China understands that wars of expansion rarely have worked since WWII.
coughs in Crimea, Hongkong and arguably Israel, Syria and Turkey
Wars of expansion can and do still work, all it needs is for the rest of the world to stand aside just as they did in 1933-45 - and the signs don't look good, given that the reaction for Russian and Chinese annexation projects was nothing more than a couple ineffective sanctions.
Crimea is the best success, but its because it really more of an annexation of a population that is ethnically same as the annexing nation.
I don't want to give what Russia did legitimacy, but its closer to self-determination than most liberal internationalist (the IR theory, I don't mean US liberals) will give it credit for. Crimea was only part of Ukraine due to the dictates of the Soviet Union and had only been part of it since 1954. Then again, maybe I'm overestimating how strong Taiwanese nationalism is.
In places like Syria, you see what happens when different ethnicities fight over territory. It's a bloody mess and everyone is worse for it.
Israel is in a different position since they really just want the land and not really the economy and people on the land. They are ethnically cleansing and then populating the area with settlers.
I was going to say that is unique in this age, but its really not all that different from what China did in Tibet or is doing in Xinjiang.
What really diminished since WWII is real ethnical cleansing. And I mean by the definition of "forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area". What China did was move in their people, and what Israel did is curve out the areas with low existing population and called them their own.
This, together with the democratic nature of the western world has led to a place where annexation of an area becomes infeasible for a place with a large opposing population (which is why Israel is not officially annexing the west bank).
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coughs in Crimea, Hongkong and arguably Israel, Syria and Turkey
Wars of expansion can and do still work, all it needs is for the rest of the world to stand aside just as they did in 1933-45 - and the signs don't look good, given that the reaction for Russian and Chinese annexation projects was nothing more than a couple ineffective sanctions.
Crimea is the best success, but its because it really more of an annexation of a population that is ethnically same as the annexing nation.
I don't want to give what Russia did legitimacy, but its closer to self-determination than most liberal internationalist (the IR theory, I don't mean US liberals) will give it credit for. Crimea was only part of Ukraine due to the dictates of the Soviet Union and had only been part of it since 1954. Then again, maybe I'm overestimating how strong Taiwanese nationalism is.
In places like Syria, you see what happens when different ethnicities fight over territory. It's a bloody mess and everyone is worse for it.
Israel is in a different position since they really just want the land and not really the economy and people on the land. They are ethnically cleansing and then populating the area with settlers.
I was going to say that is unique in this age, but its really not all that different from what China did in Tibet or is doing in Xinjiang.
What really diminished since WWII is real ethnical cleansing. And I mean by the definition of "forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area". What China did was move in their people, and what Israel did is curve out the areas with low existing population and called them their own.
This, together with the democratic nature of the western world has led to a place where annexation of an area becomes infeasible for a place with a large opposing population (which is why Israel is not officially annexing the west bank).