Article | Spring 2008
State Death: Pros and Cons
by Tanisha Fazal (Political Science)
When U.S.-led forces entered Baghdad on April 9, 2003, the demise of the Iraqi state was imminent. With Saddam Hussein's disappearance, the dismissal of the army, and the de-Baathification of the state, the fundamental governing structures of Iraqi political life were dismantled. Observers agreed that Iraqi sovereignty had been surrendered to coalition forces, even if there were no representatives of the former Iraqi state left to sign a surrender agreement.
Although state sovereignty is routinely compromised in the international system, the U.S. occupation of Iraq constitutes an especially egregious violation of post-1945 sovereignty norms. U.S. behavior ran contrary to the norm against conquest that has been enshrined in the United Nations Charter and has governed much of post-World War II international politics. The norm against conquest explicitly prohibits territorial aggression by one state against another. Although military occupation constitutes a more ambiguous category with respect to the norm against conquest, the close relationship between occupation and territorial aggression-where occupations are often preceded or followed by territorial aggression, and both behaviors are clearly major sovereignty violations-confers a taboo on occupation as well.
The effects of the norm against conquest have been considerable and strong. Violent state death-defined here as the application of military force that leads to the formal loss of control over foreign policy-making power to another state-has decreased tenfold since 1945. More minor coercive territorial changes have also seen a statistically significant decline, halving in the post-World War II era. Even claims made against other states' territory have decreased significantly with the entrenchment of the norm and the founding of institutions like the UN. The rise of the norm against conquest has also generated some unintended consequences. Prohibited from using force to acquire territory, would-be conquering states have sought alternative means to achieve the ends formerly sought via conquest. One of these means has been the use of external interventions to replace regimes and leaders. Less frequent in the past, such interventions today have become as common as violent state death was prior to 1945, and appear to have replaced conquest as the political tool of choice by the mid-1970s.
Another, more troubling, set of "side effects" of the norm against conquest speaks directly to the issue of state failure. As time goes on and the norm against conquest strengthens in the international system, interstate boundaries become increasingly sacrosanct. Leaders of weak states can then plunder state resources with relative impunity, secure in the knowledge that they will not face external challenges to the shape of the state. Thus, the norm against conquest may increase the rate of state failure.
The norm against conquest may also impede solutions to problems that arise as a result of state failure. In past eras, states that failed or were on the verge of failure were subject to shrinkage or elimination. Today, these options are off the table. Even if shrinking a failed state to more governable borders seems an eminently sensible solution to a state failure, such territorial incursions are least likely to be permitted by regional actors afraid of losing their own territory as a result of state failure.
Given these pros and cons, how can we weigh the utility of the norm against conquest? On the plus side, the norm guarantees a fundamental right of states-the right to possess one's own state regardless of strength or regime type. On the other hand, the rights conferred by the norm against conquest by no means protect state sovereignty in all its realms. If indeed the emergence of the norm leads to erosions of sovereignty via intervention or failure, then the norm may seem to be a fairly shallow institution, a bendable, poseable rule of the international system.
To understand the value of the norm against conquest, it is important to know its history. First championed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the norm against conquest was seen as a tool to end war. States tend to fight over territory. If territory is removed as a legitimate cause of war, then war should decrease.
And interstate war has decreased in tandem with the emergence of the norm against conquest. Certainly, the decrease has as much to do with the emergence of nuclear weapons and the development of the Cold War as it does with the norm against conquest, but these additional reasons only highlight the need to restrict the terrifying consequences that could result from interstate war today.
Relaxing the norm against conquest in ways that could prevent or ameliorate state failure could therefore solve one problem while creating many others. The suffering that accompanies state failure might well be replaced by suffering caused by interstate war, either between the would-be failed state and its neighbors or elsewhere in the world. Arguing that the norm against conquest ought to be maintained, however, is not sufficient. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is an anomaly not only in its violation of the norm against conquest, but also in that the champion of the norm is its major violator. Moreover, challenging the norm at its edges rather than head on may be more dangerous to the tenure of the norm, as observers may be less certain about how to react. To the degree that conquest and annexation are undesirable behaviors, international relations may soon take a turn for the worse, particularly if the U.S. ability to enforce the norm against conquest is viewed as constrained because of a decline in American power as well as a decreased commitment to the norm. It may be that this price is worth the putative security benefit, but it is essential to approach this potential change in policy-and in the norm against conquest-with open eyes. When the critical enforcer of a norm that is not deeply internalized on a global scale begins to chip away-even unintentionally-at the edges of the norm, the norm itself may not survive. Current U.S. policy may generate a return to the world of state death, in which case the norm against conquest may go the way of the states it was designed to protect.
