I Wonder What He Meant By That?

There’s an old joke. Two diplomats are attending the funeral of a third diplomat. After standing there, solemnly, for a while, one turns to the other and asks “I wonder what he means by this?” The editors of the Wall Street Journal take note of something interesting:

China’s Ambassador Lu Shaye was asked on Friday on French TV whether he considered Crimea to be part of Ukraine under international law. In 2014 Russia occupied and annexed Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet empire.

Mr. Lu didn’t stop at Crimea. “Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretize their status as a sovereign country,” Mr. Lu said. The “as we say” is a nice diplomatic touch since the only international law that Beijing recognizes is what serves its increasingly imperial interests.

The diplomat is saying that the many countries that declared their independence when the Soviet Union dissolved aren’t independent at all. That would include Ukraine, but also the three Baltic states, Moldova, and the countries of central Asia like Georgia and Kazakhstan. The clear implication is that Russia is justified in its attempt to conquer Ukraine, and perhaps the other countries too.

At one level that’s a bit of sophistry. If taken at face value he is saying that in China’s opinion Article 2 of the United Nations charter is meaningless. Even the United States which has many treaties with Canada and Mexico respecting our shared borders, does not have an “international accord” securing that border other than bilateral ones. Very few countries have actual international accords on their boundaries. In more specific terms he is asserting China’s right to attack or invade Taiwan at any time and that such an act of aggression would not be a violation of China’s obligations under the UN Charter.

That leaves we me to wonder what he meant by that?