conditional. 34 According to Walzer ‘the practice of intervening often threatens the territorial integrity and political independence of invaded states’. 35
Intervention must be an apparatus aiming to preserve human security not an
instrument of state interest. Of course, as Kofi Anand had noted ‘national
sovereignty was never meant to be a shield behind which massacres are carried
out with impunity’. Therefore, he proposed that ‘Intervention need not entail
force. It can extend to peacekeeping, to humanitarian assistance, to rehabilitation and reconstruction’. 36
Territorial conquests have been a constant reality throughout human history
until the end of the Second World War. Since then the territorial integrity norm
has been deeply internalized, institutionalized and enshrined in the collective
psyche. The are numerous unresolved territorial issues around the globe, but
those constitute limited disputes over small geographical spaces and maritime
delimitations while there is strong international consensus against the altering of
any kind of borders. The demarcation of frontiers according to the utis
possidetis principle renders separationist movements the foremost threat to the
territorial integrity of many states given that the international law remains
nuanced regarding this matter. The prospect of such movements been backed by
a stronger actor which sometimes defines the character of intervention amplifies
such as threat. Let’s not forget that regardless of its wider geopolitical aspects,
the current war in Ukraine is such a conflict.
34 Jack Kalpakian, ‘The Decline Of The Territorial Integrity Norm (1947–2018)’, World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, 23.4 (2019), 10-25 (p. 16). 35 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations 2 nd edn., (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 57 36 Elden, pp. 16-17.
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