Good article but people make this stuff way to complicated. It's not about morality orethics but simply might makes right, and the victors get to write the history books. We didn't defeat the Nazis because the Nazis were bad and evil, we firebombed Dresden and killed them until they gave up. The answer to the question "Who gets self-determination?" is whoever can take it. If it can't be won peacefully, it must be won through force (see Clausewitz, Carl). Kill more of them then they kill you until they give up. This is the way it has always been and the way it always will be.
Sure, let's rephrase the question. "By what principle should it be agreed upon in advance which independence movements / conquests be condemned or supported by the powerful countries of the world, for the sake of not maximally engulfing the world in various destructive proxy wars?"
- keeping in mind that "whatever their national interests at the moment serve" is a rule that involves more bloodshed and wealth destruction than those countries would like, and it is thus not in their interests to endorse it.
I'll go with "whatever their national interests at the moment serve." Proxy wars are a defense-in-depth strategy for powerful countries that is much better than direct confrontation. Destructive proxy wars are the least bad option for great power conflict.
It seems unlikely to me that rulers would agree to work for the national interest rather than for their own interests. Do you see any reason to believe that they would?
Everyone keeps saying this and I think it's overly cynical.
There's an international norm that says you can't launch unprovoked aggressive invasions. You could ask "how many battalions do international norms have?", but the answer would be "quite a lot!" The fact that Russia broke the norm led lots of countries to sanction it and otherwise cause it grief. I'm not saying this norm is foolproof - if it had been a stronger and more popular country like the US, maybe they could have gotten away with it. But the norm isn't totally toothless either. I bet all the time there are dictators who think "should I invade my neighbor? No, that would mean I'm violating an international norm and I'd get in trouble."
Saying "might makes right" is ignoring this valuable and powerful system. Worse, it's hyperstitionally weakening the system - as long as everyone knows everyone knows everyone ... that there are international norms, the norms will be real.
Doesn't the US being strong enough to repeatedly evade the norm indicate that might really is the determining factor, and that Russia just isn't mighty enough to defy the US that effectively?
Define "the determining factor". If norms trump might in 80% of cases, but the handful of truly overwhelmingly mighty ignore the norms, it doesn't seem like a good reason to stop caring about the norms/to say they don't really matter.
I mean, you can say the same thing about laws within a single country, can't you? If you're sufficiently rich and cunning, you can get away with bribing left right and center. But that doesn't mean the laws against corruption are fiction and that we may as well not have them at all, because for every corrupt businessman bribing their way to an unethical building permit, there are dozens of ordinary people to whom it will not even occur to bribe their tax inspector (or whatever), to the general betterment of society.
I didn't say there were people rich enough to be completely above the law; but I thought it non-controversial enough that there are some people rich and well-connected enough to *get away* with various forms of bribery and corruption that, at a smaller scale, would be noticed and prosecuted.
I also didn't say anything about the US. Feel free to substitute a more corrupt foreign country if you want. My point is that 0.5% of a given group having a special cheat code that allows them to ignore the normal rules everyone else plays by, does not mean the rules aren't still the baseline.
I think for people who aren't rich it's not the risk of punishment that prevents them from, say, bribing a Congressman to earmark funds to benefit them, but rather a lack of means to accomplish that in the first place.
In a corrupt country there's typically less "state capacity" and enforcement of the laws generally. And in such places the "baseline" of what's actually expected and even normative can be quite different from how things are officially said to be. I'm thinking of Diego Gambetta's writings about Italian academia.
This norm is part of the "soft power" projected by the United States, and would be exactly the same for any other hegemon in the US's place.
Soft power (persuasion, propaganda, rhetoric, arts and culture, etc.: everything non-military) is arguably more useful to the hegemon than military might in daily international affairs. Soft power projection makes exercises of military power less frequent and therefore less costly.
Re the cf: The military usefulness of tactical nuclear bombs is doubtful. They make a big, persistent mess, which is generally more of a problem for the attacker than the defender, who is unlikely to use nukes in its own territory (optimistically assuming it would have to clean up the mess after the invasion is repelled). The attacker would only nuke important things like transport hubs which make its own logistics less workable.
Also, the attacker usually has some goals other than creating a desolate wasteland, such as taking over industrial capacity or resources (such as water and fossil fuel resources, in the case of Crimea/Ukraine) or transport links such as ports.
"Norms" are secondary to these pure military and strategic considerations.
Nobody uses nuclear weapons in a war between peers because of MAD and guaranteed second strike capability. This is a major reason, probably the most important one, why Russia wants control of a viable (non-desert, watered from Ukraine) Crimea: Sevastopol is essential to the submarine leg of Russia's second strike tripod.
Nah, it's completely toothless. The only reason any dictator worries about invading his neighbor is if it gets some big larger country -- like the US -- upset, or at least some significant coalition of almost as big countries. So if you want to equate "international norm" to "US public opinion" then it works, but the rest of the world would be entitled to view that as pretty cynical.
Otherwise, you would need to demonstrate, at the least, some case where some large group of countries ("the international norm") *not* including the US actually caused some dictator to reverse, or be defeated. No obvious example springs to my mind. Whereas there are a host of examples of things that completely violated international norms but where nothing happened because the US didn't seem to care (the Rwandan massacre springs to mind, as does the Syrian/Hezbollah destruction of Lebanon, once a thriving civilized nation, the treatment of Tibet by China), and examples of things that weren't especially norm-violating but which nevertheless were changed *because* the US cared (the ejection of Noriega as Panamanian dictator, the fact that China was unable to annex Taiwan in the 50s, for that matter the fact that West Berlin existed for almost 50 years).
Didn't Azerbiajan just invade and claim part of Armenia (or was it vice versa). 'We' don't like Russia so we're on Ukraine's side. But for Azerbaijan and Armenia? I have no idea who's side I'm supposed to be on in that conflict, but I don't think there was some giant international reaction. I remember some reporting on how much drones were used in the conflict, but that's about it. The 'norm' seems to be really what doesn't annoy America (or local regional power) and a reflection of Pax Americana. And America itself can do whatever it wants, plenty of invading, it's just not really interested in adding directly to it's own territory. Certainly which secessionist movements get supported and which don't seem much more realpolitik then any kind of moral principle.
Iraq invades Iran intending to annex some parts and overthrow the Iranian government -> supported by the US (we don't like Iran). Iraq invades Kuwait (again intending to annex it, Iraq really wanted more coastline) US invades to stop it. North Korea invades South Korea (supported by USSR / PROC, opposed by US, really inconvenient having more than one global power) final line of control has some territory shifted to both sides. North Vietnam successfully invades South Vietnam. There's a lot more fragmentation than conquest post WWII but that generally serves the US interest.
Good article but people make this stuff way to complicated. It's not about morality orethics but simply might makes right, and the victors get to write the history books. We didn't defeat the Nazis because the Nazis were bad and evil, we firebombed Dresden and killed them until they gave up. The answer to the question "Who gets self-determination?" is whoever can take it. If it can't be won peacefully, it must be won through force (see Clausewitz, Carl). Kill more of them then they kill you until they give up. This is the way it has always been and the way it always will be.
Sure, let's rephrase the question. "By what principle should it be agreed upon in advance which independence movements / conquests be condemned or supported by the powerful countries of the world, for the sake of not maximally engulfing the world in various destructive proxy wars?"
- keeping in mind that "whatever their national interests at the moment serve" is a rule that involves more bloodshed and wealth destruction than those countries would like, and it is thus not in their interests to endorse it.
I'll go with "whatever their national interests at the moment serve." Proxy wars are a defense-in-depth strategy for powerful countries that is much better than direct confrontation. Destructive proxy wars are the least bad option for great power conflict.
It seems unlikely to me that rulers would agree to work for the national interest rather than for their own interests. Do you see any reason to believe that they would?
Everyone keeps saying this and I think it's overly cynical.
There's an international norm that says you can't launch unprovoked aggressive invasions. You could ask "how many battalions do international norms have?", but the answer would be "quite a lot!" The fact that Russia broke the norm led lots of countries to sanction it and otherwise cause it grief. I'm not saying this norm is foolproof - if it had been a stronger and more popular country like the US, maybe they could have gotten away with it. But the norm isn't totally toothless either. I bet all the time there are dictators who think "should I invade my neighbor? No, that would mean I'm violating an international norm and I'd get in trouble."
Saying "might makes right" is ignoring this valuable and powerful system. Worse, it's hyperstitionally weakening the system - as long as everyone knows everyone knows everyone ... that there are international norms, the norms will be real.
Cf. why nobody uses nuclear weapons during war.
Doesn't the US being strong enough to repeatedly evade the norm indicate that might really is the determining factor, and that Russia just isn't mighty enough to defy the US that effectively?
Define "the determining factor". If norms trump might in 80% of cases, but the handful of truly overwhelmingly mighty ignore the norms, it doesn't seem like a good reason to stop caring about the norms/to say they don't really matter.
I mean, you can say the same thing about laws within a single country, can't you? If you're sufficiently rich and cunning, you can get away with bribing left right and center. But that doesn't mean the laws against corruption are fiction and that we may as well not have them at all, because for every corrupt businessman bribing their way to an unethical building permit, there are dozens of ordinary people to whom it will not even occur to bribe their tax inspector (or whatever), to the general betterment of society.
I don't think there's anyone rich enough in the US to simply be above the laws.
I didn't say there were people rich enough to be completely above the law; but I thought it non-controversial enough that there are some people rich and well-connected enough to *get away* with various forms of bribery and corruption that, at a smaller scale, would be noticed and prosecuted.
I also didn't say anything about the US. Feel free to substitute a more corrupt foreign country if you want. My point is that 0.5% of a given group having a special cheat code that allows them to ignore the normal rules everyone else plays by, does not mean the rules aren't still the baseline.
I think for people who aren't rich it's not the risk of punishment that prevents them from, say, bribing a Congressman to earmark funds to benefit them, but rather a lack of means to accomplish that in the first place.
In a corrupt country there's typically less "state capacity" and enforcement of the laws generally. And in such places the "baseline" of what's actually expected and even normative can be quite different from how things are officially said to be. I'm thinking of Diego Gambetta's writings about Italian academia.
https://crookedtimber.org/2010/03/23/why-does-italian-academia-suck/
This norm is part of the "soft power" projected by the United States, and would be exactly the same for any other hegemon in the US's place.
Soft power (persuasion, propaganda, rhetoric, arts and culture, etc.: everything non-military) is arguably more useful to the hegemon than military might in daily international affairs. Soft power projection makes exercises of military power less frequent and therefore less costly.
Re the cf: The military usefulness of tactical nuclear bombs is doubtful. They make a big, persistent mess, which is generally more of a problem for the attacker than the defender, who is unlikely to use nukes in its own territory (optimistically assuming it would have to clean up the mess after the invasion is repelled). The attacker would only nuke important things like transport hubs which make its own logistics less workable.
Also, the attacker usually has some goals other than creating a desolate wasteland, such as taking over industrial capacity or resources (such as water and fossil fuel resources, in the case of Crimea/Ukraine) or transport links such as ports.
"Norms" are secondary to these pure military and strategic considerations.
Nobody uses nuclear weapons in a war between peers because of MAD and guaranteed second strike capability. This is a major reason, probably the most important one, why Russia wants control of a viable (non-desert, watered from Ukraine) Crimea: Sevastopol is essential to the submarine leg of Russia's second strike tripod.
Nah, it's completely toothless. The only reason any dictator worries about invading his neighbor is if it gets some big larger country -- like the US -- upset, or at least some significant coalition of almost as big countries. So if you want to equate "international norm" to "US public opinion" then it works, but the rest of the world would be entitled to view that as pretty cynical.
Otherwise, you would need to demonstrate, at the least, some case where some large group of countries ("the international norm") *not* including the US actually caused some dictator to reverse, or be defeated. No obvious example springs to my mind. Whereas there are a host of examples of things that completely violated international norms but where nothing happened because the US didn't seem to care (the Rwandan massacre springs to mind, as does the Syrian/Hezbollah destruction of Lebanon, once a thriving civilized nation, the treatment of Tibet by China), and examples of things that weren't especially norm-violating but which nevertheless were changed *because* the US cared (the ejection of Noriega as Panamanian dictator, the fact that China was unable to annex Taiwan in the 50s, for that matter the fact that West Berlin existed for almost 50 years).
Didn't Azerbiajan just invade and claim part of Armenia (or was it vice versa). 'We' don't like Russia so we're on Ukraine's side. But for Azerbaijan and Armenia? I have no idea who's side I'm supposed to be on in that conflict, but I don't think there was some giant international reaction. I remember some reporting on how much drones were used in the conflict, but that's about it. The 'norm' seems to be really what doesn't annoy America (or local regional power) and a reflection of Pax Americana. And America itself can do whatever it wants, plenty of invading, it's just not really interested in adding directly to it's own territory. Certainly which secessionist movements get supported and which don't seem much more realpolitik then any kind of moral principle.
Iraq invades Iran intending to annex some parts and overthrow the Iranian government -> supported by the US (we don't like Iran). Iraq invades Kuwait (again intending to annex it, Iraq really wanted more coastline) US invades to stop it. North Korea invades South Korea (supported by USSR / PROC, opposed by US, really inconvenient having more than one global power) final line of control has some territory shifted to both sides. North Vietnam successfully invades South Vietnam. There's a lot more fragmentation than conquest post WWII but that generally serves the US interest.