Trump Proposes to Recognise Crimea – Law, Power, and the Limits of the International System…

Finley is a Slugger reader from Belfast

The international state system is often spoken of as if it were fixed, neutral, and inherently aligned with peace and prosperity. It is none of those things. It is a pragmatic structure, historically contingent and politically constructed, whose norms and limits reflect the prevailing distributions of power and the strategic needs of states. It has evolved through conquest and consensus, through treaties and war, and through moments of philosophical reorientation—not least the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which is rightly understood as a foundational shift in world order.

Westphalia marked a decisive move away from the religiously charged, morally totalising conflicts of the early modern period. It introduced the principle of sovereign equality, not as a moral fiction but as a political necessity. Recognising the legitimacy of diverse political and religious orders enabled the coexistence of states without requiring ideological conformity. It was a breakthrough in political reasoning: relative peace and order could be sustained through reciprocal recognition, not shared truth, and sovereign states could pursue their own rational state interests as they saw fit. In the centuries that followed, this framework allowed Europe to stabilise, expand, and eventually project its institutions and modes of governance across much of the globe.

But this original Westphalian model also allowed for what is no longer permitted in the contemporary system: war as an instrument of state policy, territorial revision through force, and diplomatic normalisation after conflict without moral sanction. It assumed that states would sometimes fight, but that they could also move on. It did not seek to outlaw competition, only to regulate it within the bounds of sovereign independence.

By contrast, the current international system—largely shaped in the aftermath of World War II—has sought to constrain conflict through a legal and normative architecture that elevates territorial integrity, non-intervention, and the prohibition of aggressive war. In doing so, it has shifted the focus from managing conflict to delegitimising it. The result is a structure that presumes peace as the default, even as states continue to compete for security and advantage. When war does occur, the system treats it not as a tragic consequence of politics but as a rupture in legal and moral order—one that must be punished and not repeated.

This creates deep tensions. The law as it stands cannot accommodate the realities of strategic rivalry. States act for reasons of security, fear, and interest—not simply in pursuit of legal compliance. When the international system refuses to recognise those imperatives, it may not prevent conflict but rather freeze it, locking states into protracted hostility with no avenue for reconciliation. It inhibits states from restoring mutually beneficial relations even when shared interests resurface.

The international system is not a teleological structure destined to culminate in peace, nor is it a coherent moral order. It is, rather, an evolving political framework—one shaped by the competing interests of states, their security concerns, and historical compromises. The tension between these dynamics and the constraints imposed by contemporary international law often leads to contradictions. The current system, while focused on legal norms and the ideal of peace, may fail to accommodate the realities of geopolitical rivalry. In light of this, a more flexible approach, rooted in the principles of the Westphalian order, may offer a more pragmatic way to allow states to move beyond historical grievances and pursue their interests without the legal and moral constraints that often prolong conflict.

The Teleological Trap: Between Order and Illusion

In modern discourse, the international state system is often cast in a teleological light—as if it has progressed naturally toward a just, peaceful, and prosperous order. Institutions like the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, and the International Criminal Court are presented as milestones on a historical arc that bends toward legality, cooperation, and moral universality. According to this narrative, the evolution of the international system reflects a civilising process: a shift from raw conquest to reasoned dialogue, from imperial expansion to peaceful coexistence.

But this vision is, at best, a selective reading of history. The original Westphalian system did not arise to enshrine peace or prosperity. It was forged in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War—a conflict marked by mass death, economic collapse, and religious extremism. Its core objective was to bring an end to “just wars” fought in the name of theological righteousness, where one side—the heretic—was deemed illegitimate from the outset. Westphalia reasserted the legitimacy of the state as a secular authority and elevated sovereignty as a way to depersonalize and depoliticize war. It did not outlaw war; it merely transformed war from a crusade into a contest between formally equal, legitimate actors.

For centuries afterward, sovereignty did not prohibit conquest—it enabled it. Wars of expansion, territorial absorption, and balance-of-power adjustments were not considered violations of international norms; they were part of how the system functioned. The idea that the system should serve peace or prosperity was not its starting point, but a later interpretation—one largely developed in the wake of the World Wars and the collapse of European empires.

After 1945, particularly with the creation of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions, the legal character of the system was profoundly transformed. Aggressive war was delegitimised, colonial expansion was condemned, and sovereignty was redefined as a shield against intervention. Yet this new order, for all its moral aspirations, was not a neutral or universal framework. It was constructed by the victorious powers of World War II, and reflected their interests and strategic outlooks. It was less a system of peace than a regulated environment in which geopolitical rivalry could continue—just under stricter conditions. Rivalries persisted, but they were now expected to play out within certain legal and ideological bounds: containment rather than conquest, influence rather than annexation, competition rather than collapse.

That distinction—between peace as an ideal and managed conflict as a reality—is often blurred. Legal norms are taken to represent a kind of moral consensus, when in fact they are the artifacts of historical compromises and geopolitical settlements. The system claims to promote both peace and prosperity, but in practice, these goals frequently come into conflict. Humanitarian interventions may claim moral justification and legal cover, but they often produce disorder, regime collapse, and long-term societal breakdown—not peace, not prosperity, and not stable sovereignty. Likewise, sanctions, while lawful and nonviolent, can cripple economies, and exacerbate humanitarian crises. The legal tools of the system may restrain violence, but they do not necessarily promote prosperity; in many cases, they undermine it. What this reveals is that the international system is less an impartial enforcer of peace and prosperity, and more a framework for managing state competition, where the underlying objectives of power and security remain operative.

This is the teleological trap: to confuse a set of power-regulated legal norms with the progressive realisation of a moral end. The belief that peace and prosperity necessarily go together, and that international law is the vessel for both, overlooks the many times in history—and in the present—when legal restraint undermines prosperity, or when the pursuit of peace through law fails to account for the brutal logics of power and security.

Moreover, the rigidity of the system today leaves little space for political recalibration. When powerful states perceive the legal framework as unresponsive to their existential interests, they are increasingly willing to ignore or override it. And when they do, the entire system is exposed—not just to accusations of hypocrisy, but to fundamental crisis. Is it still a system if it cannot adapt to the realities of those it seeks to constrain?

Security and Sovereignty: The Limits of Legalism

The tension between legalism and state interest is nowhere more pronounced than in questions of security—the most fundamental of state concerns. The international state system, in its current form, assumes that legal norms can manage the anarchic tendencies of global politics by restraining aggressive state behaviour. However, the reality of state sovereignty means that states will always act to secure their survival and strategic interests, even when this conflicts with international law. The system’s ideal of non-intervention, while theoretically preserving peace, is routinely undermined by the imperative of national security.

From a realist perspective, security is the primary concern of states, and they operate in a world where anarchy—the absence of a higher authority—forces them to rely on their own capabilities to ensure their survival. The Westphalian system, by affirming the sovereign equality of states, created an environment where states are, in principle, free to pursue their security interests and it also made conflict between these interests acceptable. This is particularly true for great powers, whose security concerns are often global and whose actions—whether intervention, economic sanctions, or territorial expansion—have far-reaching implications.

The difficulty arises when these security interests clash with the current international norms that were designed to prevent war and maintain order. The legal prohibition against territorial conquest, for example, is often disregarded when a state perceives its security as threatened. The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, for example, was framed by Moscow as a defensive measure against NATO expansion, yet it blatantly violated international law. Similarly, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, justified on the grounds of security (the presence of weapons of mass destruction), violated both international law and the sovereignty of Iraq, contributing to long-term instability in the region.

In both cases, the states involved—Russia and the U.S.—acted in accordance with their perceived national interests and security needs. The legal norms of the international system, moreover, failed to provide a meaningful constraint on these actions. While the system holds that sovereignty should protect states from intervention and preserve territorial integrity, the reality is that sovereign states have often prioritized their own security needs over the legal norms that are supposed to regulate behaviour. In this way, the international system is not so much a global peacekeeping mechanism as it is a framework for managing competition between states with fundamentally different interests and levels of power.

Moreover, the current international order often imposes a stark contradiction: states are told to pursue their security within the bounds of international law, yet these laws themselves are often vague, inconsistent, or selectively enforced. For example, while some territorial conflicts, like Russia’s in Ukraine, are met with widespread condemnation and sanctions, others, like Israel’s actions in Palestine, receive a far less forceful international response. This inconsistency raises questions about the credibility of the legal system and the fairness with which it is applied. It also reinforces the idea that international law often reflects the interests of the most powerful states, rather than being a truly impartial regulator of state behaviour.

Thus, the international state system is built on the assumption that legal norms can constrain power and ensure peace, but in practice, these norms are often unable to keep pace with the complex realities of state behaviour, particularly when it comes to security. The tension between the ideal of an orderly, law-bound international community and the practical realities of state competition and conflict remains a defining feature of the global system today. States are often left to navigate this tension alone, making decisions based on their own security priorities, and in the process, highlighting the limitations of a legal system that cannot fully control or contain the political and military realities of state behaviour.

Structural Tensions: The Russia–NATO and US–China Rivalries

The structural limits of the current international system are most clearly exposed in the two defining rivalries of our time: between Russia and NATO, and between the United States and China. Both cases involve deep strategic disputes between major powers, and in both cases the international legal framework that emerged after 1945 has proven inadequate—not only in preventing conflict, but also in offering any credible pathway toward resolution or normalisation. The system assumes that great power rivalry can be managed or dissolved through legal norms, but these conflicts reveal that when fundamental security concerns are at stake, states continue to act in ways that transcend or ignore legal constraint.

The Russia–NATO confrontation illustrates this breakdown vividly. Russia has long viewed NATO’s eastward expansion as a strategic encroachment. From the Russian perspective, the alliance’s military infrastructure moving toward its borders threatens its security and weakens its influence in what it sees as its legitimate sphere of interest. Its actions in Ukraine are understood in Moscow as defensive moves in a deteriorating security environment. These actions clearly contravene the post-1945 legal framework, which prohibits territorial conquest and emphasises the inviolability of borders. Yet from the standpoint of Russian strategic logic, they are not extraordinary—they are rational responses to perceived geopolitical pressure.

The international system, however, offers no legitimate space for such security concerns to be addressed. It treats Russia’s actions not only as violations of law, but as acts requiring ongoing punishment and exclusion from normal diplomatic and economic relations. The result is not resolution but deadlock. Sanctions regimes, diplomatic isolation, and non-recognition have become enduring features of the post-2014 landscape, effectively freezing the conflict. Where past systems might have absorbed such actions into new security arrangements or negotiated settlements, the current one seeks to hold a legal and moral line—refusing to accept the outcomes of conflict and refusing to move on. In this way, the system can exacerbate and prolong the effects of war by preventing recovery and preventing the return of mutually beneficial cooperation.

The case of the United States and China reveals a parallel pattern. Their rivalry is increasingly defined by strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific, technological decoupling, trade barriers, and military posturing. This is not yet a military conflict, but the international system is no better equipped to manage it. Institutions like the United Nations Security Council have no authority to mediate between two permanent members with veto power. Meanwhile, organisations like the World Trade Organisation have proven unable to constrain unilateral actions by the United States, particularly when tariffs and trade restrictions are imposed on national security grounds.

China’s concern is not with the existence of international rules, but with their selective application. It does not reject the idea of a rule-based order; rather, it finds that the rules, particularly in trade and technology, often fail to bind the United States when enforcement would conflict with Washington’s strategic objectives. The imposition of tariffs, export bans, and restrictions on Chinese firms under the banner of national security has shown that power trumps procedure. From Beijing’s perspective, the issue is impunity.

This exposes a deeper tension within the international order: it operates on the premise of universal rules, but in practice, it reflects hierarchies of power. The system cannot constrain its most powerful participants, nor can it offer them a reliable mechanism for settling disputes when strategic interests are fundamentally opposed. What remains is not so much a rules-based order as an unstable mix of legal language and strategic rivalry—legalism without enforcement, and power politics without clear terms of engagement.

In this context, the older Westphalian conception of international order—as a system of sovereign states operating in an anarchic but mutually recognised space—may be more honest and more durable. That model accepted the reality that states would sometimes fight to resolve disputes and then return to normal relations when it suited them. It did not require moral consensus or legal uniformity, only the mutual recognition of state interests. The current system, by contrast, seeks to prevent war while also forbidding any resolution outside its normative framework. It condemns conflict but offers no closure.

This structural rigidity—where law is expected to override strategy—means that even when conflicts subside, they do not end. The international response to Russia has been not only to resist its actions but to attempt to prevent normalisation. This may deter some behaviour, but it also deepens division and stores up further instability. The system’s attempt to freeze geopolitical outcomes in legal terms makes it difficult for states to recalibrate their positions or shift towards pragmatic accommodation.

In both rivalries, then, the post-1945 order fails to manage the essential reality of international politics: that security, not legality, is the dominant concern of states. By attempting to legally regulate outcomes that flow from power competition, the system overreaches—and in doing so, risks becoming a source of greater instability. It neither prevents conflict nor provides an effective means to move beyond it. What remains is not peace, but paralysis.

Trump, Russia, and the Possibility of Normalisation

Donald Trump’s return to office has reignited debate over the future direction of American foreign policy, particularly with respect to Russia. During his previous term and now again, Trump has signalled an interest in normalising relations with Moscow, departing from the bipartisan consensus that has sought to isolate Russia politically and economically following its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine. His reported willingness to recognise Russian sovereignty over Crimea, and his desire to restore trade, energy, and investment ties, stand in direct opposition to the legal and diplomatic posture adopted by most of the West since 2014.

Trump’s approach—however controversial—raises a fundamental question about the international system: should conflicts between states, once concluded in practical terms, remain indefinitely open as moral and legal grievances? Or should states be free to recalibrate relations based on strategic interest, economic opportunity, and evolving geopolitical conditions? Trump’s instincts point toward a more Westphalian logic, where sovereignty and interest, not ideology or punitive legalism, guide state conduct.

In such a system, the annexation of Crimea, while contested, would be treated as a political reality rather than a moral aberration. The focus would shift to securing regional stability, defining new boundaries for competition, and rebuilding channels of cooperation where shared interests exist. The United States, under this model, could pursue access to Russia’s abundant natural resources—including rare earth minerals, energy supplies, and critical industrial inputs—without requiring an impossible political reversal in Moscow or a global consensus on legality. Trade and investment could proceed not as a reward for compliance but as an instrument of mutual benefit.

The benefits of such an approach are not abstract. The United States faces profound challenges in reindustrialising its economy, rebuilding its military manufacturing base, and ensuring long-term supply chain security in the face of growing competition with China. Access to Russian resources and markets could serve strategic purposes beyond profit: reducing dependency on adversarial suppliers, altering leverage over critical materials, and insulating the US economy from a deepening bifurcation of global trade networks.

By contrast, the current international system prevents this kind of re-engagement, locking the United States into a policy of long-term confrontation with Russia. That stance may appear morally principled, but it is strategically self-defeating. It drives Russia into deeper alignment with China, giving Beijing a more powerful partner in Eurasia and consolidating an alternative bloc of military, economic, and technological cooperation. In attempting to punish Moscow, Washington may be strengthening its principal competitor. A rigid commitment to isolating Russia, even as China rises, may ultimately serve Chinese interests more than American ones.

A Westphalian system—or at least one guided by its principles—would allow strategic adjustments that reflect changing circumstances. It would permit the normalisation of relations after conflict, not as a moral endorsement but as a practical necessity. The present legalist system, by contrast, makes such normalisation extremely difficult. It holds that certain acts—such as territorial annexation—cannot be accepted under any conditions, and that states who commit them must face continuing penalties. But this punitive stance, far from deterring future aggression, may simply trap states in unresolved conflict, undermining long-term stability and blocking pathways to recovery and cooperation.

The logic of indefinite punishment and diplomatic quarantine does not just harm the targeted state; it can also harm those enforcing the measures. By refusing to re-engage with Russia, the United States may be limiting its own capacity to respond effectively to the larger geopolitical challenge posed by China. Resources that could be integrated into a strategy of industrial and military renewal are left inaccessible. Diplomatic bandwidth is consumed by entrenched hostilities rather than redirected toward emerging priorities. The fixation on moral consistency—on not “rewarding aggression”—can become a strategic liability.

Trump’s foreign policy instincts, however clumsily expressed, raise a legitimate critique of the existing order: that peace, security, and prosperity may require flexibility, not orthodoxy. A system that permits states to move on after conflict, to re-establish beneficial relations, and to adjust to geopolitical realities may be more conducive to long-term stability than one which seeks to freeze the world in place through normative enforcement. That does not require embracing aggression or discarding values, but it does demand a more realistic appraisal of how states behave, how conflicts evolve, and how order is best restored.

Between Law and Power, Order and Conflict

The international state system is not, and has never been, a morally neutral structure designed solely for the pursuit of peace and prosperity. It is a pragmatic framework, historically shaped by the security imperatives of states, the balance-of-power, and the outcomes of war. While it has evolved—from the post-Westphalian recognition of sovereign equality, through the imperial and colonial orders, to the legalist norms of the post-1945 era—it remains at core a political device: a way to manage rivalry rather than to eliminate it.

The contemporary order, centred on legal norms of non-aggression, territorial integrity, and human rights, aspires to restrain the most destructive aspects of international competition. Yet it does so by presupposing an idealised consensus—one that ignores the enduring reality of strategic conflict. When major powers act in pursuit of what they perceive as existential interests, the legal structure proves unable to prevent war, and worse, it prevents resolution. It insists on punishment and isolation long after conflicts have changed shape, thereby freezing tensions in place and obstructing the return to mutually beneficial relations.

The rivalry between Russia and NATO exemplifies this dynamic. The system’s constraints on action—combined with its refusal to accept geopolitical realities—have generated paralysis rather than stability. Instead of facilitating diplomatic recalibration, it enforces a form of normative stasis. It criminalises strategic adjustments and inhibits normalisation, even when such re-engagement might serve the broader interests of peace, security, and economic development.

This rigidity is not a feature of the Westphalian model, but of the post-war legalist turn. A Westphalian or realist model of international order recognises that states are not moral agents acting within a fixed legal order, but political entities navigating a world of insecurity. In such a system, the emphasis is not on moral condemnation but on pragmatic coexistence—on the ability to move past conflict, to adapt to new realities, and to re-engage when interests align.

The case of Trump’s approach to Russia—however controversial in its expression—offers a concrete example of how a more flexible system could operate. Normalising relations, even after conflict or annexation, need not imply approval. It implies only a recognition that states must pursue stability through accommodation as well as resistance. The alternative—continued confrontation, economic decoupling, and hardened blocs—risks creating a world of permanent crises, strategic overreach, and missed opportunities for global cooperation.

In today’s context, where the United States faces the growing challenge of China’s rise, the costs of strategic inflexibility are becoming clearer. A system that forbids normalisation with one great power may inadvertently weaken another and strengthen a third. The insistence on legal principle over strategic adaptation can impair a state’s own ability to respond to shifting global conditions, and it may distort the balance-of-power, solidify hostile blocs and ultimately lead to greater conflict.

None of this implies a rejection of norms altogether, nor does it license aggression as a policy of first resort. But it does require a rebalancing—a recognition that the pursuit of order in a world of sovereign states cannot rest on moral injunctions alone. It must account for the realities of power, the imperatives of security, and the necessity of reconciliation after conflict.

The true challenge, then, is not whether to uphold a rules-based system or to descend into chaos, but whether we can design an international framework that makes room for politics, allows states to adjust after crisis, and accepts that peace—when it comes—is not always delivered through law, but often through the hard choices of diplomacy and the recalibration of interests.