Latest / Reformed Thinking / Peace Without Plunder: Ukraine’s Territorial Claims, Occupation Referenda, and the Limits of Legitimacy in International Law

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Peace Without Plunder: Ukraine’s Territorial Claims, Occupation Referenda, and the Limits of Legitimacy in International Law · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reform Thinking. Today we're doing a deep dive
• 0:03
  into a question that, well, it really sits at a tough
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  intersection. You have diplomacy, you have
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  destruction, and then you have moral law.
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  And the dilemma is this. When a huge, brutal war is
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  maybe, just maybe, grinding to a halt, what comes first?
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  Do you go for the quick agreement?
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  You know the piece of paper that stops the killing right now?
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  The expedient choice. Like the thing that buys you
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  stability today? Or do you stick to the legal
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  principle, the thing that defines what is right and just,
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  even if it's messy and frankly, much more costly to uphold?
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  And that tension is, well, it's at the heart of so much of
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  modern statecraft. We're looking at this through
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  the lens of territorial seizures and this referendum that get
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  held in occupied regions. And we have to ask that
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  fundamental question, can a piece that you buy with a
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  treaty, can it really be legitimate?
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  Can it be just if it means you have to legally sign off on
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  conquest if you're basically saying OK that's stolen land is
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  now lawfully yours? It's such a critical question
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  because the temptation is always there, isn't it?
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  For countries that are exhausted, for policy makers who
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  just want to win, the temptation is to say, look, the fighting
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  stopped, let's just accept the new map and move on.
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  Of course, but we have to really test that.
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  We have to ask if international law, and then even more for us,
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  the moral law that stands above all human law, allows for that.
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  Can we recognize that outcome as final?
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  To do that, to really conduct that test, we have to look at
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  this idea of legitimacy and I think 3 distinct layers.
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  These come right from the sources we're looking at today.
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  OK, first there's legal legitimacy.
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  Does the whole thing line up with the core international
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  rules? You know the big one, the
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  prohibition on aggressive force. The baseline.
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  The baseline. Second, you have procedural
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  legitimacy if you're claiming the people consented.
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  Well, was that consent expressed freely?
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  Or was it, you know, the result of coercion, of censorship, with
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  millions of displaced people not even getting a say?
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  And the third. And 3rd is international
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  legitimacy. Can other countries, other
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  states, lawfully recognize this new reality without just tearing
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  down the whole legal structure that's supposed to protect them
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  too? And this is what I think makes
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  this deep dive so different. We're not just stopping at the
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  legal analysis. We're starting with the the hard
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  baseline of the UN Charter system, but then we're moving
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  directly into a moral and theological analysis.
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  We're taking our cues from the reformed tradition.
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  We're asking what the moral law you know, as we see in the 10
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  Commandments, is. It's understood in sources like
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  the Westminster Confession. What does that have to say when
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  someone tries to redraw a map in the shadow of a sword?
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  It's a study in political science, sure, but it's also a
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  study in theological statecraft. Let's get into it.
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  OK, so let's start where the modern legal order really
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  begins. Right after the Second World
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  War, the whole system was reset with this explicit idea.
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  Conquest is not a source of legal title.
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  This isn't just a nice idea, it's the core legal principle.
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  After 1945, you cannot generate lawful title to territory
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  through aggression. It's there specifically to stop
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  us from going back to a world where war was just, you know, a
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  normal tool for expanding your borders.
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  That's such a huge historical shift.
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  Before that, for centuries, if you won the war, the land was
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  basically yours, the spoils of victory.
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  But the You're in Charter changed all that.
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  It did so that. Prohibition on the threat or use
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  of force in Article 24. That's not just about behavior,
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  it's about how borders themselves can change.
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  You can do it with a treaty if everyone freely consents, but
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  you can't do it by invasion. Exactly right.
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  Article 24 says you can't use force against the territorial
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  integrity of another state. And the legal upshot of that is
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  this really key distinction between what we call de facto
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  and dejour. OK, explain that.
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  De facto is just the reality on the ground.
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  You know who has military control, but dejour is the
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  lawful right. The actual title deeds so to
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  speak. So even if an army controls a
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  piece of land for 1020 years, the law still treats that
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  situation as temporary and illegal.
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  So they're squatting, but they don't own the house.
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  That's a perfect analysis. The system is built to create
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  that gap between reality and right so that other countries
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  are never legally required to reward an act of violence.
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  I see. So the system forces everyone to
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  separate a military win from a legal transfer of property.
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  The aggressor might control the land, but they don't own it.
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  And that leads you right to the non recognition doctrine.
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  That's the practical tool, right?
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  It is. If annexation by force is this
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  major breach of the rules, then all the other states are
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  expected not to treat it as lawful.
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  And that's not just symbolic, that has real teeth.
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  Oh, it has huge practical consequences for the aggressor.
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  It's anything but symbolic. It creates enormous instability.
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  It determines whose pack ports are recognized, whose property
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  deeds are valid in an international court.
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  Can you trade there? Can you invest there?
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  The mess, it's a total mess. And a peace deal that asks the
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  rest of the world to recognize the conquest is just inherently
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  unstable because most of the world will keep sanctions in
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  place and keep treating the territory as legally part of the
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  victim's state. The sources make a really good
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  point about this attempt to launder aggression.
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  You see this pattern where the goal is achieved with tanks, but
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  then immediately they try to clean it all up with paperwork.
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  Right. The referenda.
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  The proclamation. Yeah, they try to claim that
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  some administrative procedure has suddenly made the whole
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  thing lawful. They just switch instruments
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  from artillery to a ballot box. And international law is, it's
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  designed not to be fooled by that.
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  The whole point of the baseline rule is to prevent that kind of
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  conversion. The legal system is supposed to
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  look behind the ballots, behind the signatures, and see the
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  initial foundational crime invasion, the unlawful use of
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  force. If the whole change is a product
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  of aggression, then the legal problem, the illegality, it
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  doesn't just vanish because you switch tools.
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  The claim is still invalid. And that brings us to occupation
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  law. It seems like occupation law
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  exists specifically to stop that sleight of hand that move from
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  temporary military control to permanent ownership.
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  So what is the legal nature of an occupation?
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  Well, an occupation is defined pretty simply.
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  It's just effective control by foreign forces over enemy
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  territory. But, and this is the critical
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  part, the law is absolutely insistent that occupation is not
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  a way to acquire territory. It's a temporary state of a
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  hairs. It's temporary.
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  The power of the occupier has is custodial, not proprietary.
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  You're the emergency house sitter, not the new homeowner.
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  Your job is just to restore public order and keep the lights
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  on. So you're very constrained.
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  You have to keep order, but you also have to respect the
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  existing laws of the place you're occupying.
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  You're not allowed to go in and transform this whole political
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  identity. No, you absolutely cannot.
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  The law, you know, the Hagen Geneva Conventions, they are
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  very clear. The occupier is prohibited from
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  making drastic changes, moving populations around or forcing
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  people to swear loyalty. Which is why just declaring an
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  annexation is such a massive violation of occupation law.
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  It's a fundamental violation. The entire point of occupation
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  law is to be conservative, to preserve the legal order of the
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  occupied state so that a lawful restoration is still possible.
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  It's designed to frustrate the goal of the annexationist at
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  every single turn. The legal framework is pretty
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  clear then. Aggression doesn't grant you
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  title and occupation is just caretaking.
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  But we all know the aggressor tried to get around this by
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  holding votes. And that takes us to that second
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  layer of legitimacy, the procedural 1, the referenda that
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  were staged in these occupied areas.
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  They were an attempt to perform a sovereign act.
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  To determine political status. Right through the supposed will
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  of the people. But the moment you do that under
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  military occupation, you just run smack into the huge
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  structural problem of coercion. It's the ultimate contradiction,
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  isn't it? You can't claim there was
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  freedom of choice when the voting is happening with armed
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  foreign soldiers looking over your shoulder.
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  You can't. The entire environment negates
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  any possibility of genuine consent.
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  I mean, think about it, The occupier controls everything.
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  The police, the courts, the media, the public square.
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  Who gets to hold a rally? Who doesn't who?
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  Gets to move around freely. If you voice dissent, you face
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  immediate and very visible repression.
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  So sure, you can technically hold a vote, but if one side has
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  all the guns and can punish the opposition, the whole thing is
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  just incompatible with genuine self determination.
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  It becomes an exercise in obedience, not choice.
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  And this leads to this complete misuse of the principle of self
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  determination itself. You hear people say, oh, the
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  referendum were just the people expressing their right to
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  choose, but that's a deep misunderstanding of what
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  international law actually allows.
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  It is absolutely International law talks about two kinds of
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  self determination, internal and external.
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  Internal is the norm. That's the right to autonomy, to
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  political participation, to have your rights protected within
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  your existing country. And that's favored because it
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  keeps states stable. Right.
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  External self determination, which is secession, is reserved
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  for very, very narrow situations.
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  Usually it's linked to decolonization or, you know,
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  systematic oppression by an alien power.
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  The law is incredibly protective of territorial integrity for a
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  reason. To stop powerful countries from
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  just slicing up their neighbors by manufacturing self
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  determination claims. Precisely.
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  And that's where you had this argument about remedial
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  secession, the idea that, well, if a population is being
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  oppressed, they have a right to break away as a final option.
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  Can that idea possibly be used to justify a vote that was
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  organized by the invading army? No, just a definitive no.
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  The context completely destroys any credibility the claim might
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  have. Even if you accept that this
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  doctrine of remedial secession exists, and many states don't,
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  the bar for using it is incredibly high.
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  You'd have to prove what grave human in rights abuses over a
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  long period. Systematic denial of rights,
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  Exhaustion of all other political options.
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  Yes, but the real deal breaker here is the means.
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  The whole idea is that it's a remedy against an abusive
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  government. You can't credibly claim it when
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  the entire process is being manufactured by an external
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  military intervention. So if the cure depends on an
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  invasion, it's legally and morally the same thing as the
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  disease of aggression itself. It is.
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  And on top of all that, there's a practical problem that just
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  voids the whole thing. The electorate is completely
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  distorted. Right.
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  Millions of people fled. Millions.
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  Aggression and occupation drive out refugees, dissidents, anyone
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  who's afraid of being repressed or conscripted.
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  So a political process that leaves out all those displaced
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  people, especially when they were displaced by the
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  aggressor's own actions, it can't possibly claim to
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  represent the people it's deciding for.
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  The voter pool is skewed from the start.
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  OK, so if these votes are just political theater, what would a
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  credible vote actually look like?
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  If you really wanted to determine the status of these
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  regions by popular will, what would have to happen first?
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  The first thing the absolute non negotiable is the removal of
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  coercion. That means the territory cannot
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  be under foreign military occupation.
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  Full stop. And security.
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  Security has to be provided by a neutral, internationally trusted
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  force, not the army of one of the interested parties.
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  And then the civic space has to be free.
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  You need real campaigning, A pluralistic media, the right to
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  dissent, freedom of assembly, all guaranteed by the rule of
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  law, not martial law. And you'd have to figure out how
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  to include all the people who were displaced.
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  That's vital. You need to transparent voter
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  rolls and a robust way to include the millions of refugees
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  in the process. And as you said earlier, you
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  need time. This can't be rushed.
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  It has to be a deliberate political judgement made long
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  after the fog of war has lifted. The absence of all those things
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  is why you're right to say these votes weren't an expression of a
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  right, they were just a tool for entrenchment.
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  They're an imitation of self determination, designed to turn
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  the temporary fact of military control into a permanent claim
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  of ownership. It's a performance.
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  OK, let's connect all this back to the big picture of diplomacy.
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  If military occupation makes a vote in ballot because of
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  coercion, does that same logic apply to a final signed peace
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  treaty? This is where we have to look at
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  how international law sees a final deal that recognizes
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  annexation. This gets us into the weeds of
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  treaty law, specifically something called the Vienna
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  Convention on the Law of Treaties, or the VCLT.
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  There's this common assumption in diplomacy that, hey, if two
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  states sign a piece of paper, the problem is solved.
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  But the VCLT is actually very suspicious of that when the
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  Treaty is just trying to make a forced territorial change look
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  official. So we're back to the quality of
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  consent again. A country signature is normally
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  the final word, but what does the VCLT say?
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  It says in Article 52 that if a state's consent to a treaty was
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  procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the
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  principles of the UN Charter, then that treaty is legally
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  void. So you can't hold a gun to
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  another country's head and call the resulting signature a valid
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  contract. That's the essence of it.
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  Article 52 is the legal backstop here.
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  It stops the law from just being a rubber stamp for military
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  outcomes. It says an aggressor can't force
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  a victim to sign away your land or we will destroy you.
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  That resulting agreement is considered void from the very
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  beginning. That stops the aggressor from
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  converting military muscle into a legal document.
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  But there's an even ducker problem, isn't there?
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  Something called just Kojin's? We should probably define that,
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  yes. Just Kojin's literally means
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  compelling law. It refers to a small number of
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  peremptory norms in international law.
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  These are rules so basic to the global order that states cannot
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  make treaties to get around them.
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  Like what? The prohibition of slavery,
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  genocide, and for our purposes, aggressive war.
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  Think of them as the constitution of international
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  law. And if a treaty conflicts with a
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  just Cogence norm, that treaty is automatically void, no
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  questions asked. Since aggression is a just
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  Kojin's violation, any treaty trying to legitimize the fruits
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  of that aggression is itself structurally illegal.
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  OK, so with that legal framework in mind, let's run the common
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  scenarios that get proposed through this legitimacy test.
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  For each one, we have to ask, does it reward aggression?
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  Is it consent free and can the world recognize it?
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  Let's do it scenario one Immediate session or
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  recognition. This is where the victim state
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  may be under incredible military pressure, just formally signs
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  the territory over while the occupation is still.
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  Happening. This one fails the test
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  instantly on all three counts. It structurally rewards
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  aggression, which damages the entire post 1945 system.
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  The consent from the victim is completely poisoned by that
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  Article 52 coercion problem, and it basically accepts the results
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  of those procedurally void referenda.
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  And it would create an international headache.
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  A massive 1. It would invite widespread
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  nonrecognition from other countries, leading to an
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  unstable, toxic border dispute for decades.
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  This scenario teaches the most dangerous lesson possible, that
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  war works. That if you're brutal enough for
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  long enough, you can buy new borders.
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  Right. Scenario 2.
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  A frozen conflict or a ceasefire.
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  This is an Armistice. You freeze the lines where they
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  are. It's a temporary deal just to
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  stop the violence, but it doesn't solve the big question
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  of who legally owns the land. Now, this is the only kind of
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  deal that you could call legitimate, but only as a
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  temporary measure. It works because it explicitly
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  separates the de facto military control, the line where the
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  shooting stopped, from the du jour legal title, which stays
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  with the victim state. So it achieves the moral goal of
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  stopping the killing without giving in on the legal
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  principle, right? It doesn't ask the victim to
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  sign away any rights, so it avoids the coercion problem in
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  the VCLT. But the big danger here is what
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  people call creeping annexation, right?
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  The aggressor just slowly integrates the territory over
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  time. New currency, new schools, new
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  laws, hoping the world just gets tired and accepts it.
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  That's the main weakness and it requires constant vigilance from
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  other countries. They have to maintain sanctions.
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  They have to keep up the non recognition policy until a final
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  settlement, a real one free of coercion, can be reached.
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  If the international community starts treating that frozen line
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  like a permanent border, the whole point is lost.
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  It has to be seen as a military line, not a legal one.
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  OK, so that leaves scenario 3A phase process after withdrawal.
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  This means a deliberate sequence of events.
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  First, you stop the fighting. Second, the aggressor fully
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  withdraws or the areas demilitarized.
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  Third, neutral international monitors come in, and only then
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  do you start some kind of political process.
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  This is by a very wide margin the strongest candidate for a
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  genuinely legitimate and just settlement.
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  It fully respects the legal baseline.
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  Aggression doesn't get you title, and critically, it
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  removes the coercion before it asks for consent.
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  So any later political process, whether it's a vote or a treaty
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  on autonomy, would actually be credible because those prior
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  conditions were met. That's right, security from a
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  neutral force, a free and open society, transparent voting and
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  including all the displaced people.
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  So this scenario allows for peace, but it doesn't make that
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  peace a servant of conquest. It allows for real self
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  determination, maybe some kind of robust autonomy for those
• 17:05
  regions, but it does it without signing off on the violent theft
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  that started the whole thing. It builds justice into the
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  structure of the peace. So now that we've established
• 17:13
  the legal case, we need to shift our ground.
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  We have to move from human laws, from charters and treaties that
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  can be broken, to what the Reformed tradition would call
• 17:22
  the eternal decree of God. The sources we're looking at
• 17:25
  route their analysis not just in political science but in
• 17:28
  theology. This is so central to Reformed
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  thought, the idea that the boundaries of nations are not
• 17:34
  just, you know, random accents of history, they're seen as
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  ordinances of God. This goes right back to Paul's
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  sermon on Mars Hill in Acts, where he says that God
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  determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling
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  place. And if you take that seriously,
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  it means that distinct nations, separate jurisdictions, defined
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  borders, these are all constructs of what we'd call
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  common grace. They're part of a divine design
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  to maintain a measure of order in a fallen world.
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  So when a ruler respects a neighbor's border, they are in a
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  sense respecting the divine architect who set that limit.
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  And when they try to erase that limit with violence, they're
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  acting in open rebellion against that cosmic order.
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  Precisely. So the attempt to absorb these
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  territories, it stops being just a geopolitical crisis and it
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  becomes a theological transgression.
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  It's an attempt to rewrite those allotted periods and boundaries
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  using theft and lies. And this leads us to our main
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  thesis here. Any peace deal that gives du
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  jour legitimacy to these annexations is void under the
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  moral law. It violates the 8th and 9th
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  commandments. Let's take the 9th commandment
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  first. You shall not bear false
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  witness. We have to look at the
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  referendum itself. In a free society, a vote is
• 18:46
  supposed to reveal the will of the people under coercion.
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  It's something else. It's a ritual of deception, a
• 18:52
  covenant of lies. And you only need to look at the
• 18:54
  numbers they publish. It's a statistical lie.
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  You see these claimed approval ratings of 99.2% in one area,
• 19:01
  98.4 in another. I mean, those numbers don't
• 19:03
  exist in free societies. That's not data, that's a dogma.
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  Those are numbers that only appear in totalitarian systems.
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  Where the result is decided before a single vote is cast.
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  So just publishing those numbers and demanding the world accept
• 19:15
  them is a structural violation of the 9th Commandment.
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  It's bearing false witness against reality itself.
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  It is. It's a moral command to the rest
• 19:22
  of the world to suspend your reason and participate in a
• 19:25
  public falsehood. And the way the vote was
• 19:27
  conducted, the reports of armed brigades going door to door,
• 19:31
  forcing people to participate, that's not a political process.
• 19:35
  That's more like taking inventory of a prison
• 19:37
  population. And this connects directly to
• 19:39
  reform teaching on civil acts. A vote or any civil pledge is a
• 19:43
  serious moral thing. The Westminster Confession talks
• 19:46
  about lawful oaths and vows, and it says they have to be made in
• 19:50
  truth, righteousness and judgment.
• 19:53
  A vote that is extorted by violence lacks both
• 19:56
  righteousness and judgement. It's a coerced speech act, so
• 19:59
  it's not just legally null, it's morally void before God.
• 20:02
  The aggressor is hijacking the moral language of democracy to
• 20:06
  try and sanctify the sin of theft.
• 20:09
  Which brings us to the 8th Commandment.
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  You shall not steal. The analysis here has to look at
• 20:13
  the office of the magistrate, the civil ruler.
• 20:15
  The Reformed view laid out in the confession is that the
• 20:18
  magistrate is ordained by God for the public good.
• 20:20
  He's given the sword, as Romans 13 says, to defend the good and
• 20:24
  punish evildoers. But the crisis here is when that
• 20:27
  civil power uses the sword not for its ordained purpose, but to
• 20:32
  become the evildoer itself, to steal on a massive geopolitical
• 20:36
  scale. The magistrate's authority comes
• 20:39
  from God. It's not absolute.
• 20:41
  So when he acts ultravirus that is beyond the scope of his
• 20:45
  divine Commission by stealing his neighbor's land, he sheds
• 20:48
  the character of a minister of God in that specific act.
• 20:52
  It reminds me of Agustin's question in the City of God.
• 20:54
  He asks justice being taken away.
• 20:56
  Then what are kingdoms but great robberies?
• 20:59
  Yeah. This act of annexation forces us
• 21:01
  to confuse the lawful office of the ruler with the criminal
• 21:04
  abuse of that office. The moral law says we can't just
• 21:07
  wash away the sin effect by printing ballots.
• 21:09
  And this is all made so much worse by the Act of Covenant
• 21:11
  breaking. We have to remember the 1994
• 21:14
  Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine gave up its nuclear
• 21:16
  arsenal, the third largest in the world at the time, in
• 21:19
  exchange for solemn security guarantees from major powers,
• 21:22
  including Russia, that its borders would be respected.
• 21:25
  The violation of that covenant is a catastrophe not just for
• 21:28
  Ukraine, but for the whole idea of diplomatic trust.
• 21:32
  In Romans 1, Paul lists covenant Breakers right alongside haters
• 21:36
  of God. It underscores how serious this
• 21:38
  is. If these solemn international
• 21:40
  promises, especially about nuclear weapons, can just be
• 21:42
  ignored, then the bond of truth that holds civilization together
• 21:46
  starts to dissolve. This is why we have to
• 21:49
  theologically push back against the argument of pragmatic
• 21:52
  realism, the idea that, well, for the sake of stability to
• 21:56
  lower gas prices or prevent a wider war, we should just accept
• 22:00
  the reality on the ground and recognize the stolen land.
• 22:03
  That's a huge theological mistake.
• 22:05
  It elevates the immediate visible idol of stability above
• 22:08
  the eternal attribute of justice.
• 22:10
  It's seeking peace where there is no justice, which the prophet
• 22:13
  Jeremiah warns against. A piece that's bought by
• 22:15
  legalizing theft is not Shalom. It's not holistic well-being.
• 22:19
  It's just a pause. The Christian conscience can't
• 22:21
  grant that de jure recognition because that would mean saying
• 22:24
  the 8th commandment has a geopolitical loophole for the
• 22:26
  powerful. So to navigate this tension in a
• 22:29
  principled way, Christian statecraft has to make a very
• 22:32
  sharp distinction, the distinction between de facto
• 22:34
  tolerance and de jure recognition.
• 22:37
  OK, let's unpack that. We have to acknowledge the raw
• 22:39
  reality on the ground, the physical control by the
• 22:42
  aggressor, especially if our goal is to preserve.
• 22:45
  This reminds me of Jeremiah telling the Exiles in Babylon to
• 22:48
  seek the welfare of the city where they've been taken.
• 22:51
  He was recognizing the physical reality of their situation.
• 22:55
  So Krypton statecraft can accept a ceasefire to stop the
• 22:58
  bleeding. We tolerate the de facto reality
• 23:01
  that the thief is in the house to stop him from burning it
• 23:03
  down. Yes, exactly.
• 23:04
  But that tolerance can never, ever cross the line into du jour
• 23:08
  recognition. To do that is to make a
• 23:11
  definitive moral and legal judgement.
• 23:13
  It's saying this land which was seized by violence and lies, now
• 23:17
  rightfully belongs to you. So how do you hold that line?
• 23:20
  You look to history, you engage in a holding action for truth.
• 23:24
  The most powerful example is the Western policy towards the
• 23:27
  Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and
• 23:31
  Estonia. That went on for 50 years, from
• 23:34
  1940 to 1991. For half a century, the West
• 23:38
  insisted that de jure sovereignty belonged to the free
• 23:41
  Baltic republics, even while the Soviet Union had total de facto
• 23:45
  control. And that 50 years of refusal was
• 23:47
  a patient moral statement. It was a declaration that time
• 23:51
  does not make a crime right. The West kept recognizing the
• 23:55
  old diplomatic missions of those nations, so when the Soviet
• 23:58
  Union finally fell apart, the restoration of their sovereignty
• 24:01
  was quick and legally clean because the West had never
• 24:04
  signed the deed over. So policy makers can sign a
• 24:07
  truce that says we'll stop fighting at this line while at
• 24:10
  the same time holding a policy that says, but we do not
• 24:13
  recognize this line as a border. It's just where the shooting
• 24:15
  stopped. It establishes a third way.
• 24:18
  It's not utopian pacifism that just tells the victim to give up
• 24:21
  land for peace, and it's not a relentless militarism that seeks
• 24:24
  only total victory. It's a tenacious commitment to
• 24:27
  justice that is patient enough to wait for the moral order to
• 24:30
  reassert itself. And now we have to shift our
• 24:32
  perspective one last time to the ultimate source of all
• 24:36
  authority, which would really put our anxiety about these
• 24:39
  earthly borders into perspective, the cosmic Lordship
• 24:42
  of Christ. The psalmist asks why do the
• 24:46
  nation's rage and the people's plot in vain?
• 24:49
  And the answer is that the rage of these finite earthly rulers
• 24:52
  plotting to steal land and redraw maps is met with divine
• 24:55
  laughter. He who sits in the heavens
• 24:58
  laughs. The Psalm says these annexations
• 25:01
  are the raging of a temporal ruler trying to steal what
• 25:03
  belongs to the infinite God. In the end, there's only one
• 25:07
  ruler who holds legitimate title to all territory, and that's
• 25:10
  Jesus Christ. I mean, that makes the stage
• 25:11
  referenda look like a sad parody of real authority.
• 25:15
  Tyrants are desperate to manufacture legitimacy with
• 25:17
  flags and forced votes. But Christ was installed by the
• 25:20
  Father's eternal decree and as Romans one says, vindicated by
• 25:23
  the resurrection. No coerced vote was needed.
• 25:26
  The empty tomb is the only referendum that matters in
• 25:29
  eternity. The very method of conquest
• 25:31
  judges the aggressor too. The invader uses death and
• 25:34
  coercion to take territory for himself.
• 25:37
  Christ, on the other hand, advances his Kingdom not by
• 25:40
  shedding the blood of others, but by shedding his own.
• 25:43
  The line of Judah shows up as a slain lamb.
• 25:46
  Any empire built on force and lies is just a fragile temporary
• 25:51
  structure in God's eyes. And that Christological focus
• 25:54
  gives us what you could call eschatological realism.
• 25:57
  When you look at the red lines on an occupation map, you have
• 25:59
  to remember Isaiah's words. Behold, the nations are like a
• 26:03
  drop from a bucket, accounted as the dust on the scales.
• 26:06
  Any empire that builds its stability on injustice will
• 26:09
  sooner or later find that stability turns to ash.
• 26:12
  So let's bring this home. What's the application for the
• 26:15
  different spheres of influence for the Christian statesman?
• 26:17
  What's the imperative? For the statesman, it's to
• 26:20
  uphold non recognition as a steady long term policy.
• 26:24
  They have to resist the enormous pressure to just normalize the
• 26:27
  situation for some short term economic or strategic gain.
• 26:30
  They can negotiate A ceasefire to save lives, but they must
• 26:33
  never give the aggressor the moral and legal victory of
• 26:37
  recognition. They have to preserve the
• 26:39
  victims legal claim. And for the church as a
• 26:41
  corporate body. The church has to exercise its
• 26:44
  prophetic office. That means refusing to fall into
• 26:47
  the trap of moral equivalents where you try to spread the
• 26:49
  guilt around equally. The church can't be vaguely
• 26:52
  neutral. We have to teach our people
• 26:53
  clearly about the moral law that theft is theft and lies are
• 26:57
  lies, and we have to guard against the fatigue of
• 26:59
  compassion for the millions of people who have been displaced.
• 27:02
  And finally, for the individual believer.
• 27:05
  For the individual, the imperative is to cultivate holy
• 27:08
  grief. We're told to weep with those
• 27:10
  who weep. That means sustained, specific
• 27:13
  prayer and support for humanitarian aid.
• 27:16
  And it means praying with theological precision, not just
• 27:18
  for peace, but for a just peace, for restitution.
• 27:23
  The simple refusal to live by lies, to call things by their
• 27:26
  right names, is a powerful spiritual discipline.
• 27:29
  Hashtag tags tag tag outro. We've covered a lot of ground in
• 27:32
  this deep dive, from the legal architecture of the UN system to
• 27:35
  the moral framework of the Reformed tradition.
• 27:38
  But I think our central finding is pretty clear.
• 27:41
  Legitimacy requires a specific sequence.
• 27:43
  You have to end the coercion before you can claim there's
• 27:45
  been consent. That's right.
• 27:47
  And so any final deal that validates aggression fails both
• 27:50
  tests. It fails the legal test because
• 27:52
  it violates the UN Charter, and it fails the moral test because
• 27:55
  it violates the 8th and 9th commandments.
• 27:57
  We've seen this start collision really, between two different
• 27:59
  covenants. On one side you have what you
• 28:01
  call the covenant of lies, which is sealed with theft and
• 28:05
  falsehood and promises a false kind of stability.
• 28:07
  And on the other side, you have the moral order of God, who is
• 28:10
  the judge of all kings and nations.
• 28:13
  The verdict from both the legal and theological sources is the
• 28:16
  same, a categorical refusal to grant Dujour recognition to the
• 28:19
  annexations. The map might have been changed
• 28:22
  by force, but the moral law hasn't changed.
• 28:25
  The line drawn on the ground by a tank is not a border, it is a
• 28:28
  crime scene. So we'll leave you with this
• 28:30
  final thought, one that's based on that eschatological realism
• 28:33
  we talked about. When we look at those shifting
• 28:36
  red lines on the maps of occupation, we have to remember
• 28:39
  that the Kingdom to which we belong cannot be shaken.
• 28:43
  The truth, like Christ himself, might be temporarily buried
• 28:46
  under the force of empire in the weight of official lies, but it
• 28:50
  will surely rise. We wait for the King who will
• 28:52
  judge the world in righteousness.
• 28:54
  And until he comes, our task is simple.
• 28:57
  We refuse to call the darkness light.