Creeping Annexation: The Perfect Crime of Geopolitics

Samer is the owner of a small restaurant in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. In 2011, amidst the clatter of a busy lunch service going on around him, Samer sat down for an interview with a British journalist. He lamented many aspects of the Israeli occupation, such as devastating unemployment, dependence on Israel for secondary goods, and an untenable high cost of living. Amongst his grievances, one thing stands out: “we don’t even have our borders, we are a country with no borders, everything is controlled by Israel, Israel controls our lives from A to Z.”[i]

Vephivia lives in a town named Jariasheni, which sits on the border between Georgia and the self-proclaimed breakaway Republic of South Ossetia, which Russia has occupied since 2008. In a 2016 interview with the New York Times, Vephivia described how Russia had moved his home from Georgia to Russia overnight that summer, when Russian bulldozers dug a dirt track through the town, delineating between Georgia and South Ossetian territory.[ii]

Though they live 900 miles apart, speak different languages, pray to different gods, and live under the rule of different governments, Samer and Vephivia are both victims of an increasingly prevalent practice called “borderization” or “border creep,” which has enabled powerful states to expand their territory and influence without firing a single shot. Victims of border creep are simultaneously cut off from the resources they have relied on for their entire lives and denied adequate resources by their occupiers. This phenomenon represents a failure of the international community to protect state sovereignty and human rights. In a world where conventional conflict over territory is taboo, border-creep is a new kind of annexation, one carried out with fences and roads instead of with bullets. Moreover, the innately hierarchical structure of international organizations allows for powerful and well-connected states to escape repercussions for these actions.

Defining Border Creep

Border creep, also referred to as “creeping annexation,” is the strategy by which states construct infrastructure across internationally recognized borders to blur the original lines of demarcation and gradually bring new areas under their control. This practice has several core characteristics. First, it only occurs in situations where power is heavily asymmetrical, as even these limited incursions are only tolerated by those without the material resources to resist, the assistance of allies, or both. Second, the gradual nature of this strategy means that it creates unnatural divisions within communities, causing severe amounts of disruption to local economies and social structures. Finally, borders are shaped specifically by the imposition of new physical structures which deny peoples the “right to move.” This is a manifestation of teichopolitics, a larger global trend towards the construction of physical barriers that harden borders along “important economic or social discontinuity lines.”[iii]

Annexation of Ossetia

Two contemporary examples exemplify border creep’s problematic outcomes. The first is Georgia’s region of South Ossetia. In 2008, following a decade and a half of strained relations between Georgia and Russia, Georgia’s explicit intent to join NATO sparked a five-day war in which Russia invaded and occupied the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, pushing the Georgian army back deep into their own territory. Despite international outcry from NATO and the EU, Russia decided to formally recognize these territories as “Autonomous Republics,” effectively bringing them under Russian control.[iv]

Since 2008, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, has conducted a process of “borderization” around the territory of South Ossetia to establish a solid boundary between Georgia and its secessionist region.[v] Prior to 2008, no material border existed between Georgia and Southern Ossetia. In the years that followed, a barbed wire fence gradually emerged, causing numerous disruptions to Georgian communities that once occupied both sides of the new border. Families have been completely separated from the vital farmland they rely on to raise livestock and cut off from irrigation water necessary for growing crops. The imposition of this border has impacted cultural activities as well. Georgians on the Russian side of the border who wish to follow their tradition of visiting the graves on Easter are denied entry.[vi] Additionally, the mass migration of young people away from border villages due to a lack of economic opportunity raises the concern that an aging population will be left behind without the ability to resist further border creep from the Russian FSB.[vii]

The international community’s response to Russia’s creeping annexation has been minimal at best. Russia’s veto power on the UN Security Council and its refusal to ratify the Rome Statute shields it from being held accountable by the UN or International Court of Justice (ICC) . Additionally, since Georgia never successfully joined NATO or the EU, in part due to their lack of territorial integrity, these organizations can do little beyond a toothless condemnation.[viii] Russia’s great-power status means that Georgians are forced to look on helplessly as the FSB gradually conducts borderization of their territory, ripping apart families and destroying the agricultural resources they need for survival.

Palestine Partitioned

For Palestinians in the West Bank, a similar process is underway. The West Bank has changed hands a number of times throughout its history, most recently with Israel’s capture of the territory from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967. Until 1993, the region was under de facto military occupation, after which it was divided into three areas: Area A under Palestinian control, Area B under joint control and Area C, which encompasses the majority of the West Bank, under Israeli control.

While the area has long been occupied by a Palestinian majority, Israel’s construction of a network of settlements within the West Bank beginning in 2001 has severely disrupted the area, resulting in a gradual, de facto annexation of the territory. These settlements consist of around 100 different gated communites of Iraelis connected by a complex road system that cuts through Palestinian land. While these roads may seem benign at first glance, Palestinians are prohibited from travelling on many of them–often facing harassment from settlers and Border Patrol officers for even approaching them–turning the roads into de facto borders.[ix] These roads isolate Palestinians from one another in islands of Palestinian settlements, while simultaneously allowing Israel to connect its own gated communities and project its power. There is a certain poetic irony to the notion that roads, which on the surface serve to connect people and enable travel, inhibit those very things among the West Bank’s Palestinian population.

The Role of the International System

Similar to the divisions of Georgians in South Ossetia and Georgia proper, carving up the Palestinian communities has had grave consequences for the people who live there. It has limited economic opportunity and represents a “divide and conquer” strategy that prevents Palestinians from forming a larger united community in the West Bank. Yet like Russia, Israel cannot face persecution from the ICC because it has not ratified the Rome Statute. Moreover, Israel’s close relationship with the United States means that it is also unlikely to be punished by the UN. With absolutely no avenues for recourse through international institutions, and without the material capability to stand in the way of border creep, people like those in Northern Georgia and Palestine are all but helpless, making this strategy of annexation a perfect geopolitical crime.

Conclusion

The process of borderization and creeping annexation is a direct result of the international order’s hierarchical yet evolving power structure and the norms it enforces. A country like Israel can no longer send tanks into the West Bank and forcefully remove the Palestinians, as it would constitute a clear violation of human rights. Likewise, Russia can no longer send attack helicopters into Georgia and establish the borders of the Republic of South Ossetia through military action, as such an egregious violation of a state’s sovereignty could not be ignored by the UN. This reality has motivated each state to take a more gradual and creative approach to achieving the same ends: the annexation of a territory it believes it has a right to at the expense of those living in them. Barring major reform of international institutions, it is unclear what will stop Russia, Israel, and future opportunists from doing the same.

Illustration by Oscar Martinez.

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