What would be the best analogy for Dagestan: Yugoslavian break-up or a simple Lebanese civil war?
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The United Nations, World Court, and pretty much the entire international community including the USA agree that uti possidetis juris is in fact international law and all their neighbors of Dagestan would be expected to adhere to Dagestan's existing boundaries. Those who say "oh, there's no majority and lots of minorities", oh, you mean like several African nations? And Moldova proved that just because you have a majority of people that are of similar ethnicity as your neighbor, you don't automatically invite to join them. Pretty much the only thing guaranteed is war. The entire reason the world, including the US, really didn't want to see a break-up of Bosnia and Herzegovina is because of uti possidetis juris; the same conservative forces would be at work here as well (not conservative as in US political views; conservative as in comparative politics and against radical change of the international landscape). You see this with nations being against the break up of Cyprus and Iraq along ethnic lines, or Somalia even though it bring legitimacy to places like Somaliland. It's already hard enough without the OK of the previous supranational construction, to create your own borders internally and separate is even harder and you need international support- South Sudan only example? Dagestan IMHO becomes a mini-Bosnia/Herzegovina; forced together by the international community in a power sharing agreement where no one wants to be with each other.
Why didn't they want a break-up of the places like Bosnia, Cyprus, and the others you mentioned? Why uti possidetis juris?
Uti possidetis juris was developed for two reasons-
1) Places like South America and later Africa and Asia would be less likely to fight over borders (like that's really worked out well...) and especially for Africa that the colonial boundaries as bad as they were would be more peaceful for everyone to recognize than every ethnic majority of a nation declaring that province that has a majority of the nation's minorities would not be part of the nation thereby "orphaning" them, or nations attacking other nations to "liberate". Or minorities (ahem, Biafra?) causing civil wars. As bad as uti possidetis juris sounds to those agreeing with Wilsonian self-determinism, it actually does make a safer place and allows the World Court an easy way to determine border disputes in places like the Aouzou Strip between Libya and Chad.
2) So there is no places left outside of any nation's jurisdiction. The world community abhors the idea of going back to "terra nullius" which means no-man's land. Neighboring states shouldn't take advantage of a nation's break-up to say "Oh, good, the Soviet Union collapsed, Moldova is free game!"
International law needs rules. As imperfect as they are. It's better than the alternative; as Churchill said about democracy "It's the worst form of government ever invented by man... except all the other forms."
For number one what if the ethnic groups used non-violent ways and/or the international community used peaceful solutions to split up states when needed? Is that not as bad?
Number two is too obvious. I don't think you need uti possidetis juris for that.
Agreed for the final paragraph.