There’s an interesting discussion in James Bradley’s Flyboys (dealing with WWII and its origins) about the resentment of the Japanese when their imperial ambitions and attempted conquests in the Far East were challenged by Western nations (notably Great Britain and the U.S.).
After all, the British had established a large empire which included posessions in the area, and the U.S. had only stopped expanding its territory at the expense of others a few decades earlier. So why couldn’t the Japanese conquer China and establish its own empire by force?
The answer was that other world powers were no longer willing to accept such actions, in part for selfish reasons and in part because attitudes about colonial conquest had changed.
By all historic precedent up until recent years, Israel has every right to hold onto the land it occupied as the result of war, and can also argue that it’s even more entitled to do so seeing that its gains resulted from misguided aggression against it.
The problem is that the rest of the world (for varying reasons) will not accept Israel’s keeping that territory in perpetuity. Times have changed and there’s a new reality, unfair as it may seem to Alessan and his countrymen.
Rather than pointlessly debating the “fairness” of it all, the challenge remains whether Israel can barter that land for a chance at peaceful existence.
I seriously don’t think anything has fundamentally changed. If a country can take land in war, and hold it against all others, eventually it becomes “theirs”. Questions will be raised by outsiders if the original inhabitants object, but if they don’t, or their objections are ignored or unpopular, or if the country that took the land has some sort of pre-existing claim on it and can convince outsiders that the objection is an “internal matter”, the land is considered for all intents “theirs”.
While recent examples are rarer now than previously, certainly they exist post-WW2. Think of the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam, or the conquest of Tibet by China; and think of the threat that Taiwan exists under right now - if it were not for US protection, China would have snapped Taiwan up long ago and claimed it was an 'internal matter".
The world will only “not except” those changes where someone has the power and will to make this lack of acceptance tell. Japan was unfortunate (or rather, foolish) enough to think that, basically, it could get away with snatching its colonial empire from under the noses of the established powers - but it hadn’t the power to do it. In short, it was not that Japan was somehow behind the times, it was that they lacked power - big powers fighting each other for control of colonial empires is certainly nothing new; nor is such powers, having fought, lacking the will, power or ability to keep command of the empires once won (think of the Seven Years War and the American Revolution).
On the international stage, various attempts have been made to disguise this unpalatable truth with the comforting fictions embodied in the United Nations. Unfortunately, might will continue to make right, until our planet has a true world sovereign power, able to actually lay down binding, enforcable laws.
I think there is a difference between colonial powers splitting up countries behind closed doors and it being done through international law. In high school I read the complete debates on this at the UN library, and Arabs were definitely included in the process. In fact the Russians and the West both supported the creation of Israel, so it was not even a close thing.
Some have touched on this already, but it seems to me the answer is by consulting the residents of the area. If the people are allowed to vote on their destiny, you’ll probably get a good answer. The residents of Texas will (unfortunately) probably choose not to become Mexicans. If Kuwaitis were allowed to vote after the Iraqi invasion they would not have wanted to be Iraqis. Puerto Rico is one of the few “occupied” territories I know of which gets a chance to vote - their decision to stay in their present status legitimizes it.
Now this clearly encourages movements of populations, but to a certain extent even if the occupying country was wrong to send people in X years ago, it is just as wrong to exile them now.
While I mostly accept your point in principle, Vietnam an Taiwan are not good examples. Vietnam was partitioned into North and South by outside powers and would have reunited earlier without outside interference. If all outside powers had left after WWII, the country would have stayed unified either peacefully, or have had what anyone would consider a civil war to establish who was in control.
Both Taiwan(Republic of China) and mainland China (People’s Republic of China) maintain that there is only one China. Any invasion from one side or the other would just be a continuance of the civil war that started after WWII.
In both cases, neither would strictly be a case of a foreign invasion.
China is a bit interesting in that their historical claims go back maybe a thousand years. The Mongolian aka the Yuan Dynasty was 1271 to 1368.
The really interesting part is claiming the Mongolian empire as being “Chinese.” Yep, anywhere the Genghis Khan or his decendants conquored, become part of the historical Chinese claim (Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria). Same for the Manchurian empire.
And to add weight to the claim, the ethnic Han Chinese have literally flooded since 1949 into the areas of Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang such that the locals have gone from usually an overwhelming majority of the population to less than 50%. IIRC, Manchurians make up at most a few percent of what used to be Manchuria.
So, historic claims (however dubious) going back at least hundreds of years followed by a majority population.
Lemkin presented a draft resolution for a Genocide Convention treaty to a number of countries in an effort to persuade them to sponsor the resolution. With the support of the United States, the resolution was placed before the General Assembly for consideration. Defining genocide in 1943, Lemkin wrote:
Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.[13]
I posted only a few sentences, sorry they weren’t subtle enough for you. Can you synopsize your views in a brief but subtle paragraph? Will it mention that one side wants peace and the other side intends to keep killing innocents until it drives the Israelis into the sea and back to … Poland? I don’t defend every single Israeli action, and want to perceive shades of gray rather than black and white. But which side do you paint with the darker shade?
“a little further into the past than just last week” is rather vague. Are we going to reconsider Joshua’s siege of Jericho or what?
I think the idea of a cut-off date offends me because it sort of assumes that history is something that happened in the past, with rules that don’t apply to the modern world. That’s an incredibly arrogant and utopian point of view. The fact is that history continues whether we want it or not, and the same rules that governed the world a century ago largely govern the world today.
The last time I checked, sending a Gunboat and some Maxim Guns to deal with recalcitrant native chieftains isn’t considered a viable foreign policy tool anymore.
Similarly, if one sees a man wearing a skirt nowadays, one doesn’t get to shoot him and nick his country (to borrow a line from Captain Blackadder).
So no, the same rules that governed the world a century ago don’t generally govern the world today. It’s a different game of cricket entirely, IMHO.
What do you mean? Surely you don’t suggest that Mexico be returned to Spain, who would then return it to the Aztecs, who in turn would return it to yet an earlier culture? IANAL, but surely there’s a Latin phrase meaning, roughly, “possession is 9/10 of the law”, without which legal, political and social systems couldn’t function?
Where I live today, 45 years ago was a place where one’s “land title” border ended at a rifle’s-shot distance! And many of those property lines are observed to this day! (My sister-in-law’s brother-in-law was a very famous “Robin Hood” type strongman in those days, and many locals are surprised when I mention that he’s still alive, an unassuming retired old villager, though I think he has a certain proud sparkle in his eyes.)
Of course. That is, after all, exactly how domestic laws “work”.
If you don’t obey the law, a cop comes and arrests you, backed up with the whole force of the state and society. That’s “might”.
The reason “international law” of war & peace doesn’t work like that is that there is no “cop” who is above the fray. It is more like “law” in a frontier town, relying on one’s armed neighbours to lynch ‘bad guys’ - when the neighbours may (objectively speaking) be the ‘bad guys’.
I disagree that there is a difference in kind here. Many modern invasion and conquests (and many pre-modern ones) were based on some sort of existing historic claim - to “reunify” a group that had been “split by an accident of history”, or based on some bit of dynastic juggery, or to protect the frontiers. All that differs is the degree to which outsiders 'buy" the motive as legitimate.
Look at the origins of WW2. According to Hitler, at least initially he wasn’t after conquest at all - only to correct the 'historic mistake" made of splitting the “German nation” up into a bunch of smaller countries by the powers after WW1. Seems to me exactly the same notion as that North & South Vietnam are ‘really one country’, that Taiwan is an indissoluble bit of China, that Tibet is a “historic part of China” (referenced by China Guy above), etc. etc.
The odd man out or historically somewhat anomalous situation is the scramble by european nations for colonies, which lacked even a shred of that excuse. There have of course been empire-builders before, and probably will be again, but the conditions that make for empire-building probably do not exist right now.
Invasions and conquests without some theory of historic or other legitimacy are rare.
How can one look at the present-day invasion of Afganistan and not be in any way reminded of the numerous times the Brits invaded Afganistan for much the same reasons in the 19th century?
The world hasn’t changed very much at all. The rhetoric is different, but not the reality.
