International Law Allows for Border Changes But Not by Military Action, Ukrainian Activist in Karelia Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 8 – Most of the borders in the world today are the result of military action, taken at a time when international law allowed for that; but now, international law rejects that mechanism and requires “the voluntary expression of agreement of the interested parties” to any such change, Andrey Litvin says.

            Litvin, an instructor in geography and member of the Ukrainian Association of Karelia, points out that “the status of a territory within this or that country being defined by the legal actions of that state,” one that may provide for secession, with the general rule being that “the more democratic a country is, the more tolerant it is to secession” (region.expert/territories/).

                An obvious exception to that rule, the geographer continues, is the case of the USSR and Russia: Under Stalin, union republics had the constitutional right to secede; but under Putin, the autonomous republics have no such rights and even joking about changing the country’s borders can bring a prison sentence.

            At the present time, “the subjects of the Russian Federation (with the exception if you will of Chechnya) in a legal sense are less different from the foreign territories of France and administrative-territorial units of the first left of other major unitary states of Europe than they are from the subjects of federations of developed democratic countries.”

            Most large countries, Litvin continues, have viewed federalism as a necessary means of governing their large and diverse territories. Russia has been an exception, although many  Russians have viewed federalism as something the country should move towards in order to benefit both the population and the country as a whole.

            Konstantin Arsenyev, the founder of economic geography in the Russian Empire, for example, wrote in 1818 that Russia would be far better off if it recognized its far-flung territories at least as colonies rather than simply extensions of its central Muscovite territory:

            “If we were to recognize Siberia as a colony,” Arsenyev said, “then Russia would be an extremely happily arranged State, which would contain all the benefits for popular industry and well-being.”  That idea informed the oblastniki, but neither then nor now has it been accepted by the country’s rulers.

            As Litvin observes, “in present-day Russia, neither Siberia nor other regions distant from Moscow is considered a colony, apparently because international law without qualification gives colonies the right to self-determination” and thus its exercise, something the central Russian government does not want to permit.

            While international law governing secession is still underdeveloped, Litvin continues, one principle does seem to have gained near universal acceptance, that of uti possidetis, which holds that when a region does exit from one country and becomes independent, it does so without any change in borders. 

            That explains why when the USSR came apart, it did so on the basis of borders drawn by the Soviet state rather than on those that might have more adequately reflected the national aspirations of the titular nations of the new states. It also is likely to play a key role in the event the Russian Federation disintegrates, whatever its center or components now think.

            But at least at the present level of development of international law, the key action defining whether a state is a state is whether it is a member of the UN or has real opportunities to become one. Those taken in are almost universally viewed as states; those that aren’t lack that kind of recognition regardless of how other states or groups of states act.

            On the basis of this analysis, Litvin draws three conclusions certain to be important to any nations considering secession and the formation of independent states: First, “the history of international relations shows that many territorial and border disputes have a latent character,” one that has its roots in actions not recent but long ago.

            Second, such events, “the relicts of imperialism, often give birth to disputes in our day especially if states show a particular interest to a territory because of the location of useful mineral resources or other reasons.” And third, what actually happens in the world depends less on international law than on the motivations and interests of major powers.