Finley is a Slugger reader from Belfast
President Trump continues to flummox and flabbergast the ever-upright and law-abiding NATO partner states with his forthright Greenland claims. POTUS wants them to understand that he is not mucking about when it comes to the security interests of the USA. He spells it out for them. So listen up. POTUS is speaking.
President Donald Trump stressed his desire for the US to annex Greenland ahead of a contentious visit by his vice president, comments likely to further stoke anger in the Danish territory.
Trump said Wednesday that the mission of Vice President JD Vance and others on his team would be “to let them know that we need Greenland for international safety and security.”
“It’s an island that from a defensive posture, and even offensive posture, is something we need, especially with the world the way it is, and we’re going to have to have it,” the president said during an interview with conservative talk show host Vince Coglianese.
Now they know. His team has a mission to let them know. The world is what it is, it works how it works, and they are ‘having’ Greenland so get over it. They need to be able to do defence – and do offence for that matter. It is necessary, imperative, a done matter. ‘Necessity knows no law’ and ‘a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.’
The Trump administration takes a realist position on international relations. States are unavoidably locked into security competition. USA can never know for sure what China or Russia will intend in a decade or two. There is no one to protect USA but itself. Relative power is the only path to security. ‘Peace through strength.’ Peace through war. If need be.
The USA needs what it needs. There are no two ways about it. No way around that. The first duty of the state is to its own security. Its own survival. A state can do nothing else unless it survives. Opportunities, wealth, welfare. Civil rights, charity. Any manner of good and upright works whatsoever. Nothing. Let alone protect democracy around the world.
POTUS could hardly have been plainer about his intentions, clearer, outright explained. Yet his NATO partners could not be less convinced. This is pirate politics. The law is the law and the law plainly states that annexations are illegal. Civilised states do not do that stuff. Not any more anyway. What on earth is Trump going on about?
So when did states stop with the ‘piracy’ and get civilised? European states are not coy about that. USA rescued them from themselves after 1945. Without USA and NATO, without the UN and collective security, they would still be tearing themselves apart and laying waste to the continent. They just cannot help themselves. That is what it is.
Conquest used to be the thing. The way of the world. It always was.
That traditionally the right of conquest has been recognized is a proposition whose truth it seems safe to assume. For as Lassa Oppenheim noted in 1905: “As long as a Law of Nations has been in existence, the states as well as the vast majority of writers have recognized subjugation as a mode of acquiring territory.” And indeed, those classical international legal thinkers who took account of the customary law of nations and the nineteenth and early twentieth-century international legal positivists were in virtually unanimous agreement about the presence of the right of conquest among the rules which were recognized by international law. It is only in our own times that it has become possible to argue that the right of conquest has ceased to be upheld by international law. – Sharon Korman: The Right of Conquest: The Acquisition of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice (1996, Oxford University Press)
It used to be the law – the international law – that conquest is A-OK. Want to do a conquest? Go for it! Maybe it is not ‘just’ but so what? This is not a morality play. It is reality. And it works how it works. And who is to say what is ‘just’ anyway. Opinions about that are ten a penny. Opinions. Everyone has got one. Like a rear end.
Thomas Hobbes was the leading light of states in the philosophy of war. The state of nature is a state of war. All states have a ‘right’ to pursue whatever contributes to their security. Both sides are equally ‘just’. All wars are just. It is the way of the world. Lawyers might have had their complimentary positions. But the priestly ‘just war’ of the scholastics was out.
No one ever followed that anyway. Certainly not the Medieval states. Certainly not the modern states.
This was also the prevalent view in the practice, if not the legal doctrine, of late medieval and early modern European warfare. Even though since the late Middle Ages the principle that only one side in war could be truly just was widely accepted, in practice it was generally assumed that both sides in war had valid claims and fought lawfully as long as they were authorized by legitimate – typically supreme – public authorities. – Pablo Kalmanovitz: The Laws of War in International Thought (2020, Oxford University Press)
What state could honestly say that it did not owe its existence to conquest at some time or other anyway. Whether in the 19th century or the more distant past. Not Britain. Not France. Nor Spain. Certainly not USA. Canada. Australia. New Zealand. Germany. Even Ireland fought its way to statehood. Basically all of them did conquest at some time or other.
USA rescued them from wars of conquest. The principle of ‘self-determination’ became influential after the French Revolution but international law remained firm that conquest is entirely legitimate. Woodrow Wilson talked it up in 1918. Only after 1945, again at USA instigation, would the UN supposedly enforce ‘self-determination’. Or sort of.
Obviously ‘peoples’ do not really have self-determination when it comes to states. International law prioritises the territorial integrity of states. ‘Peoples’ cannot opt out of states unless the state agrees. They cannot opt into states. That would be silly. ‘Hey, we want incorporation into Norway. It is called self-determination, get over it!’
Yet ‘self-determination’, championed by USA in the 20th century, excludes conquest. ‘Hey, you cannot do a conquest! what about self-determination!’ ‘Self-determination’ is invoked selectively in international law. Inconsistently. Incoherently. Yes when it comes to future conquest but no when it comes to secession or accession.
States quite like that. It secures their power over the territory that they already possess. They might have got it by past conquest but so what. International law has always been about what suits states and their concern for power over territories and peoples. And European states were very open to the idea after 1945. Security from future conquests? We get to keep it? Sweet.
It would be rash to assume that ‘moral’ arguments about ‘self-determination’ are anything more than a pragmatic strategy for state security and power. Even if the principle was not selectively applied only to secure states from future conquest. States have always been concerned with what suits them. Always will be. It is the way of the world.
USA did very well after 1945. ‘Self-determination’ would be selectively invoked against past conquests only in ‘colonial’ contexts. The empires of the European states would be dismantled. There would be no further conquests. USA had grabbed its massive land from the Natives in the 19th century but that is not ‘colonial’. It is manifest destiny. USA was all set up for superpower status.
So now Trump wants Greenland. USA will ‘have’ Greenland. USA needs Greenland. It is entirely necessary. A must have. It is not optional. No two ways about it. It is imperative. This is the real world and you gotta do what you gotta do. That is how it goes in the real world so you might as well get over it now. Or you lose. Quite possibly you cease to be.
So let Russia have parts of Ukraine. Who cares anyway. ‘Law’? Do not make me laugh. If anything the Russian expansion will get the international community used to conquest again. Conquest is back. It is how the world works. It is called security. Get over it. It will soften up international expectations to a USA annexation of Greenland. What is not to like about that?
Canada? We are not subsiding that place no more. We will show them who is governor around here. USA needs that energy. Those resources. USA would be so much more powerful if it had that place. Tariff them to collapse. Make Trudeau cry on TV. Canada had better listen up now because the time is coming. They might not be top of the list but they are on it.
International law has always been about what suits states and their power. It entirely suited USA to contain European states and to dismantle their empires while it rose to supremacy. Global hegemony. ‘Self-determination’ was an adequate moral posture to help get that job done. European states were shocked by war and open to another way.
But we took that stuff seriously? Anyone really supposed that USA or any other state was really concerned with ‘morality’. For the first time in history. USA that kept its own settler colony but shut down the empires of others. That stood up for ‘self-determination’ but only when it comes to conquest or to the ‘colonies’ of others while it rose to global hegemony.
Fooled you again. Times change. Needs must. So are European states weaklings frightened of the real world? Liars. Unable to man up to secure their existence. Desperate for ‘laws’ to protect them from each other. From themselves. That stuff is fine within states. But between them? Frit. Easily taken in. Maybe. But is POTUS all mouth and no cattle? Time will tell on that one anyway.
This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.
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