Eugene Kontorovich (Northwestern University Law School) has posted International Responses to Territorial Conquest
(American Society of International Law Proceedings, Vol. 102, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The
prohibition on territorial conquest is a cornerstone of the
international legal order. The United Nations Charter bans the use of
force as a tool of international relations, even when used to rectify
prior injustices. Thus territory taken by force has the status of
ill-gotten gains, and cannot be kept by the victor. An important
corollary is that third-party states cannot recognize the sovereignty
of the conqueror or otherwise treat the acquisition as illegal.Despite
the Charter, nations sometimes acquire or try to acquire territory
through force. This paper, part of the proceedings of the American
Society of International Law’s 102nd annual meeting, discusses the
preliminary results of an ongoing research effort to systematically
explore the international response to every consummated conquest since
the entry into force of the UN Charter. The question is, given a
conquest, what is the expected international reaction?This
project classifies international reactions as condemnatory, accepting,
or silent/acquiescing. There are close to 20 conquests depending how
one counts (deciding what counts as a conquest is perhaps the major
methodological issues of this project).The preliminary results
are that systematic international condemnation – a resolution the U.N.
Security Council or General Assembly – occurs in under 1/3 of the
cases. On the other hand, some conquests have won overwhelming
international acceptance; these surprisingly include both conquests of
entire nations (Tibet and South Vietnam.)While territorial
conquest has been relatively infrequent in the post-World War II
period, most conquests have not been condemned by the international
community. Indeed, open acceptance is as common as condemnation. The
small likelihood of international opposition to conquest suggests that
the relatively low incidence of conquest should be attributed to causes
other than the non-recognition norm. This does not mean that the
anti-conquest norm has no force or "compliance pull," but it does
suggest that condemnation and nonrecognition are not likely play a
significant role in decisions about whether to conquer.