The post-second world war taboo on acquiring territory through force or by the threat of force is being unravelled by a generation of political leaders, led by expansionist threats from Donald Trump that are unprecedented for a US president.
Experts are warning that a combination of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and Trump’s comments explicitly pushing for the US to acquire Greenland, Canada, the Panama canal and Gaza is fuelling a permissive environment that threatens long-recognised borders and the international rules-based order that has existed since the end of the war.
The norm, enshrined in article 2 of the UN charter of 1945, states that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
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The headline of an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs puts it bluntly: “Conquest is back.”
Yes, but Trump does represent a qualitative change. At least there was some consensus in Washington before him, both on domestic and international affairs. That made the US rather predictable. You knew where your values and interest met theirs and where they did not. That is no more. The US is now home to both some of the most forward thinking people and institutions and some of the most influential regressive beliefs. And all helmed by a fan of the latter and whose tempers change by the minute. The US is right now in some regards a bigger source of uncertainty than either Russia or China, erratic and extremely polarized as it has become. And it’s not only markets that hate prolonged uncertainty. Foreign governments and the people do too.