ROW Episode 37

In this episode we propose a series of steps the international community ought to take in order to eliminate boundary and territorial disputes as they often serve as triggers for violent conflict and lead to breaches of international peace.

Episode Transcript

Sovaida (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast
dedicated to envisioning abetter world and to infusing
hope that we can make theprincipled choices to build that
world.
In this episode, we propose aseries of steps the
international community ought totake in order to eliminate

(00:30):
boundary and territorialdisputes, as they often serve as
triggers for violent conflictand lead to breaches of
international peace.
Many wars and conflicts in theworld have been sparked by and
continue to fester and threatento erupt because of competing
claims to territory.

(00:52):
In fact, there's a prettystunning statistic that I wanted
to share with you.
85 percent of the world'scountries are involved in a
territorial dispute with atleast one other country.
People have drawn maps showingin red the number of countries
that are involved in at leastone territorial dispute.

(01:13):
And it's amazing.
It's like almost the entireplanet is involved.
So it behooves us to really payattention to solving these
boundary conflicts andterritorial disputes.
If we did that, imagine how muchwe could relieve our world from
the burdens of war and conflict,with everything that entails in

(01:35):
terms of the costs in humanlife, human suffering,
destruction of property, and allthe other crises.
And I think the conflict inUkraine If nothing else, in
Syria and so on, have shown usreally the untenable costs of
conflict.
We need only consider, forinstance, the fact that in the

(01:56):
20th century, the century beforethis, the biggest conflicts,
including the two World Wars,the Korean War, the Vietnam War,
and the first Gulf War, had todo with boundary disputes that,
if left unresolved, were capableof miring entire regions and
countries in war and conflict.

(02:17):
Unfortunately, our attempts totackle this problem, which is a
deep one, have been haphazard.
We've had occasional successes,but we've left the bulk of the
problems intact.
For example, while internationallaw has developed certain rules
determining what constitutesterritorial sovereignty, how

(02:38):
masses of land or water arebounded and can be said to lie
within the territory of anygiven state, we still find
ourselves in the 21st Centurywith a lot of intractable
boundary disputes.
Think about Israel and Palestineover the Golan Heights, Israel
and Syria over the GolanHeights, Israel and Palestine
over the West Bank and the GazaStrip, India and Pakistan over

(03:02):
Jammu and Kashmir China overTaiwan--is it part of China?
Is it not part of China?
Is it an independent country?--Russia and the Ukraine, Russia
and Crimea, Russia and Georgia,where we had the war a number of
years ago, the fights in theSouth China Seas over sets of
islands like the SpratleyIslands, the Paracel Islands,

(03:25):
and Scarborough Shoal, and inthe East China Sea over the
islands of Senkaku.
And that's just to name but afew.
Let's just quickly look at whatare some of the important
causes.
Really, the biggest drivers ofterritorial dispute are firstly

(03:45):
that boundaries very often wereimposed by colonial or empirical
powers.
It's a historical problem and wehad colonial, whether they were
Western colonial powers or theRussian or Ottoman empires who
held control over many countriesand peoples.
Once these empires collapsed,the Cold War basically froze

(04:09):
these political structures asthey were at the end of World
War II.
And then during the Cold War,the status quo was largely
preserved.
But once the Cold War ended, allof these ethnic and religious
divisions that lay beneath thesurface and were smoldering
began to heat up again, anddisaffected people strove to

(04:30):
break away from their states andset up their own dominions in a
quest for self determination.
What did international law do?
It set up this rule.
It developed a doctrine calledmuti posidetis juris.
The goal was to ensure that newstates that emerged after
independence would remainstable, so they would just take

(04:50):
on the boundaries that they hadat the moment of independence.
The problem with this approachis that the people who emerged
post colonialization had not hada say in the way their
boundaries had been drawn in thefirst place, and so they were
reluctant to accept wholesale asystem of boundary demarcation
agreed to among the colonialpowers whose shackles they had

(05:14):
finally managed to break.
An example of a country in whichthe people sought self
determination is the country ofSomalia, which claimed parts of
Ethiopia and Kenya, both of theparts that were inhabited by
Somali tribes.
And then, of course, thisdoctrine of muti posidetis juris

(05:37):
conflicts with yet anotherprinciple of international law,
which is a core principle, andthat's the principle of the self
determination of peoples.
So you see, we haven't reallycome up with a system for
resolving what happens to theseboundaries once nations became
independent, and how do we quellthese eternal boundary disputes.

(05:59):
Now, the second driver for manyof these boundary conflicts is
competition over access tocritical natural sources like
energy.
Really a desire to obtainequitable access to these raw
materials and critical resourceson reasonable terms.
Unfortunately we have failed tocreate a universal mechanism to

(06:24):
tackle these historical andarbitrary demarcations of
boundaries effectively.
There's been no systematiceffort to do essentially three
really important things.
The first is we need to be ableto identify in a timely fashion
all the flashpoints in the worldresulting from such disputes.

(06:45):
Secondly, we need to come upwith a fair and consistent set
of rules that can be appliedmethodically to resolving such
disputes.
You'll recall that during thisseries, we've often taken a very
principle driven approach, thatwe need to first identify a set
of shared ethics or universalfirst principles, like the

(07:05):
principle of the oneness ofnations and peoples and the
principle of equity and justice.
And then incorporate them intothe processes and the
institutions we create andadopt, in order to tackle the
challenges of the 21st century.
And the third thing that we haveunfortunately failed to do is to

(07:26):
create a responsibleinternational body with the
authority to make thesedeterminations about where do
the boundaries lie.
In essence, our approach so farhas been a reactive versus a
proactive one.
Now this is another topic we'vecovered and I think we spent an
entire session on this a whileback, about taking a reactive

(07:49):
approach to problems as opposedto thinking ahead and being
proactive, taking a principledapproach as opposed to one based
on expediency.
So what we've done in thisreactive approach is that we've
either left the parties in aboundary dispute to voluntarily
take their dispute before theInternational Court of Justice

(08:09):
and await its judgment, which,if rendered, they may or may not
then implement.
Remember, we also had an episodein which we talked about the
many ways in which our worldcourt is broken, and therefore
incapable of doing its job,which is preventing conflict.
And one of the ways it wasbroken is that it lacked

(08:30):
compulsory jurisdiction, thatnation states got to voluntarily
submit to its jurisdiction ornot.
And then even when the courtrenders a judgment, we talked
about the fact that there was nomeans of enforcing it.
It's up to the goodwill of thesenations who've broken the law in
the first place to then abide byjudgments of the court.
It's really child's play anddoesn't make much sense.

(08:52):
The second thing that happens,is that the dispute takes a turn
for the worse.
The nations don't go before thecourt, the dispute takes a turn
for the worse, and then it endsup in conflict and violence.
Then the internationalcommunity, in the last second,
once this thing has escalatedand blown out of all proportion,
has to get involved and takesome action.

(09:16):
Now, there are flaws in both ofthese approaches.
Both approaches leave a lot tochance, and they don't guarantee
an effective, efficient, andsystematic way of resolving
boundary disputes in anequitable and timely manner.
The flaw in the first approach,where we leave it up to
countries to say,"Yes.

(09:36):
We'll go before theInternational Court of Justice
and voluntarily submit to itsjurisdiction," is risky because
you're depending on the parties'goodwill.
And it requires them to do twothings.
First of all, to submit to thejurisdiction of the court, and
secondly, to abide by itsjudgment.
Now, we have had some successfulreferrals of boundary disputes

(09:56):
to the court.
For instance, in 1991, Bahrainand Qatar agreed to submit a
long standing series of disputesto the world court.
These disputes had almost led towar in 1986, but fortunately the
court resolved them in March2001.
So that's one success story.
Another success story is adispute between Belgium and the

(10:18):
Netherlands over certain borderplots surrounding a particular
Belgian commune and a Dutchcommune, and the court resolved
the dispute in favor of Belgiumand the parties accepted the
decision.
And there are a few others.
Some of these disputes,interestingly, have been
resolved by mediation orarbitration at the Permanent
Court of Arbitration, which isin The Hague, in the

(10:40):
Netherlands.
For instance, the EritreaEthiopia War finally ended when
the parties agreed to implementthe 2002 ruling of the Eritrea
Ethiopia Boundary Commissionthat was established under the
auspices of the Permanent Courtof Arbitration.
And Australia and East Timor,which had longstanding maritime

(11:03):
boundary disputes between them,finally had these resolved.
They were willing to submit tothe jurisdiction of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration,and in 2018, there was finally
an agreement after mediationunder which East Timor basically
will receive at least 70 percentof the largest oil field in the

(11:25):
disputed boundaries, an oilfield called Greater Sunrise.
Meanwhile, we have a lot ofunresolved conflicts that we
listed at the beginning of thisepisode that I won't repeat
again, like Indian Pakistan andthe Golan Heights and so on.
Now the flaw in the secondapproach, which is to stand back
and just let countries duke itout and see what happens,

(11:47):
usually ending in conflict, isthat these things fester and
then they do break out intoconflict and violence.
Sometimes the internationalcommunity decides to take action
to ameliorate the situation, andother times it decides to idly
stand by.
An interesting example, some ofyou may not know that the
dispute between Iraq and Kuwait,--you remember when Iraq

(12:10):
illegally tried to annex Kuwaitand invaded it in August 1990--
this dispute had existed sincethe end of the First World War
when Britain divided Kuwait andIraq into separate emirates.
Iraq never recognized Kuwait'sindependence.
This was an arbitrarydemarcation of boundaries by
colonial power as far as theywere concerned.

(12:33):
And indeed in the 1960s, the UKsent troops to Kuwait to prevent
its annexation by Iraq.
I think few of us know thishistory.
In 1990 almost 30 years later,when Iraq invaded Kuwait, it was
yet another attempt by Iraq tosay,"Hey! We don't accept the
borders between us and Kuwait.
Kuwait is part of Iraq." Andthen you'll remember that the

(12:55):
world cobbled together acoalition of forces from 28
countries, led by the U.S., butunder the auspices of the
Security Council, to oust Iraqfrom Kuwait.
And then after all these years,since the end of the First World
War, the Security Council,acting way too late, created a
Boundary Commission for Iraq andKuwait to resolve the dispute.

(13:17):
Iraq stopped participating in1992, but finally in 1994 they
agreed under the pressure ofsanctions and other pressures to
abide by the decision of thiscommission.
You can see how hodgepodge thesystem is around the world in
terms of resolving boundarydisputes.
Therefore, it's no big surprisethat we have so many of them and

(13:41):
that 85 percent of countries areinvolved in at least one
territorial conflict with atleast one other country, which
is really a stunning statisticIn addition to failure to
establish a proper viable globalsystem for resolving global
disputes that is systematic,methodical, applies certain

(14:02):
principles that we're all awareof and that apply equally and
fairly across the board toeveryone and even handedly apply
to them, we've also failed tocreate a system that ensures
that all nations have equitableaccess to critical natural
resources, and raw materials onreasonable terms, like sources
of energy.

(14:22):
We can see how much trouble andconflict that has created.
Now, the trouble with both ofthese triggers, whether it's
historical demarcation ofboundaries by colonial or
imperial powers, or whether itis a desire to lock up access to
critical resources, they're bothcompounded by the fact that many

(14:45):
nations involved in boundarydisputes are nuclear weapons
states.
They own nuclear weapons andtherefore the risk of us
entering into a nuclear wareither accidentally or
deliberately goes upexponentially.
Honestly, the risk is way toohigh.

(15:06):
We have to resolve this problem,not just to cut down on getting
85 percent of countries in theworld out of territorial
disputes and get them toreallocate their energy and
resources to other moreconstructive endeavors, but also
because of the risk to theentire world of a nuclear war.

(15:28):
Honestly, it would suffice forjust one nuclear power to be
involved in such a territorialdispute because of the risks.
And we've seen this.
We need to be learning from whatwe're seeing going on right now
in Ukraine.
One of the main reasons why theWest has actually kept out of
Ukraine, so we read, is thatthey were afraid by the threat

(15:52):
by Russia that she might usenuclear weapons and they didn't
want to get themselves embroiledin a direct conflict with Russia
with the very real danger thatit would escalate even
accidentally and unwittinglyinto a nuclear war that would
undoubtedly take over the wholeworld.
We also know,--and I want torepeat this, I said this in one

(16:14):
of the previous episodes, but itbears repeating-- that the risk
of even a limited nuclear war,even if it's limited
geographically or limited intime, is just untenable.
Studies show that if such a veryshort, brief nuclear war in a
very small part of the worldwere to take place, it would

(16:34):
result in 10 years of no cropsaround the world, 10 years of no
summers, leading in no crops,leading into mass starvation of
about 2 billion people aroundthe world.
That is a quarter of the world'spopulation or more.
That's a pretty horrificstatistic right there.
Okay, so once we recognize andaccept the fundamental reasons

(16:58):
for the problems, we can nowmove forward towards crafting a
viable solution, right?
And because the system we have,this reactive system, doesn't
work and is unfair.
So here are some proposals aboutwhat we could do.
These are proposals that Iactually came up with about, oh

(17:20):
gosh 15, 16 years ago when Iwrote my first book in this area
of global governance calledCollective Security Within
Reach, and I've been talkingabout it ever since.
But I think now with COVID,everything that the world has
gone through, especially withUkraine and Syria and Yemen and
Tigray and Ethiopia and on, allthese huge conflicts around the

(17:42):
world where boundaries areinvolved, Sudan and South Sudan
and Eritrea and Ethiopia and on,hopefully, we'll be more
receptive to some of theseproposals, or at least start to
think about them and get thecreative juices flowing.
There are a few steps that Ipropose What if we were to set
up an International BoundaryCommission, basically a
permanent boundary commission,whose sole task will be to

(18:05):
examine closely all conflictingterritorial and irredentist
claims.
That means claims where peopleare seeking restoration of
territories that formerlybelonged to them.
Nations and people should beencouraged to submit all their
claims to this commission, theInternational Boundary

(18:25):
Commission, for it to examineand all the relevant evidence.
And then let it issue arecommendation that will then
lead to a binding decision andI'll tell you how we get there.
So the commission would betasked with regularly monitoring
and identifying potentialtrouble spots early on.

(18:47):
To help it with this, thenetwork of regional early
warning agency that we proposedin episode 21 of this
Reimagining Our World seriesshould regularly apprise the
commission of festering problemswithin their region.
In that episode, we talked aboutthe need to establish an
international intelligence andmonitoring agency with regional

(19:10):
offices that would have earlywarning stations that would then
feed all this early warning tothe international body.
And that international body, theInternational Intelligence and
Monitoring Agency, would thencommunicate with the
International BoundaryCommission and say,"Hey, these
are flashpoints.
We need to resolve theseproblems." The commission should
be given the power to requestand, if necessary, compel the

(19:34):
parties to submit their disputesfor resolution.
So none of this, I get to choosewhether I want to come or not.
And the commission, indischarging its work, will
solicit input from all partiesinvolved and study the
geography, history, anddemography of the regions.
That's step one.
Step two is that we, theinternational community, need to

(19:57):
craft a body of clearlyarticulated principles and
rules, subject to advancedagreement by the international
community, that will be appliedby the commission in a fair,
consistent, and systematicmanner to all boundary disputes,
no matter where they arise.
This is the principle drivenapproach in action when it comes

(20:18):
to boundary disputes.
Right now, the World Courtapplies a very broad and vague
mandate to apply certain sourcesof law that are set out in
Article 38 of the Statute of theCourt that include international
conventions, internationalcustomary law, and so on.
The breadth and generality ofthese sources of law require the

(20:42):
court to sift through a morassof rules and principles every
time it decides a case,including a boundary dispute, to
decide which of these rules mostappropriately applies to this
case.
What we end up with is veryoften the court will apply
different combinations of rulesand principles, even when it's
dealing with boundary cases.

(21:02):
By contrast, giving theInternational Boundary
Commission a specific set ofrules and principles that are
relevant to boundary disputesalone will facilitate their work
and ensure that these rules andprinciples are applied equally
across the board.
What happens here is you buildtrust, and countries that are
more likely to submit moreeagerly and willingly and

(21:24):
quickly their disputes to thecommission, believing they'll be
treated fairly and held to thesame standard as any other
nation.
Step three.
The Commission now carefully anddispassionately considers all
the claims before it.
And we're fortunate, we live inan information age, so there's a
wealth of information that theycan also research about

(21:46):
historical facts, about how theboundaries came to be created,
about the people who lived inthese spaces before, their
relationships with each other.
But that's not enough.
They need to also take intoaccount other vital factors.
Like what?
Like the geography of theregion, including mountain
ranges, rivers, oceans, bodiesof water.

(22:07):
Geological considerations, likethe existence of raw materials,
since that's such a driver inboundary conflicts, and valuable
resources like gold, diamonds,oil, and timber.
The economic underpinnings ofeach region, like land
cultivation, industry, ormining.
International transportationroutes, like pipelines, roads,
railways, and ports.

(22:28):
And the ethnic composition ofthe people and their cultures,
including their languages,religions, and other cultural
characteristics.
And after considering all ofthis, they should come up with a
reasoned recommendation,proposing a new demarcation of
the applicable boundaries andexplaining their basis for their
recommendation.

(22:49):
Then we get to step four, whichis once the Commission has made
these recommendations, theworld's leaders should consider
them and approve theCommission's recommendations,
and then incorporate them andenshrine them in a new global
treaty called an InternationalBoundary Treaty.
And this treaty has to be agreedon by all nations.

(23:11):
You can't have some people in,some out, because as we've seen
in our world that is soinextricably interconnected and
interdependent, that doesn'twork when you have topics where
the stakes are so high for thesecurity of the planet.
Now, over time, as new disputesarise, step five kicks in.

(23:33):
The Commission has to be taskedwith the responsibility and the
authority to consider newdisputes.
Every year, they should invite asubmission of new disputes for
their consideration.
And in addition, in doing this,should rely on the alerts of the
early warning system that wetalked about.

(23:54):
And once they consider this,every five years, they can
publish an annex to theInternational Boundary Treaty
with all their newrecommendations and decisions.
The sixth step is to ensure thatall of these decisions that are
now incorporated in thisboundary treaty are enforceable,
because there's no point inhaving laws and decisions on the

(24:15):
books, as we very well know, ifthere's no mechanism for
enforcement.
So first of all, we have toempower the world executive,
whoever it is, whether it'stoday the Security Council or in
the future an executiveauthority created in the manner
that we've been talking about inthis series.
Empowered to intervene, and ifnecessary using a military

(24:38):
force, be they regional forcesor the international standing
army that we've also talkedabout at length.
And the violation of this treatyshould be considered a breach of
the peace under the currentmandate of the Security Council.
Under breaches of the peace orthreats to the peace or acts of
aggression, it gets to act anduse military force.

(25:00):
So this should be regarded as abreach of the peace if one
nation violates theInternational Boundary Treaty.
And in general, this agreementwould be enforced using the
system of collective securitythat we talked about at length
in episode 23 of this series,and then demonstrated how it

(25:21):
might have averted the war inUkraine in episode 29 of this
series.
If you haven't had a chance towatch those, I warmly recommend
that you go and do that.
Now, the final Step seven is weneed to also address the second
driver of boundary conflicts,the second biggest driver, which
is the desire of countries toaccess energy and other critical

(25:45):
natural resources on equitableterms and on reasonable terms.
We again talked at length aboutthe idea of creating a global
energy agency starting in thefield of energy that can then be
expanded to include other rawmaterials that was in episode
34-- because this is a really acritical factor.

(26:08):
I firmly believe that if we didnothing else, if we were to
establish this global energyauthority or agency and pool in
its hands all the management andcontrol of certain key
resources, including energyresources, we would see the
number of boundary conflictsplummet.

(26:28):
And we could then, again, divertour energies and reallocate them
to resolving some of the reallydire problems we have in the
world, including climate change,adaptation, mitigation, and so
on.
An example of a dispute, by theway, that could have been
avoided taking these measuresthat we talked about is the one
that arose between Libya andChad over the Ozu Strip, which

(26:52):
was a purported source ofuranium in northern Chad.
The dispute was finallysubmitted to the court by both
countries in 1990 and the courtfound in favor of Chad, but if
we had pooled these resources inthe hands of a supranational
energy authority then it wouldnever have arisen in the first
place.
So one of the interesting thingsI hope you've noticed about all

(27:16):
of these pieces that we'vetalked about is that they're
like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,right?
A boundary commission and aboundary treaty here in episode
37 is one piece.
An international intelligenceand monitoring agency with
regional warning units isanother jigsaw piece discussed
in episode 21.
A supranational agency forpooling and ensuring equitable

(27:39):
access to critical resourceslike energy in Episode 34 is yet
another piece of the jigsawpuzzle.
And a viable system ofcollective security, including
the creation of an internationalstanding force, episode 23, is
yet another piece.
So you see how we've beenbuilding, we've been reimagining
our world and imagining eachpiece of the jigsaw puzzle

(28:01):
separately, and as we start toput them together, a picture of
where the world might be headed,what we could do, choices we
could make to have the world bea more peaceful and a more
uplifting place and a moresecure place where we can all
focus on building our individualand collective potential, that

(28:22):
picture now becomes evident.
If you guys are interested inwhat you've heard today and want
to get more, remember a lot ofwhat we talked about, or see it
in writing, or delve intofurther details, feel free to
pick up a copy of CollectiveSecurity Within Reach on Amazon.
I wrote it a number of yearsago, but the ideas in it, I

(28:44):
think, are really great are evenmore valid and important today
than they were back in 2008 whenit first came out.
Okay I think I've covered what Iwanted to in today's episode.
I hope that you have found itinteresting.
I'm just quickly going to go uphere and see This commenter

(29:08):
says, we must revolutionize themind to solve humanity's
problems.
You're absolutely right.
We have to start with conceivingand believing that our world can
be different.
It's not enough to conceive.
One of my favorite quotes iswhat a man can conceive and
believe he can achieve or what awoman can conceive and believe
she can achieve.

(29:29):
So it's conceiving, but then wehave to believe it before we
achieve it.
Very often we think,"Oh, I'llconceive it and then I'll see
whether I believe it.
We'll see if it happens and thenI'll believe it." That is not
the nature of faith and that isnot the nature of creative
energy that actually is capableof building something

(29:50):
affirmative.
You've got to be able toenvision it and absolutely
believe it in your gut, in yourmind, because it's only then
that we put wholehearted energyand indefatigable commitment
into building things.
Yes, thank you very much.
Okay.
Take care and thank you verymuch for joining me, whether

(30:12):
here live or on YouTube.
Bye for now.
That's all for this episode ofReimagining Our World.
I'll see you back here nextmonth.
If you liked this episode,please help us to get the word
out by rating us and subscribingto the program on your favorite
podcast platform.

(30:32):
This series is also available invideo on the YouTube channel of
the Center for Peace and GlobalGovernance, CPGG.