Topic
Adjacent Military Occupations
This ERC project comparatively studies the historical progression and current development of 22 cases of adjacent military occupations (NMO), centring on both completed as well as ongoing NMOs from 1945 (passage of the UN charter) to Russia’s most recent NMO in Crimea (2014) or Turkey’s in Northern Syria (2016).
Adjacent Military Occupations (NMO) 1945–2021: How Do They End?
NMO are territories occupied by geographically adjacent powers who possess no recognised international claim for their conquered territories. Since the UN charta’s passage in 1945, there have been 22 internationally recognised NMO. Thirteen of these ended with the occupier’s withdrawal from the territories it had seized through military force. Nine NMO are still in process.
NMOs differ strongly from »classic« occupations for afar (e.g. the USA in Iraq 2003–2011 or in Afghanistan 2001–2021). Unlike »classic« occupiers, they usually claim ownership of the adjacent territories they seize with force. And while »classic« occupiers tend to avoid demographic changes, most adjacent occupiers initiate such changes deliberately by resettling their own native population in the occupied territory or expelling native residents from these territories (or both). The goal of this project is to understand what factors can trigger the occupier to retreat from the NMO.