DR 14 Mar

In a world increasingly fragmented by conflicting ideologies and polarised narratives, there remains one striking exception to this pervasive discord: the near-universal acceptance, either tacit or overt, that respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nation-states is an inviolable cornerstone of the international community. The United Nations Charter, ratified in 1945, unequivocally enshrines this principle, obliging states to abstain from employing force as a means of violating the territorial sanctity or political autonomy of other states. Herein, the term ‘state’ is employed in its geopolitical sense, distinguishing it from the more ambiguous references to ‘nations’ or ‘countries’. Consequently, few would now openly endorse territorial annexation following military conquest as legitimate. Yet, while conquest undoubtedly persists, it is habitually cloaked in euphemistic justifications—whether through Russia’s tactic of instigating secessionist movements and subsequently annexing regions via orchestrated referenda, or Israel’s strategic nomenclature of territorial control as ‘occupation’ rather than ‘conquest’.

Political figures today profess an aversion to conquest, embracing a narrative that casts modern international order as civilised and pacifist. The very notion that territorial acquisition through force might be morally defensible seems anathema. Nevertheless, this widespread revulsion towards conquest is historically anomalous. In the 17th century, Hugo Grotius, a Dutch jurist, argued that treaties concluding wars—even those that imposed manifestly unjust conditions such as territorial seizures—must be upheld to ensure conflict cessation. Refusing to acknowledge such treaties, Grotius contended, would risk perpetuating interminable warfare. Similarly, the 19th-century American jurist Henry Wheaton observed that the territorial claims of nearly all European states were historically rooted in conquest, subsequently legitimised through protracted occupation. Thus, the very legitimacy of most modern states implicitly validates historical conquest.

Whereas Grotius's framework sought to temper conquest by formalising its eventual recognition, contemporary international law enshrines the preservation of territorial boundaries as sacrosanct, effectively freezing the geopolitical landscape as it existed post-1945. Curiously, this paradigm prohibits only those conquests that transpired after this arbitrarily imposed temporal threshold, thereby implicitly legitimising territorial acquisitions preceding this cut-off. This dichotomy renders conquest a heinous crime in the contemporary order while paradoxically validating historical annexations.

The entrenched global aversion to conquest is the confluence of myriad factors. Curiously, those states most capable of effecting large-scale territorial annexation often emerge as its most vocal detractors. While victims of conquest, such as Palestinians or Ukrainians, or those fearing subjugation, like Estonians or Taiwanese, naturally denounce territorial aggression, it is striking that the United States, the preeminent military power with expansive global deployments, similarly condemns annexation. Since its annexation of the Northern Mariana Islands during World War II, the US has abstained from seizing conquered territory despite maintaining military dominance across continents.

This apparent self-imposed restraint derives partly from the United States' historical trajectory as a settler-colonial enterprise propelled by land acquisition, plantation slavery, and agrarian-industrial capitalism. Unlike traditional imperial entities, which pursued expansion through state-directed campaigns, the US's territorial growth stemmed predominantly from settler incursions. British colonial authorities had previously attempted to curtail such expansion to avert destabilising conflicts, yet following independence, the fledgling US government proved less inclined to uphold territorial agreements with Indigenous populations. Despite this, federal authorities struggled to contain the disorderly westward advance of settlers. Consequently, states such as California, Florida, Hawaii, Texas, and Vermont briefly existed as sovereign entities before their eventual incorporation into the Union. Numerous unsuccessful ventures, bearing names like Vandalia, Watauga, Transylvania, and Westsylvania, similarly emerged from settler ambitions but failed to attain formal recognition.

The US's legacy of conquest was thus distinct from European colonial empires, defined less by state-sanctioned annexation than by settler-driven expansionism. Yet this unstructured mode of territorial acquisition culminated in imperial ambitions that mirrored those of traditional colonial powers. By the 1890s, the annexation of Hawaii signalled America’s transition towards a more conventional imperial framework, igniting public debate regarding the nature and ethics of US expansionism.

Difficult Word Meanings:

• Inviolable: Never to be broken or dishonored.

• Tacit: Understood or implied without being stated.

• Euphemistic: Using mild or indirect language to replace harsh terms.

• Autonomy: Self-governance or independence.

• Anomalous: Deviating from what is standard or expected.

• Protracted: Lasting for a long time or longer than expected.

• Confluence: A coming together of multiple elements.

• Temporal: Relating to time as opposed to eternity.

Word Count: 600
Flesch-Kincaid Level: 17 

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