You make a lot of true points, though we can disagree on how to interpret or how best to express some of them. But I think it’s worth noting that at the moment when we tried to freeze national borders, the “we” was the former colonial powers. It wasn’t (maybe partially, but not entirely) out of an upwelling of virtue, it was because they were no longer strong enough to impose their will. And it was accompanied by “Hey, even though we totally upended your borders and governance structures many times over the centuries, we’ve now decided to change the definition of what a state is so you no longer have sovereignty anyway. That means if you go to war without our permission, the US will come in and mess things up again instead of letting you figure it out for yourselves. But in many cases they’ll do it halfheartedly, dragging things out and making Faustian bargains for fear of being seen as a colonizer themselves. Kthxbai!”
The UN declaration(s) came later, and were a good idea but also a bit of a veneer on the prior underlying events. Like many concepts we rely on in life and law, they’re sometimes incoherent or implausible if you try to make them foundational to your worldview.
You make a lot of true points, though we can disagree on how to interpret or how best to express some of them. But I think it’s worth noting that at the moment when we tried to freeze national borders, the “we” was the former colonial powers. It wasn’t (maybe partially, but not entirely) out of an upwelling of virtue, it was because they were no longer strong enough to impose their will. And it was accompanied by “Hey, even though we totally upended your borders and governance structures many times over the centuries, we’ve now decided to change the definition of what a state is so you no longer have sovereignty anyway. That means if you go to war without our permission, the US will come in and mess things up again instead of letting you figure it out for yourselves. But in many cases they’ll do it halfheartedly, dragging things out and making Faustian bargains for fear of being seen as a colonizer themselves. Kthxbai!”
The UN declaration(s) came later, and were a good idea but also a bit of a veneer on the prior underlying events. Like many concepts we rely on in life and law, they’re sometimes incoherent or implausible if you try to make them foundational to your worldview.