The European Union was last week awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Previous institutional recipients of the award include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), the United Nations (2001), and the Red Cross (1944). While the announcement was met with pride and applause by many within and without Europe, the Euroskeptics have been equally vocal in their derision of the award, pointing to ongoing social instability in many regions of Europe due in part to the Eurozone economic crisis, and the ongoing existentialist crisis the EU seems to be facing.

Such objections somewhat miss the point of the accolade, which has clearly been granted in reference to a longer-term contextualization of the ‘European project’ – after a century of continental turmoil, the creation of the European Communities in the 1950s, which eventually led to the birth of the European Union, was a watershed moment, marking the beginning of a new era of intergovernmental cooperation, an unprecedented single market project, and supranational implementation and enforcement of a new legal order for the benefit of European citizens.

Military tensions between Syria and Turkey have risen dramatically in the last two days. After shooting down a Turkish fighter jet in June, Syrian government forces reportedly fired into Turkish territory and killed five civilians yesterday. Turkey has responded by shelling targets in Syria.

Though presently limited, the attacks are of keen interest to the United States. Turkey and the United States are both members of NATO and thus parties to the North Atlantic Treaty. Article 5 of that treaty establishes collective self-defense obligations by providing that in the event of an armed attack against any NATO member, every other member “will assist the [attacked member] by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain security of the North Atlantic area.” Thus, the Syrian attacks on Turkey might conceivably require the United States to come to Turkey’s defense.

[Update: I recently completed a more extensive analysis on the dispute; that article is available here.]

I’d like to share a couple brief thoughts on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, which has intensified pretty dramatically in recent weeks. The islands together comprise only seven square kilometers and have supported virtually no economic activity other than the collection of guano and bird feathers, but China and Japan both vigorously claim them as their own. This disagreement has been intractable for a variety of reasons. One is the economic stakes—sovereignty over the islands will dictate rights to potentially massive oil and gas deposits under the East China Sea, so there is no financial incentive for conciliation. Another reason is historical animosity—having suffered from Japanese colonialism and militarism during much of the first half of the twentieth century, China is particularly keen on defending against what it perceives to be expansionist Japanese territorial claims. Finally, the dispute is intractable for legal reasons, as I hope to illustrate below.

First some historical background: Chinese sailors reportedly used the islands for a number of purposes for centuries, but Japan formally annexed them in 1895 and then, at the end of World War II, transferred administrative authority to the United States. A 1968 study first raised the possibility of extensive oil and gas resources around the islands. Approximately four years later in 1972, China objected to Japanese sovereignty, and the United States returned the islands to Japanese administration. To demonstrate its control, Japan has since leased the islands to private businessmen, built a weather station and heliport, conducted land surveys, and patrolled the surrounding waters. China has consistently objected that these activities are irrelevant, at least in part because the annexation was illegal and Japan never had sovereignty to begin with.