Frozen borders and keeping the peace (updated)

Part of the reason why the global response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been so unified and harsh is that the invasion violated an unwritten but important rule which has helped keep the world stable for almost eighty years.

The year 1945 was a pivotal year for the world, marking the boundary between two very different periods of history and even two different kinds of history.  One example is the freezing of international borders.  If you look at a map of the world immediately after the end of World War II, when the new borders had just been settled, and a map of the world today, it's notable that most of the present borders are still in the same places.  There have been just a few cases of large entities splitting into smaller ones (Yugoslavia, British India, Sudan), and even fewer mergers (East and West Germany into unified Germany), but there have been almost no changes caused by countries biting off chunks of territory from their neighbors, as routinely happened for centuries before 1945.  Even when the USSR broke up, the borders of the new countries stayed the same as those of the former Soviet "republics".  When the countries of black Africa became independent, they kept the borders inherited from the European colonial empires, even though those borders mostly ignored the actual geographical distribution of ethnic groups -- because they realized that trying to adjust the borders to reflect ethnicity would lead to chaos and probably innumerable wars.

The emergence of a global consensus that changing borders by forcible seizure of territory, even if arguably justified on historical or ethnic grounds, is intolerable is one of the things that has kept the post-1945 world more peaceful than almost any previous era.  Especially for Europe, which had suffered almost continuous territorial wars since the fall of the Roman Empire, this period has been a blessing.  No one has worried that (for example) Germany might start a war to take Silesia back from Poland, or that Britain might try to reconquer the Irish republic.

Previous attempts by rogue states to change or erase borders by force, such as Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, also elicited a forceful and unified international response, because the world could not risk the re-normalization of such behavior.  Putin's incursions into Ukraine in 2014, by contrast, did not lead to as strong a response as they should have, perhaps because confronting a country as powerful as Russia was too daunting.  It was easy enough to concoct excuses -- Crimea, annexed by Russia, had been part of the Russian republic of the USSR until 1954, and the Donbas territories were not annexed but declared to be "independent" states, though actually puppets of Russia, thus paying lip service to the rule against forcible annexation (Turkey did the same thing in northern Cyprus in 1974).  But now the world has seen, as it did in the 1930s, that failure to confront an aggressive dictator early on just leads to escalated aggression a few years later.

And this is an especially frightening case.  It's unclear whether Putin aims to annex Ukraine outright (perhaps after a staged referendum as in Crimea) or to install a Vichy regime that would make it a de facto puppet state.  But either way, a large European country, bordering on the edges of the West, would have its sovereignty snuffed out by naked military force.  And given Putin's aspirations to restore the Soviet era, other countries might be at risk if he succeeds.  If he gets away with conquering Ukraine, he might think he could get away with invading the Baltic states -- which would mean a direct war with NATO, a war which would be at serious risk of turning nuclear.

That's why pretty much every democracy and even some less-than-democratic states are willing to go to the mat over this invasion.  A world with hydrogen bombs cannot tolerate any risk of a return to pre-1945 norms.  It's simply too dangerous.

Some current links of interest:

A huge Russian armored column is heading toward Kyiv.

Russia has now been accused of using a thermobaric bomb, a super-powerful explosive capable of inflicting devastating casualties over a wide area, in Kharkiv.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians have signed an online petition and various open letters opposing the invasion.  One has to respect the courage of Russians living under a gangster-regime who nevertheless take a stand.

In a stark departure from its traditional neutrality, Finland joins the countries sending weapons to Ukraine.  Maybe they're thinking back on this.

See video here of a missile attack on an administration building in Kharkiv (this is a conventional missile, not the thermobaric bomb mentioned above, which would be far more powerful).

Lots of observations and links here from a blogger who once spent some time in Ukraine.

Here's how Ukraine could actually win the war.

This Ukrainian gay erotic artist (NSFW images) would have much to fear if his country fell to Putin's fanatically homophobic regime.

Here's a concrete step you can take to oppose Putin's propaganda.

The war is inspiring motivational images.

Disney has imposed sanctions on Russia.  First PornHub, now this.  If the Russian people eventually have no entertainment left but watching Putin's speeches on TV, they're really going to get mad.

Next, an important reminder:

And sorry, but this is kind of silly:

What do they think New York and Washington looked like in those years?

Updates:  An audio message from the home base of one Russian brigade supports Ukrainian claims that the Russian forces are suffering massive casualties.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Russian troops' motivation and morale are at rock bottom.  More here.  There are even reports of soldiers punching holes in their own fuel tanks to let the fuel run out and avoid fighting.

Turkey is stopping Russian warships from passing through the Bosporus.

Observations here (not verifiable) by a blogger on the startling incompetence of the invasion.

Fund-raiser here for members of the Roma minority trying to escape Ukraine.

Here's a subtle act of protest in Moscow.

An American of Ukrainian descent discusses the powerful pull of the ancestral culture.

68% of Russians support the war, probably due to Putin's total control of the Russian media.  Support seems likely to erode as more accurate information filters into the country.

Ukrainian authorities now say that about two thousand Ukrainian civilians have been killed.

A common feature of news reports about the war has been the heavy Russian missile bombardments of Ukrainian cities.  It's not clear what military purpose this serves; few targets of military significance are hit by such barrages, and historically, indiscriminate killing of civilians has angered them and strengthened their determination to fight rather than demoralized them.  More to the point, missiles are not cheap, and Russia's supply of them is not unlimited.  I've seen reports that Russia's supplies of missiles and other weapons will become seriously depleted in just a few more days, at the rate they are being used up.  Ukraine will start running out of things too, of course -- but Ukraine, unlike Russia, is being re-supplied by the West.

[Image at top:  anti-invasion protest in St Petersburg, Russia]