Andrew Sullivan: US should institute a 2 state solution by force

[Malthus]

In all fairness Abdullah claimed the entire Arab world

However, he wasn't in a position to station soldiers loyal to him in the rest of the Arab world.

I didn't realise there was ever much of a debate about recognising the Chinese conquest of Tibet, once the decision was made to recognise the PRC over the ROC.  But I'd still argue that international recognition is the single most important factor.  I think the lack of it was a huge part of what denied Indonesia legitimacy in Timor-Leste, for example, and, as I mentioned earlier, what causes problems for the Moroccans in Western Sahara.

I would argue that the single most important factor is actual physical occupation of the territory by one's uncontested armed forces.

International recognition is nice, but it doesn't do shit if there is no state willing to back it up with force. Conversely, force is often recognized as conferring legitimacy, once it is proved successful - that usually and except in truly odd cases leads, eventually, to recognition being granted.

In both cases you mention, there is (or was) an ongoing armed dispute over ownership that muddies the water. Timor-Leste became independant in 2002, after a brutal independance war against a Portuguese-backed resistance movement. In neither case was the occupying army able to prove uncontested occupation. 

[The Minsky Moment]

China is actually a pretty good example here.

What is the answer to the question of who has sovereign control over Taiwan?
If answered according to the standard of recognition, the answer is the PRC.  But that immediately runs up against the very practical problem that the PRC in fact does not control jack there.  If sovereignty is to have any meaning at all, it is clear that the ROC is sovereign on the island.

As for "legitimacy", the PRC/ROC split is illustrative as well as to the limits of that concept.  If all "legitimacy" means is who recognized who, then it is a rather narrow and technical concept trying to carry more weight than it can bear.  If it means something more, then that meaning has to be specified - but as a matter of positive law, it clearly has not been.

Sovereignty is one of the hard "facts" of inter-state relations.  The Supreme Court's recent decision in the Gitmo cases (Boumediene) recognized that and correctly (in my mind) based its ruling on the de facto realities of America's presence rather than de jure legal and technical fictions.

Needless to say, I tend to come down more on the Malthus side of this discussion.

[Malthus]

Heh, sometimes it seems to me that in matters of war and peace, the very concept of "international law" is nothing more than the state of nature dressed up in the Emperor's New Clothes.

Sadly, nothing better illustrates the absolute impotence of notions of international law (and conversely the necessity of possessing the means for self-defense) better than the history of the Jews of Europe and the Middle East in the course of the 20th Century.

International law did nothing to help them faced with the Holocaust, international law did nothing to restrain their enemies when Israel became a state (indeed "recognition" was the signal for invasion and war by all of its neighbours), international law and the organs of the UN did nothing to prevent two further wars (the case pf '67 is particularly instructive - the towering example of courage provided by the UN in the face of Nassar's insistance that it move aside so he could attack Israel was certainly not lost on Israelis!); and international law, in spite of years of attempts, has done nothing to help create a Palestinian state, or a permanent state of peace in the region.