Remember Goa? The last fragment of Portugal’s Indian empire was annexed after a brief military operation in 1961. Few raised even token protests at this exercise of raw power politics. Gained by force in 1510, Goa was lost the same way. It mattered far more to stay friends with the new India than worry about the bruised ego of some stubborn Portuguese fascist.
As Ukraine faces the prospect of trading land for a (supposed) peace deal, the Goa episode serves to highlight the flimsiness of the rule—enshrined in the UN Charter, clause 2.4—that borders cannot be changed by force. Ever since the dawn of that supposedly bright new world in 1945, such changes have happened all too often, even in supposedly super-civilised, law-abiding Europe: look at Cyprus, still divided after the Turkish invasion of 1974, or Armenia-Azerbaijan, or ex-Yugoslavia. In the end, it is the politics that matters. How much do you care about the winners and the losers, respectively? Who do you blame for the row in the first place? Will it do any good to complain? Everything else is just words.
Sophists can make the distinction between “de jure” and “de facto” recognition of unlawfully drawn borders. But as the Baltic foreign ministers noted in a Financial Times piece this week, that is little comfort for the people concerned. Kęstutis Budrys (Lithuania), Baiba Braže (Latvia), and Margus Tsahkna (Estonia) wrote that for the six million Baltic citizens who lived through Soviet occupation after 1940, “international legal nuances offered no protection from daily horror”. A similar number of Ukrainian citizens live in the territories that Russia has already occupied. These people face child abduction, torture, imprisonment, surveillance, propaganda, and other cruelties reminiscent of the Soviet past”. Concessions made at the expense of other people can be made quickly. Reversing them takes decades, if it happens at all.
True, those legal nuances are not nothing. They can provide useful diplomatic debating points. They certainly come in handy when times change. Germany’s constitution provided a handy framework for reunification. The Baltic states stress historical continuity with the pre-war republics. But the change in power dynamics that makes them relevant also means that they are not strictly necessary. Far, far better not to be divided or occupied in the first place.
For Ukraine, no discussions on ceasefires, security guarantees, land swaps, and reconstruction can avoid this central point. The political will needed to make them work is huge. But if we had huge political will, Ukraine would not now be on the back foot on the battlefield. These countries were too scared to help Ukraine beat Russia when it had a chance of winning. Why should anyone believe that these countries, their leaders, and voters will be more determined to bear those risks and costs when the fighting stops?
The perhaps least unattractive option, a Korean-style armistice, worked chiefly because every United States administration after 1953 threw its full weight into defending and reconstructing South Korea; scant sight of such resolve now.
The motivation of the aggressor in this war is different, too. North Korea’s Soviet and Chinese backers did not want a forever war. Vladimir Putin needs military hysteria for his regime’s survival. As Jill Dougherty, the veteran CNN correspondent, points out in her new memoir spanning 50-plus years of Russia-watching, “neurotic insecurity” is the hallmark of the Kremlin’s outlook. Diplomacy may soften the edges of the problem, but concessions worsen, not abate it. The only real countermeasure is political willpower. Ukrainian, Baltic, and other victims of past dirty deals understand that. We shall see how many others do.
Edward Lucas is a Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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