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This essay investigates the role of the post-1945 norms, rules and practices pertaining to state recognition of territorial claims in the bloodiest series of con icts in post-1945 Europe, the Balkan wars of the last decade. These moral and legal normsÐRobert Jackson and Mark Zacher evocatively call them``the territorial covenant’’, 2 and Zacher, more recently,``the territorial integrity norm3Ð stipulate that territorial change attained through the use of military force cannot be accepted by the society of states as valid. They outlaw``the acquiring of the right of sovereignty by victory’’, as Thomas Hobbes de® ned conquest in Leviathan, 4 and permit only territorial modi® cations attained by way of consent of all parties involved. The same applies to non-sovereign jurisdictions that become sovereign: unless their governments decide otherwise, their former administrative borders must remain intact. I suggest that territorial norms …