Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 there have been growing concerns in the US and from allies over the potential breakdown of international order such that all states threatened. Kerry Goettlich writes that for those in the Global South who are not US allies, the invasion of Ukraine is a challenge to Western hegemony, not to the international order. Support for the future of the territorial integrity depends on the interests of smaller states seeking protection against conquest aligning with great powers which seek legitimacy for their vision of international order. 

One of the most common arguments for the US to continue to pour weapons into Ukraine is that if Ukraine lost territory to Russia permanently, international order itself—particularly the respect that states have for each other’s territory—would be severely weakened. As President Biden put it to the UN General Assembly in 2023, “If we abandon the core principles of the United States to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure? I’d respectfully suggest the answer is no.” Particularly in the context of the struggle over the military aid package passed by Congress earlier this year, this argument has been a crucial part of Democrats’ effort to show that the Russo-Ukrainian War is not a regional matter but one that impacts directly on US core interests. It is also an important obstacle to US support for any peace deal in which Ukraine would surrender territory.

But the notion that the Russo-Ukrainian War is an existential threat to the territorial integrity principle—the legal and moral prohibition of territorial conquest—has not been subject to a large amount of scrutiny. Deeper historical understanding shows that assumption cannot be taken for granted.

Comparing conquest attempts

If Russia’s attempt to conquer neighboring territory had been the first by any state since the Second World War, this argument might have some appeal. But international rules and norms are rarely, if ever, so robust. In political scientist Dan Altman’s reckoning, 65 attempts at territorial conquest occurred between 1945 and 2018. Some conquests have even been followed by successful and permanent annexations of the conquered territory, including India’s conquest of Goa from Portugal in 1961, and Israel’s de facto annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1981.

What makes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost unique in post-WWII history is that it is, and is explicitly intended as, an attack on the hegemony of the US and its allies. At the September 2022 ceremony by which Russia formally annexed large parts of Southern and Eastern Ukraine, Putin claimed that the people of these regions needed protection from a Western neo-colonial project of world domination which seeks to break apart and plunder Russia and all other countries seeking their own sovereignty. While Putin rehearsed his familiar claims about the historical unity of areas encompassing much of the former Soviet Union, most of the speech focused on Western imperialism and was cast in a defensive tone against Ukraine’s “real masters in the West.” Because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is intended as a part of a struggle against the West, Western countries feel that the war is about the survival of international rules and norms as such, but outside the West this view appears parochial.

From the perspective of states which are not close US allies, and not located close to Ukraine, it is easier to see the distinction between threats to US or Western power and threats to international order as such. For Shivshankar Menon, a former Indian National Security Advisor, the war in Ukraine “is not a challenge to the global order…it’s a challenge to the European order.” Many of these states have good reasons to support the principle of non-conquest which are quite unrelated to what happens in Ukraine, or to the future of the US’s global power. These states will not all be persuaded by President Biden’s claim that if they watch from the sidelines as Russia takes away parts of Ukraine’s territory, they will be less safe from would-be aggressors. For them, the idea that what is a threat to Western hegemony is a threat to everyone carries little weight.

Photo by Nico Smit on Unsplash

What territorial integrity depends on

What matters in the long term is not perfect adherence to the rule against conquest, or that UN resolutions against aggressors are consistent and unanimous. Instead, the future of the territorial integrity principle depends on states’ believing it aligns with their interests. Support for the territorial integrity principle has always been a confluence of two very different types of interest: smaller states seeking protection against conquest, and great powers seeking legitimacy for their vision of international order. At a global level, this dynamic dates to the international response to Japan’s conquest of Manchuria from China in 1931. The US response, which was initially designed to protect US economic interests in China, as a continuation of the old “Open Door” policy, was to vow never to recognize conquered territory anywhere. But when countries throughout Europe and Latin America with vulnerable borders of their own seized on it to save the League of Nations, it became the general principle known today as the Stimson Doctrine. And the Atlantic Charter, which the US and Britain published in 1941, declaring their opposition to forcible boundary changes, did much to galvanize support from around the world for the war effort against the conquests of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The fact that the territorial integrity principle depends on these two very different types of interest—of small states, and of great powers—means it may be threatened if the two interests do not visibly contribute to one another. Vulnerable states worldwide voiced support for China when it was invaded by Japan in 1931, hoping the principle would protect them against other threats, such as from Germany. By contrast, when Britain and France failed to denounce Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, the link between great power interests and small states’ needs broke down, dissipating faith in norms and rules. Support for Ukraine, but not other victims of conquest, may appear similarly arbitrary to states distant from Ukraine. For Global South states to give stronger support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, they must be convinced this will strengthen their own borders.

Great powers – or at least the US – must also see it as aligned with their vision of international order. If those most capable of conquest fail to demonstrate opposition to conquest, the territorial integrity principle would be little more than a collective security pact between smaller states. A neglected factor in US support for territorial integrity is the way in which it has provided a platform for global leadership. In 1900, for example, the US affirmed the “territorial integrity” of China, and the right of every nation to trade on equal terms in China. This enabled the US to moralize about its superior style of overseas influence compared to European states, and to portray itself as keeping colonialism in check. The Trump presidency, however, reopened the debate as to whether this type of moral posturing should remain a US priority. So, in this sense, US domestic debates are of greater significance for the long-term future of territorial integrity than the absolute denial of any Russian territorial gains.

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