Lior Erez Harmful Intentions and Negative Effects for States Such a justification is provided by Jain’s second line of argument, in which the harm of unjust inclusion is not to the individuals in question but to the interests of the “parent state”. This is a version of the principles prevailing in the old international system, although importantly state interests now should be balanced against individual right claims. Jain301 relies on Anne Peters to argue that ‘mass naturalisations, in particular of individuals who do not have strong links to the state of naturalisation, may thus infringe upon the sovereignty of the parent state’.302 Bauböck, similarly, places the use of passportisation as a pretext for military intervention at the most severe end of his sliding scale. As a general principle, he proposes that ‘[c]itizenship attributions that have the intention and effect of undermining the territorial integrity and stability of other states should be considered illegal’.303 The Russian passportisation policy and the blatant violation of international law in its war of aggression against Ukraine clearly motivate this line of argument, as they should. As several contributors note, the wrongness of the case remains evident even if naturalizations were voluntary and there is a genuine connection between the naturalising state and the individuals in question. My concern about it, however, stems from the sense that the wrongness of the Russian case is overdetermined. Even if accepting as a matter of fact that mass naturalizations occurred as a pretext for military occupation (but see Knott’s argument against this view),304 the case is so extreme that it provides a shaky foundation for a general principle. As I will try to briefly demonstrate, applying the line of argument to less blatant cases prove to be much more ambiguous, and arguably over-extends its usefulness. It seems, first, that identifying an intention of undermining territorial integrity and stability would be a much harder task in most cases. The Russian case aside, states rarely advance weaponised citizenship policies while exclaiming that these are intended to be used as weapons. Indeed, they have the interest of disguising their true intentions by providing more benign justifications for potentially controversial citizenship laws, appealing in diaspora connections, human rights, or historical injustice. As I argued above, if we accept a pluralist justification for inclusive citizenship policies, some of these justifications would be legitimate, and we can fully expect states to game the system to achieve the appearance of legitimacy.305 If our task here is to find a way in which international law norms allow for providing such retrospective evaluation (Jain),306 it is hard to see how this kind of intent could be identified. As Ramesh Ganohariti persuasively argues, even in the Russian case its actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia – and the intentions behind them – could not be definitively determined to be criminal.307 Turning instead to the effects of such policies on the affected state seems like a more promising route, especially if intent can be interpreted obliquely, in light of foreseeable consequences of one’s actions. Jain is right to point out that for extra-territorial naturalizations – where the question of unjust inclusion might arise – we should reject the Nottebohm assumption that ‘nationality has its most immediate, its most far-reaching and, for most people, its only effects within the legal system of the State conferring it’.308 Of course citizenship laws have affects beyond the boundaries of the state. Again, the Russian case provides a stark example of such egregious effects, with passportisation facilitating territorial invasion. 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 49 Peters 2010. Jain 2022. Bauböck 2023. Knott 2022. Kingston 2022. Jain 2022. Ganohariti 2022. Jain 2022. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies