This chapter considers the first of two additional reconstructions of state creation under international law, both of which present alternatives to statehood as political community. I call this first alternative 'the stability thesis', given its core claim that the law of state creation is primarily explicable and provisionally justifiable, not in terms of international peace and friendly relations, rather than political community. Two versions of this rational reconstruction are considered. Under the first, stability is secured by seeking to eliminate controversy: on this 'modus vivendi' approach, only those standards that meet broad international consensus should be considered legally relevant to the creation of states. Under the second, which prioritises substance over consensus, international practice is reconstructed so as to prioritise legal standards that are maximally conducive to stability in and of themselves. Ultimately, I argue that we should reject both versions of the stability thesis. Although international peace is morally important, both within state creation and otherwise, it cannot function as the primary normative foundation for this area of law.

In this introductory chapter, we provide an initial examination of the linkages between peaceful borders and the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. We refer to several empirical examples, including the cases of the Northern Triangle in Central America, the Tri-Border Area of the Southern Cone of South America, the Colombian borders, and the Schengen open regime in Europe. In addition, we refer to the existing scholarship by clarifying several key concepts, stemming from five different bodies of literature: international peace, globalization, international borders, governance and “areas of limited statehood,” and the phenomena of transnational criminal organizations and terrorism.