Golan Heights tweet will have global consequences [View all]
By Stacie Goddard March 23 at 5:00 AM
On Thursday, President Trump tweeted his intention to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, territory that Israel annexed from Syria in the wake of the 1967 war. For decades the United States, along with the entire international community, has refused to recognize Israel’s annexation, instead treating the Golan Heights as temporarily occupied territory.
While commentary has largely focused on the effects Trump’s announcement will have in the Middle East, this shift in U.S. policy has global implications, as well. Trump’s position on the Golan Heights is inconsistent with what scholars call the territorial integrity norm, the principle that denounces territorial conquest as a legitimate instrument of international politics. Trump’s announcement is likely to weaken the norm of territorial integrity, and in the process, undercut the U.S. ability to deter and punish states that engage in territorial expansion.
The territorial integrity norm stipulates that states may not use force to alter interstate boundaries. Before 1945, forceful territorial conquest was largely seen as legitimate: After all, states depended on territory for their security and wealth, and thus seizing territory to augment natural resources, expand their population, or build more secure boundaries, was a tempting prospect.
By the 19th century, norms were changing. States in Latin America sought to order their relations around recognition of each other’s sovereign claims to territory. By 1945, the rabid expansion of Hitler’s Germany and imperial Japan made clear to the United States and its Western allies the dangers of territorial conquest. As they built the postwar order, these states enshrined the territorial integrity norm in the U.N. Charter, mandating that all members must “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/23/trumps-golan-heights-tweet-will-have-global-consequences-territorial-expansion/?utm_term=.9c3208985804
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