RE: The disposition of territory acquired under the principle of conquest .....?

"To the victor goes the spoils", but yes, in the modern world, there is always treaties, good or bad, it was a bad one after the truce or armistice ending WW1 that so humiliated Germany it ensured a WW2. In reality one tribe challenged and usually imiliated another in North America before European invasion, Spain was just another part of Europe, same as England or France or the Dutch, and what they took by force from teh natives they later lost in wars, signed treaties, and even sold to the USA, and then we bought Alaska from Russia. While you have to give the Dutch credit for "purchasing" Manhattan for $20 worth of trade goods, the unspoken fact is they got ripped off as that tribe didn't have a claim to it. This lead to warfare and the establishment of a bounty, by the Dutch, on native scalps. It became much more expedient to claim taking foreign countries into "protectorship" as Russia created the USSR or China has been slowly swallowing up Asia, with eyes currently on Taiwan, Nepal and elsewhere. It does away with the need of "treaties" at all. The Isreal situation is a mess, with hatreds and distrust and fundamental differences so deep people kill each other over rocks and desert, and one religion insists on holding a site holy to the other simply to prove superiority, and Isreal holding land like Golan Heights because it is always used to attack them from, and no one seems to suggest the UN occupy these places and keep them open and safe for all peoples of all nations and faiths. If there can be no peace in the Middle East, the cradle of human race and modern civilization, there never will be anywhere.