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The one big difference between the war in Ukraine and the standard War Template of the recent decades is, actually, that Russia is straight-up annexing parts of their neighboring country. It did so in 2014 and it is gearing up to do so on an even larger a scale.
Of course, all of that is particularly dire when one lives in another neighboring country to Russia (and it's only too natural for Finns to join in cheering Russia's armed forces getting rekt, especially as Russia has taken quite a few of those troops into Ukraine right away from the Finnish border), but even taking that into account, Russian behavior in Crimea is expectional compared to nearly all the other wars in recent decades, including the Iraq War. Annexing parts of another country is really one of those things that should be considered verboten in the post-Cold-War world (Cold War world too, really, that's when the standard was formed), and this implicit standard has really been one of the main pillars of stability, such as it is, in the current global structure, the one thing that has been made a horror in the international community.
It doesn't matter whether the annexing country really, really, really feels the territory is rightfully theirs. It doesn't matter if they consider it crucial to their security. It doesn't matter if the initial annexation (Crimea) was connected to a period of chaos within the original country of the territory. It doesn't matter if the original country is authoritarian, or corrupt, or even that there are militias prowling around with Sonnenrads in their gear. It doesn't matter if the population of the annexed territory agrees. Whatever the reasons, this is one cat we still don't want to let out of the bag.
I can think of one potential counterargument - US is behaving hypocritically, since Trump gave his blessing to another notable recent case of annexation of conquered territory, the Israeli annexation of Golan Hills. That is indeed something Trump shouldn't have done, but still, two wrongs don't make a right. Individual cases of the norm being broken, no matter how hypocritically, don't mean that the international norm no longer exists or that it no longer has any validity. It just means it's been broken. Break it enough times, have that breaking sanctified by the rest of the international community, and then it no longer exists, and it's a free-for-all for all countries to start grabbing parts of other countries, and the bad old times can return.
Morocco occupied and annexed Western Sahara in 1975. In 2020, her sovereignty over Western Sahara was recognized by the US:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-international-law/article/united-states-recognizes-moroccos-sovereignty-over-western-sahara/36A7A41EC0BB341D79CE4661EDD8B60E
From 1975 to 2002, East Timor was annexed by Indonesia, as recognized by the US and other nations.
China annexed Tibet in 1950.
Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1973, as recognized by the US in 2019, as you also mentioned. The US also recognized unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, partially annexed in 1967.
Let's not pretend there is a big difference.
It's true, annexations have happened. However, my understanding is that, apart from annexation of Tibet (where PRC actually just implemented a previous claim by former Chinese states and annexed a de facto country whose independence had never been recognized by other countries), none of these were actually formally accepted by the international community, apart from Golan by US. Western Sahara continues to be on UN's list of unrecognized countries, and my understanding is - if someone has any better info - even though US supported the Indonesian regime behind the schemes, formally it never went against UN's view that East Timor was an occupied territory. Similarly, an important thing regarding Crimea (and Luhansk, Donetsk etc.) is that the international community, apart from some Russian allied states and a handful of Third World countries, has not accepted the annexation of Crimea or the independence of LPR/DPR - there still is a difference between their de facto status and their de jure status in the eyes of the world.
Incidentally, all four of the mentioned causes have been major Western progressive cause celebrés at some point or another, one could barely crack open a book by Chomsky in the 90s without East Timor being mentioned and I have personal experience of Western Sahara solidarity becoming a thing on Finnish left-wing youth circles at a time. As such, that made it easier for many leftists in Finland to take the same stance regarding the illegitimate occupation of the Ukrainian territories by Russia.
That's all true. We can definitely apply nuance if we want to. Of course, we can also say that the annexation of the Crimea was merely the case of implementing the pre-1954 claim of the Russian SFSR.
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Annexation might be the most outrageous way to disrupt equilibrium, but if done bloodlessly, it might cause less suffering in the long run, than toppling/installing governments w/t outward annexation. For some reason civilized world strongly prefers smouldering conflicts with violence and suffering spread -- and therefore, perceptually discounted -- across space and time thinly enough to look almost "natural".
Wikipedia on Syrian civil war: 15 March 2011 – present (11 years, 6 months and 3 days); aside from combatant casualties at least 306,887 civilians killed, estimated 6.7 million internally displaced & 6.6 million refugees.
For Iraq estimates and methodologies range wildly.
Costs of war project: 268,000 - 295,000 people were killed in violence in the Iraq war from March 2003 - Oct. 2018, including 182,272 - 204,575 civilians
The PLOS Medicine study's figure of approximately 460,000 excess deaths through the end of June 2011 is based on household survey data including more than 60% of deaths directly attributable to violence.
The Lancet study's figure of 654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006 is based on household survey data. The estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths. That also includes those due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.
Is that burning slow enough?
This is not to justify any other conflicts. The whole framing of "justification" is hilarious, as it presumes innocence of any geopolitical act, unless you can't make up any excuses at all.
Is the claim here that someone should have annexed Syria or something? Annexation and long-run conflicts aren't the opposites, if anything the initial Russian annexation of Crimea just served as tinder for the larger Ukrainian conflict and eventually the current phase of the war.
I don't really follow.
You singled out annexation as an exceptional threat to international stability. Why do we need that stability in the first place? Not to save lives and to promote well-being in the long run? By this metric, I argue, conflicts w/t annexations inflict more damage than bloodless annexations.
That's absolutely an overstretch. Annexation and the launch of separatist movement were a direct response to revolution in Kyiv (revolution doesn't justify that response, I am just stating the causal link). Without annexation, separatist movement alone would have sparked the protracted smouldering conflict, that we observed till February. Invasion was in no way necessitated by the state of the conflict or status of annexed Crimea, unless you believe Putin's narrative.
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