"The territorial integrity of Ukraine must be safeguarded!", "If the territorial integrity of Ukraine is violated, Russia will face very severe consequences".
How many times in these days have we heard phrases like these! Proclamations (but I would be tempted to say "slogans") already heard in the past substituting the names of other nations for Ukraine and Russia.
The imperative always seems to be that of "Safeguard territorial integrity" of any existing state entity. It is enunciated to us with the same serious seriousness that Moses must have had when he, having come down from Sinai, he was reading the Tablets of the Law to the Jews who had followed him in the Exodus. It is enunciated to us as a universal principle of civilization, a pillar of international law that cannot be questioned at any cost.
It's really like this? Or is it a "fig leaf" pulled out when necessary to cloak the interests of those who only want to maintain the status quo with idealism?
Above all, though, why does this noble principle only hold true when the potentially damaged state entity is our friend or ally?
In fact, the principle of safeguarding of territorial integrity it was promptly abandoned when this was consistent with our geopolitical objectives. Consider the case of the massive NATO intervention in Kosovo and the consequent "violation of the territorial integrity" of Serbia in 1999.
Maintaining the status quo at any cost, safeguarding geographical borders to the detriment of the aspirations of populations and tensions attributable to ethnic or confessional diversity could often prove to be a handbrake that attempts are made to impose on the evolution of history.
If the territorial integrity of a sovereign state is never to be questioned, then let us prepare to give back to Austria the territories that we have torn from it with tears and blood in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th wars of independence.
Furthermore, I wonder but those who today invoke the territorial integrity of Ukraine as sacred and inviolable were in many cases not the same who in 1999 did not seem to care at all about the violations of the territorial integrity of Serbia, in reference to the (just and sacrosanct ) Kosovo's aspirations for independence?
Mind you, the writer is not interested in taking pro-Russian or pro-Serbian positions rather than pro-Ukrainian or pro-Kosovar positions! Moreover, it seems to me dangerous to raise as a guiding principle exclusively the safeguarding of geographical borders (drawn in a different historical, political and demographic situation) without attributing similar importance to the wishes of the populations (whose ethnic and religious composition could have changed compared to when those borders were traced) or to the situations of conflict that have developed within these borders.
Such an approach will not lead to the solution of the crises but only to temporarily hide the symptoms, while “under the ashes” internal conflict could degenerate to the point of being no longer manageable with the sole tools of negotiation and mediation.
In fact, the principle of "Safeguard territorial integrity" of a nation could be perceived exclusively as a useful justification for prohibiting, limiting or delaying compliance with another principle, that of "Self-determination of peoples". Principle also recognized by international law but that often the international community seems to sacrifice to the reasons of real-politik and to the maintenance of the status quo.
There is no doubt that the International Bodies after the Second World War have generally aimed at safeguarding the status quo and, in most cases, at opposing the secessionist pressures within sovereign states, regardless of the more or less valid reasons that there could be at the basis of such thrusts (think of the independence aspirations of Catalonia, the Basque Country or Scotland, to remain in the old continent, or Quebec in Canada).
It seems to have affirmed (in practice if not in doctrine) the prevalence of the principle of territorial integrity of state entities over that of self-determination of the inhabitants (see in this regard James Crawford State Practice and International Law in Relation to Secession, 1998, in British Yearbook of International Law, Volume 69, pages 85-117).
In fact, there is a tendency at most to allow a minimalistic interpretation of the principle of self-determination in my opinion, or rather "grant" to minorities (which, moreover, at the local level could be a "majority") respect for their particular identities (linguistic, confessional or cultural that they are), but that do not ask for anything else (respect but not self-determination).
However, we tend to exclude in an almost a priori way the possibility of a secession that could lead to independence, or worse still, to reunification with a neighboring state entity with which this minority wishes to reunite by virtue of an ethnic, linguistic or confessional.
For example, in full respect of the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the population of the Republika Srbska of Bosnia was never allowed to express themselves on a possible secession from Bosnia and unification with Serbia. We recall that Bosnia broke away from Serbia after almost three quarters of a century in which they were both part of the same state entity. I assume (from direct knowledge of the situation) that many Bosnian Serbs, at least immediately after the end of the conflict, would have opted for reunification with what not a few of them continued to regard as their "real" homeland.
Similar speeches could concern the part of Kosovo north of the Ibar river (inhabited by people who consider themselves Serbs) or the Presevo Valley of North Macedonia (inhabited by people who consider themselves Albanians).
Of course it is necessary to take into account the realpolitik! However, there is also an ideological perspective on this, as secession is considered a modality “To convey an idea of ethnic purity as the basis of XNUMXst century statehood. An idea that, to say nothing of the other, is in contrast with all the efforts made by the international community starting at least from the end of the First World War to induce states to give life to systems capable of guaranteeing coexistence between plural collective identities " (Rife A. Tancredi, Crisis in Crimea, referendum, page 481 Rife A. Tancredi, Crisis in Crimea, referendum, p. 481).
Consequently, secessionist or autonomist claims are usually viewed with great suspicion by the international community, also because they are perceived as the result of nationalistic and identity ideologies that do not embrace the ideal of a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional society.
Of course, the exceptions are cases in which such claims can be justified by evidence of severe violations of the human rights of minorities and / or severe limitations of their political rights. Both circumstances, however, are quite difficult to prove objectively and documented. Anyone who intervened in Bosnia or Kosovo at the end of the civil wars that actually plagued these regions in the last decade of the last century, will have realized that the inter-ethnic or inter-confessional violence was not only one-way (as it would have appeared from the reports of CNN) and that it was difficult to draw clear separations between the victims and the perpetrators.
Coming to the Ukrainian case, namely Russia's unilateral annexation of Crimea and Kiev's refusal to discuss the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, predominantly Russian-speaking areas, without wishing to justify the threatening attitudes of Russia which the West must firmly oppose, do you really believe that tensions can only be resolved by stubbornly denying their existence?
Above all, however, must the principle of "safeguarding territorial integrity" (which translates into maintaining the status quo) always apply or only when it suits us?
That is… as Luigi Pirandello wrote "So it is (if you like)"!
Images: NATO / web
