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It was not Lincoln trying to adjust the borders of the United States unilaterally. It was the Confederacy that tried to do that. Lincoln was all about preventing that happening. If there's some equivalent to Confederates here, it would be the DPR/LPR separatists (though of course they're not equivalent, there's multiple differences there, too).
It was after WW2, and due to WW2, that the current international system, along with its respect for existing borders, was born. To my knowledge America has not annexed new territories since WW2.
Huh? By democratically seceding? Why do Ukrainians have a God given right to an independent polity but the southern states do not? Do you imagine that if the South had not fired on Fort Sumpter, Lincoln would have moved the troops out eventually and respected the will of the Confederate peoples?
Yet our historical mythos remains unaltered in a post WWII order (despite many other historical events getting revamped to match modern morality). Actually its much worse, confederate statues and flags were far more tolerated prior to WWII than they are now, we have gone in the opposite direction. It's all "who whom".
The war of course started not with the secession itself but with confederates attacking federal assets (Fort Sumter.)
I'm pretty sure holding military assets in a foreign country against their wishes is an act of war itself, so it started before that.
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Ukraine's independence has been formally recognized - by the global community, and most crucially by the Russian Federation, in its role as the continuation of the centuries of Russian statehood and as the state that de jure assumed the role of continuing the Soviet Union's role in the said global community. Indeed - again, de jure - Russia and Ukraine have been separate subjects for 100 years now, first within the Soviet Union and then, after the said state stopped existing, as independent countries, even if de facto Soviet Union might have been just Russia by another name. When Russia is violating Ukraine's sovereignty, it is doing so in explicit violation of treaties and structures it has formerly recognized as valid. Indeed, even now, Russia recognized Ukraine as an independent country, even if it claiming large parts of it as a part of RF.
Confederacy, on the other hand, was never recognized as independent, either by US or any other country. That's the crucial difference.
The actions of the North, to be clear, were "in explicit violation of treaties and structures it has formerly recognized as valid". The constitution does not give the president the right to send troops to forcibly abolish the existing democratically elected government in the case that they choose to secede, and my ancestors would not have signed it if it did. It was originally a free association of states, not unlike the EU (and my state has an almost identical population to your country).
Typically, when you send troops into a place to depose the existing government and install your own puppet government, we call that "invasion". You can characterize it differently, if you wish, such as "quelling a rebellion", but this your original point was that Russia was violating a modern guiding principle for the international order, which was "Don't invade and annex other countries". That you are willing to split hairs over exactly what counts as an invasion instead of leaning in on the more general principle of "People ought to be able to self-govern, if they so choose, and attempting to force them into your polity is wrong" further reinforces to me the idea that no such principle actually exists in the modern world.
No matter how you characterize the American Civil War, it did not happen during the current post-WW2 world order, which is what I'm talking about here - the world order characterized by an international opposition to invasion for annexation, that opposition being the result of preceeding history.
My point is that we didn't end up in a world that was opposed to boat tipping on principle, but rather other effects came into play that made tipping the boat a generally undesirable activity. In other words, I think you are mistaking description for prescription.
The evidence for this is that modern society venerates people who conquered and annexed their outgroup using very similar rhetoric to Putin, and I believe they would very likely do it again if the situation allowed for it.
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At that time the supremacy of the federal government over states hadn’t been established. It was much more like the European Union today. The civil war would be akin to Brexit happening and the EU declaring war on the UK. The notion of federal borders versus state borders was in question.
The US of this era was obviously already more federal a country than EU of the current era for the simple virtue of having a federal army, including the possession of forts like Ft. Sumter.
Even the specific interpretation of US constitutional arrangements before and leading up to the American Civil War - a topic where there are and have been multiple legal interpretations, then and now - is immaterial here, though. The 1800s was an era when countries, including the US, generally considered annexation by force to be a valid method of expanding their power. This led to a considerable amount of warfare and suffering, culminating in the World Wars. This is justifiably considered to be very bad, and the international norm of not considering annexation by force to be valid is a vast improvement. The precise threat of Russian invasion of Ukraine is taking a considerable step towards a return to the Bad Old Times, should it be approved by other countries.
If we agree annexation by force to be bad, how do we feel about annexation by secession? By treaty? By demographic shifts due to birth rates and/or migration? By cultural invasion?
Once all the borders on Earth are set in stone as far as war is concerned, Power will find another way to get the territory it wants. It skirts legibility if all methods legible to the law are blocked. It fights unseen wars through peacemongering. It still consumes all as fuel, as rust is slow fire.
Getting countries to utilize their quest for power through means other than open warfare and annexation is a feature, not a bug.
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Well I’m specifically referring to your point that it was the confederacy trying to adjust borders and not the states.
While I agree that the EU today is weaker than the Feds then; States Rights were still a thing then and wasn’t a settled issue. The constitution itself only about 80 years old would have been geared more towards the borders being the states properties.
I do agree no changing borders has been a mostly a good thing atleast by force. Though it is different with breakaway republics doing it democratically.
It just feels like an incorrect interpretation of history that a states land at the time was the property of the states and not the Feds. That was very much in debate at that time.
Even today I am not convinced that a right to secession does not exists in the Constitution. And it really just comes down to who has more powerful ability to project force.
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