by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
If the UN now has the right and duty to intervene, in a morally relative manner, in territorial disputes between various groups and grant de factosovereignty, then the sky is the limit. Why go through the motions of two-party discussions at all?
Why not just declare Turkish-controlled Cyprus a legitimate nation? Maybe the UN could unilaterally announce the Falklands to be the Argentine Malvinas, or wade into Ossetia to redraw the borders between Russia and Georgia?
If East Jerusalem is the new capital, then perhaps divided Nicosia can be declared once and for all the capital of Turkish Cyprus. Will China get the U.N. green light to annex Taiwan? Perhaps U.N. luminaries like Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba can help decide which parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq belong to a soon-to-be-autonomous Kurdistan.
The discussions between Spain and Catalonia are stalemated; what better way to restart them than for the UN to save us the hassle and declare an independent Catalonia — and why not a UN-approved Basque homeland as well? And to be fair to soon-to-be-smaller Spain, the UN might grant it sovereignty over British-occupied Gibraltar. Germany of today hardly resembles Bismarck’s original state; now that the passions of 1945 have cooled, can we return to the questions of Danzig and the unlawful annexation and absorption of East Prussia? The UN never finished its job in Korea, why not return and craft a “single-state” solution by imposing unification on the two squabbling parties, whose cycles of violence and immature bickering seem to have no end? If the UN can unilaterally declare an independent Palestine, are not Tibet’s aspirations far more compelling — and deserving of a unilateral UN resolution declaring Lhasa the new capital?
©2012 Victor Davis Hanson
