Opinion | Putin’s Land Seize Gained’t Be the Final

Earlier than 1945, the worldwide rule on territorial acquisitions could possibly be summed up as vae victis, “woe to the vanquished.” Kings, sultans and czars led bloody campaigns to take land from each other and develop their empires overseas. Russia, Prussia and Austria as soon as devoured Poland utterly. The Ottomans seized Jap Europe and Egypt. As political scientist

John Vasquez

says, “Of all of the doable points states can combat over, the proof overwhelmingly signifies that points involving territory . . . are the primary ones susceptible to collective violence.”

Lastly, in 1945, that rule modified. Amid the wreckage of failed German and Japanese expansionism, the United Nations Constitution declared a brand new rule for the world: Borders can now not be modified by power.

This prohibition has been surprisingly profitable. Between 1945 and 1975, charges of profitable territorial conquest declined dramatically. Remarkably, after 1976 no U.N. member misplaced territory to a different by power (besides in a small Egyptian border dispute). For nearly 40 years, although wars have been fought, this specific pressure of battle appeared to have been eradicated utterly.

Till Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, along with his invasion of “little inexperienced males”—Russian troopers in unmarked inexperienced uniforms—after which an illegitimate referendum. The West’s halfhearted response to Crimea’s seizure inspired Mr. Putin to invade once more this 12 months and extra brutally. Russia’s indiscriminate shelling of civilians, to say nothing of the heinous therapy of Ukrainians in locations like Bucha, reveals how savage wars for land will be.

The Russian president’s perspective is a throwback to the bloody-minded philosophy that dominated earlier than the U.N. Constitution. In Mr. Putin’s aggressive pronouncements, one hears echoes of German ultra-nationalist

Heinrich von Treitschke,

who in 1870 demanded France’s Alsace-Lorraine as a prize of the Franco-Prussian battle: “These territories are ours by the precise of the sword, and we will eliminate them in advantage of a better proper—the precise of the German nation, which won’t allow its misplaced kids to stay strangers to the German Empire.”

Mr. Putin made related irredentist claims about defending Russian audio system in Ukraine earlier than his invasion in February. Although most individuals within the Donbas don’t wish to be annexed (any greater than most Alsatians did), this has not stopped the Russian president’s drive to re-create his mythic “Russian world.”

German leaders additionally desired Alsace-Lorraine’s pure sources, as Mr. Putin does Ukraine’s. Hitler coveted Lorraine’s wealthy iron mines; Mr. Putin desires Ukraine’s considerable vitality. The components of Ukraine Mr. Putin is making an attempt to overcome comprise roughly $1.4 trillion value of pure gasoline and coal.

Mr. Putin isn’t the one fashionable chief with expansionist goals. Consider Chinese language President

Xi Jinping’s

assertiveness within the South and East China seas, or Hungarian Prime Minister

Viktor Orbán

touting outrageous maps of “Larger Hungary.” In dozens of nations, claims to overseas land could possibly be used to inflame help for battle. And as we’re seeing now, wars can push different worldwide points off the agenda. Provide-chain issues, epidemics, nuclear proliferation—they’ll all be overshadowed by one man’s need to seize territory.

The West can discourage future land grabs if it stops Mr. Putin. The U.S. and its allies ought to preserve their most severe sanctions—particularly the monetary sanctions and boycotts of oil and gasoline—till Russian troops go away Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees can return, and internationally supervised referendums will be held in all of the territory claimed by Mr. Putin.

The associated fee will probably be excessive if the West fails to cease Mr. Putin’s annexations. One can solely dread what number of lives will probably be misplaced if the way forward for battle turns into like its previous. The e-book of Revelation says that the primary horseman of the apocalypse rode a white horse and went forth to overcome. With out decided motion by the West on Ukraine, the fearsome White Horseman might journey once more.

Mr. Wenar is a professor of political philosophy at Stanford.