Putins Land Grab Wont Be the Last – The Wall Street Journal

If Vladimir Putin is allowed to keep the land he has seized from Ukraine, it will violate one of the modern worlds few meaningful protections of peaceits prohibition against taking territory by force. The West must stand firm against the Russian presidents imperialist aims, or else the world may see a resurgence of the vicious conquests that marked world history before World War II.

Before 1945, the international rule on territorial acquisitions could be summed up as vae victis, woe to the vanquished. Kings, sultans and czars led bloody campaigns to take land from one another and expand their empires abroad. Russia, Prussia and Austria once devoured Poland completely. The Ottomans seized Eastern Europe and Egypt. As political scientist John Vasquez says, Of all the possible issues states can fight over, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that issues involving territory ... are the main ones prone to collective violence.

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Putins Land Grab Wont Be the Last - The Wall Street Journal