Trump is just the latest US President who does not support the territorial integrity of states

We should not be so surprised at the poor ‘peace proposal’ outlined by US President Donald Trump because it is a myth the US has been fully committed to the principle of the sanctity of the territorial integrity of states. The US has a long record of infringing the territorial integrity of states. Here’s how, writes Taras Kuzio.

Trump’s ‘peace proposals’ proposed the US ‘de jure’ recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukraine was pressured to accept this ‘de jure recognition.’ Obviously, this was not thought through as the Ukrainian president has no constitutional right to infringe the constitution by giving away territory. Such a step would require a referendum where opinion polls show that most Ukrainians would oppose such a step. The New York Times cited Ukrainian MP Kostyantyn Yeliseyev as saying: ‘There is not a single Ukrainian politician who would vote to legalize the occupation of Ukrainian territories. For members of Parliament, it would be worse than political suicide."

Trump has also ignored two documents that denounce legal recognition of Russian occupied territories in Ukraine. In July 2018, then US Secretary of State Pompeo said the US would never recognize Russian rule over Crimea. In October 2022, Senator Marco Rubio, and Democratic and Republican Senators proposed legal amendments prohibiting the US from recognizing "any Russian claim of sovereignty over any portion of the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine".

The Trump administration has gone one step further by pressuring Ukraine to also give up sovereignty over four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson that were annexed in September 2022. Trump’s "peace plan" called for the "de facto recognition" of Russia's occupation of parts of the four Ukrainian regions.

Chief negotiator Steve Witkoff had already outlined Trump’s acceptance of Russian rule. Witkoff, in a March interview with Tucker Carlson, could not name all the four Ukrainian regions but claimed, erroneously, they were Russian speaking, which Zaporizhzhya and Kherson are not. Witkoff claimed, again erroneously: "There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule." Carlson added the Kremlin’s line: "In fact, some of those territories are now, from the Russian perspective, part of Russia, correct?"

The Trump team’s ‘peace proposal’ is not a new approach.

In fact, the US has undermined the territorial integrity of states since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, that is, for over three decades. The US never pressured Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin or Vladimir Putin to unfreeze conflicts in Moldova, Georgia or Azerbaijan which Russia had created in the 1990s when the Kremlin had supported separatists.

In 1992, Section 907 of the US Freedom Support Act banned any direct assistance the Azerbaijani government. This made Azerbaijan the only post-Soviet state, out of fifteen USSR republics, to not receive direct aid from the US for the purposes of supporting military reforms and political and economic transitions from communism and command control economies.

The US action was because Azerbaijan blockaded Armenia after the First Karabakh War from 1988-1992. Washington blamed Azerbaijan for the war even though it was Armenia that had occupied twenty percent of Azerbaijani territory from 1992-2020.

Trump’s attack against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not ‘de jure recognising’ Crimea as Russian follows in the same erroneous US footsteps. Trump accused the Ukrainian leader of making ‘inflammatory statements’ that ‘makes it so difficult to settle this war’ and of Ukraine of failing to defend Crimea in 2014. In Spring 2014, US President Barack Obama, fearing ‘escalation,’ pressured Ukraine to not fight against Russia’s invasion of Crimea and ignored US security commitments to Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Trump blamed Zelenskyy for a breakdown of the peace talks, saying ‘I think we have a deal with Russia. We must get a deal with Zelenskyy.’ Trump added ‘I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelenskyy. So far, it’s been harder.’ In fact, the absence of pressure on Putin to moderate his maximum demands, which have been in place since Spring 2022, reflects Trump’s support for Russia and antipathy to Ukraine and personal animosity towards Zelenskyy whom he blames for his first impeachment.

Trump has never pressured Russia or called Putin out for not agreeing to a ceasefire. On March 11, Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire. Trump is following in the footsteps of previous US administrations who have offered carrots to aggressors – Armenia and Russia – while using sticks against those whose lands have been occupied – Azerbaijan and Ukraine. A Guardian editorial described Trump as desperate for a peace deal ‘whatever it means for Ukraine.’

Between 2001-2022, the US Senate adopted an amendment that provided the president with the ability to waive Section 907. But in November 2023, the US suspended military and other forms of aid to Azerbaijan by repealing the Freedom Support Act Section 907 waiver authority for fiscal years 2024 or 2025; that is, during Joe Biden and Trump’s presidencies.

The US reaction aimed to punish Azerbaijan after it had regained control of the Karabakh region in September 2023. Karabakh is internationally recognised as Azerbaijan sovereign territory. One wonders if the US would also punish Ukraine if it were in the future to retake Crimea, a region which is recognised as Ukrainian sovereign territory.

The US has never demanded Israel withdraw from the Golan Heights or the West Bank that were occupied after the 1967 Six-Day War, with the former annexed in 1981. The UN and most countries recognise the Golan Heights and West Bank as Israeli-occupied Syrian and Jordanian territories.

Successive US administrations refused to provide military aid to Azerbaijan and Presidents Barack Obama and Trump to Ukraine. The US ignored military attacks against Azerbaijan and Ukraine that led to the occupation of their territories while at the same provided military aid to Armenia and Israel which were undertaking the illegal annexation of their neighbour’s land. The US has been the biggest supporter of military aid to Israel for decades, assistance that has amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars.

In February 2008, the US, together with the UK, recognised the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. Kosovo had been an autonomous region of Serbia which had no legal right to become an independent state after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Autonomous regions in the former USSR were not given the right to independence; this was only given to fifteen Soviet republics.

Ukraine has never recognised the independence of Kosovo because Kyiv believed it opened the door to other regions claiming the right to ‘self-determination.’ Indeed, Russia used the Kosovo example to claim that Crimea also had a right to ‘self-determination,’ even though the two examples are very different as one region became an independent state and another was annexed. Armenia used the examples of Kosovo and Crimea’s ‘self-determination’ to back its claim to the Karabakh region having the same right.

The US has also pursued a curious approach to Kurdish separatism. The PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which first launched military attacks inside Türkiye in 1979, is designated as a terrorist organisation by Türkiye, the US and European Union (EU). Türkiye is an important member of NATO that hosts two US air bases, two US radar stations and an US air station.

At the same time, the US has militarily cooperated with the YPG (People’s Defence Units) in Syria that has a close and working relationship with the PKK. YPG-PKK units in northern Syria have long been a central component of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Meanwhile, Washington has viewed the SDF: "as its key armed ally in its fight against Daesh, which controlled a vast swath of territory in the region up till 2017".

Türkiye on the other hand is convinced the SDF is a US-backed political front to camouflage YPG-PKK fighters within its ranks. Strangely, "tens of millions of dollars of American taxpayers' money is spent on arming the YPG, an offshoot of the PKK".

Trump’s ‘peace proposal’ that infringes Ukraine’s territorial integrity and rewards Russian irredentism has shocked many commentators. Nevertheless, Trump’s disrespect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity follows a long tradition over the last three decades of de facto supporting Israel’s occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights and Jordan’s West Bank, punishing Azerbaijan after a fifth of its territory was occupied by Armenia, recognising Kosovo’s independence, and cooperating with Kurdish separatist groups that threaten Türkiye’s territorial integrity.

Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Türkiye, and the EU uphold the sanctity of the territorial integrity of states as being central to international law. Unfortunately, the historical record shows this has never been the case for the US, Israel, and of course Russia.

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