It's always been an odd choice to build infra on services owned by companies from a country which doesn't recognise the ICC and, even worse, has a special law that if any of US service men were ever tried there, they will invade the Hague. (gotta love the good guys)
Dropping a cite for the last bit, as it's so goofy people tend to think it's made up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
It's a great example from 2002 that demonstrates that while the US have ramped up its isolationism efforts lately, it has been moving in the same direction for a long time, so what's happening now shouldn't be so surprising.
Many people raised the alarm back then, and were shouted down by promises that these laws would only be used when appropriate. In 2002, very few would've been okay with tearing apart American families, parents, and children based on the color of their skin, letting women miscarry through malnutrition while in custody, etc.
Just wait 25 years, buy the media, and slowly brainwash the population.
The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973, and likely has roots that go much further back.
Difficult for a democracy to defend against this type of long term attack.
Passed in August 2002, how very Patriot Act of them.
To be fair, the Rome Statute entered into force in July 2002.
I don't understand the whole concept. Why would any country recognize a law above their own?
Because they’ve already entered into treaties making the offenses involved matters of universal jutisdiction which any state can prosecute their citizens for, and as a State Party to the Rome Statute, they would have more influence over the fairness and process of the ICC than they would over any national system outside of their own.
Also, because they are tired of the diplomatic cost and expense of working with other countries to set up ad hoc tribunals for particular conflicts and want to get the job done once and properly. (That's actually why the US was one of the leaders of the effort that produced the ICC, even though it did a U-turn against it at the last minute.)
> they’ve already entered into treaties
To answer the GP more directly: Treaties the US enters into are part of US law.
Because borders aren't hermetically sealed?
Same reason individuals tend to want to live in a society and the rules that come with it.
It’s like any international treaty, you agree to it because there’s something in it for you in return for signing it.
In this case, there’s a straightforward benefit to it in that it could be used to prosecute crimes against the US and US citizens, and soft benefits e.g. of the US being seen a a paragon of lawfulness and trust. There’s likely more, these are just what I could think of immediately.
If the US wants to prosecute someone who is residing outside it's jurisdiction, we do a rendition. Not all countries have that option.
Another benefit is discouraging our government from committing war crimes.
that only works if the ICC has any jurisdiction any power
That's true, but the member states agree to offer that jurisdiction. For instance, joining the treaty would allow us to arrest suspected war criminals, or at least, discourage them from traipsing around on our territory.
A lot of people toss around “war criminal” pretty loosely. And regardless of whether you think say, George W Bush was a WC (I don’t), it would be awkward for any country to have to hand over its elected leader, which could even be a popular one with broad support, to be prosecuted at The Hague, because Europeans disagreed with a military decision. Joining the ICC would mean the US would need to do just that.
> it would be awkward for any country to have to hand over its elected leader,
Since the leader (elected or not) generally controls the executive apparatus (that’s what makes them the “leader”), its unlikely that this would actually occur, irrespective of the nominal obligation. It is more likely that they would be turned over after being removed as leader (a process which an ICC warrant may or may not accelerate, depending on the response of other institutions, the populace, etc.)
At least, that is what has generally happened with the top leaders that have ended up at the ICC (or its predecessor ad hoc tribunals, back to Slobodan Milosevic, the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes by an international tribunal—the ICTY—who wasn't turned over by Yugoslav authorities until after he resigned.)
> because Europeans disagreed with a military decision
The majority of State Parties to the Rome Statute are non-European, as are a majority of the current judges of the court, as is the current acting chief prosecutor, so it is really weird to describe ICC involvement this way.
I suppose it would be like the governor of a state getting prosecuted for Federal crimes.
Would GWB have acted differently, had he been forced to consider the legality of his actions under a broader framework? Would we have preferred for presidents to have even broader immunity from prosecution?
The ICC demonstrably has some of each of those things, though less than proponents would like in both cases.
Why would any state enter into a treaty with a state that doesn't recognize them? Diplomacy requires it so it has been in the USA Constitution since the beginning:
Article VI, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Same reason most people prefer living in a society with laws: you are subject to laws, but so is everyone else, and provided the laws are beneficial ("just") you are overall better off.
On a national level I agree not to steal, and in return nobody else is allowed to steal from me. On the ICC level my country agrees not to genocide anyone, and in return others aren't allowed to genocide either
The fundamental problem with this logic is that there is no enforcement body here. In a just society, the law defines who is "allowed" to steal from you and the state's enforcement arm punishes those who violate the law. The law binds but also protects.
Creating a global enforcement arm is an obvious non-starter: Which laws shall be enacted and enforced against whom, and how are fundamentally political questions. The answers to those questions necessarily change once you cross into another polity. States can coordinate and agree mutually to enforce a law... but if Poland says that despite their commitments to the contrary they simply aren't gonna extradite that suspected Nord Stream saboteur: Tough nuggets. Such situations expose international "laws" as mere window dressing on powers that emanate from and remain held by individual states.
There is no global enforcement arm and plenty of evidence that if someone starts genociding you, nobody else is gonna do anything about it. You're on your own. Such "laws" bind but do not protect.
Especially in the context of the US as world hegemon: The US fully expects to shoulder the entire burden of deterring or defeating threats to the homeland. Joining the ICC would bring precisely zero extra protection from genocide. Indeed, such a commitment may limit the US's freedom of action, discredit US deterrence, and actually make a devastating war more likely.
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Seems like the US is very involved in others' business for such an "independent" spirit.
E.g. Switzerland (a country I'd argue as having a far more genuine independent spirit) was labeled as a currency manipulator by the US [0], despite the designation being fairly arbitrary, and you know, her being her own country (and so surely subject to her own laws).
What you're describing as "independence" looks a lot more like "rules for thee are not rules for me", which the US just happens to have the privelage of preaching due to its preeminent position in the world.
[0] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/switzerland-branded-as...
Strange framing.
Currency manipulation is meant to benefit the country doing manipulation (in this case Switzerland) at the expense of another country (in this case U.S.)
It's very much the role of U.S. government to protect U.S. from other countries trying to do harm to U.S., be it by bombing U.S. territory, tariffs on U.S. goods or currency manipulation that economically hurts U.S.
You could present an argument that Switzerland wasn't trying to harm U.S. economically via currency manipulation but instead you're trying to delegitimize the very idea that U.S. can defend itself from other countries trying to harm it economically by pretending that it's purely internal affair that has no effect on U.S.
Currency manipulation does hurt U.S. and that's the reason U.S. has the right to push back on it.
I said Switzerland was labelled a currency manipulator - its attempts to devalue the Franc was in response to the sharp rise in its value as a result of Covid and the markets plowing money into safe-haven assets. This presented a real problem for the country at the time, and the primary dynamic at play wrt exports in the country is actually between CHF and EUR, not CHF and USD. The US designation was widely considered arbitrary iirc, putting Switzerland into the same grouping as countries like China, which have vastly different reasons for devaluing their currencies, and arguably ones more in line with what the US was actually supposedly targeting.
So I haven't claimed that Switzerland is a currency manipulator, nor that this would be a good thing, nor that its efforts to devalue its currency had anything to do with the US. I don't see what the contention is here - unless it's that only the US is allowed to be "independent" (i.e. above all international law), here wrt the ICC, while other countries must curtail what is in their national interests (like not having their export markets decimated) for fear of provoking this one special, privileged land?
If the argument is that the US can enforce its agenda on other countries and they must just suck it, then sure. But that's not an argument about fairness or what's right, that's an argument about what to expect from the actor with the biggest stick.
"Rules based order"
For a country built on dead bodies of independent natives, the last sentence seems disingenuous at best.
yes we independently decide to invade other countries for no good reason and independently decide to extrajudicially murder people the president doesn't like, I'm so very glad
The reason has nothing to do with "independence". It is that the US has the death penalty for this, and they want to kill people who commit war crimes.
At least that was the reason I was given in the US military. YMMV
I wouldn't believe anything the military tells you about justice.
The US military told people whatever they needed to tell them to follow orders. That's why they follow unlawful orders like those to extrajudicially blow up non-combatant US citizens abroad, and imprison people in Guantanamo for decades without trial, assist the disarming of innocent US citizens in NOLA in the aftermath of Katrina, blackball soldiers in Vietnam that reported war crimes, and all manner of other things that hardly anyone seems to be held to account for.
Nothing about the ICC stops the US from executing war criminals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
> The ICC is intended to complement, not replace, national judicial systems; it can exercise its jurisdiction only when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals.
Has the US ever executed an American soldier war criminal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Day
Interesting. Thanks for posting that. I hope the US will always prosecute war crimes of its own soldiers, but I'm skeptical--I don't think that's how war and power work.
Oh, I'm skeptical as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gallagher_(Navy_SEAL) is more the norm.
> It is that the US has the death penalty for this, and they want to kill people who commit war crimes.
> At least that was the reason I was given in the US military.
That's obviously nonsense. For many reasons:
(1) ICC jursidiction does not supercede national jurisdiction that is actually exercised—that's explicitly a basis for ICC jurisdiction not to be applied (it can be applied in the case of sham proceedings designed to provide cover). So it wouldn't stop the US from trying, and applying the death penalty to, any war criminals.
(2) The actual reasons for the the US opposition, including Congress passing a law threatening the ICC, are matters of public record, and are much more about the US wanting impunity for accused (American) war criminals than any fear of inadequate punishment.
(3) The US response to its own war criminals that it has had the opportunity to punish since the establishment of, and its refusal to join, the ICC has shown a singular lack of capital punishment. And even the occasional Presidential pardon after conviction.
Even for US military propaganda directed at is own personnel, that's pretty lazy, low-effort stuff.
The US happily enforces its rules on other nations on a regular basis.
Every country tries that on a regular basis. The US might have more power on the world stage, but everyone tries it once in a while. If you look at history the US has been very restrained with using their power (which isn't a high bar)
I don't disagree; the point is it's a little rich to go on about "her own country", "subject to her own laws", and "independence" given that context.
Do you also think it's hypocritical that the Dallas Cowboys try to sack the other team's quarterback even though they don't want their own quarterback sacked?
The Dallas Cowboys operates according to team rules that encourages such violence. The entire point of international cooperation is to prevent the sort if wonton violence our military engaged in the last 80 years.
God willing, someone in this country or in another one will work up the nerve to erase such a malignant cancer out of existence eventually.
Gridiron football is explicitly a zero sum game. Coexisting as sovereign states isn’t, and it would be quite sad to learn any of us see it that way.
This is more like the Dallas Cowboys threatening to shoot up your locker room if you sack their quarterback.
No man is an island, and no country is either. You live in an international community, whether you like it or not. You can choose to be a rogue state, but it doesn't reflect well on you.
Why would the US choose to cede authority to the ICC here? If the US wishes to discipline its service members, they still can and do. Under no circumstances should any country allow a foreign entity to decide what its military can and cannot do.
> Why would the US choose to cede authority to the ICC here?
For the same reason as any other treaty - the corresponding benefits.
> If the US wishes to discipline its service members, they still can and do.
That's not what the ICC is for. The ICC is for when a country won't do so when they should be.
> Under no circumstances should any country allow a foreign entity to decide what its military can and cannot do.
The US has a very long history of telling other foreign entities what they can and cannot do.
> If the US wishes to discipline its service members, they still can and do.
Its not “service members” that are the usual defendants at the ICC.
Why have an ICC at all then?
If US soldiers are (once again) committing war crimes, will the US do anything? What’s the recourse for the victims of those crimes? Should there not be one?
> What’s the recourse for the victims of those crimes?
The war crimes (and some others) that are subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC are already crimes recognized explicitly in the treaties establishing them as crimes matters of universal jurisdiction. Yeah, its difficult to get your hands on them to exercise that jurisdiction, but... that hasn’t really been a problem the ICC has solved with regard to significant powers when their personnel are subject to its jurisdiction, either.
The recourse is for the country of those citizens to declare war against the US.
Well they also don't want their own citizens to have any say. So whose interests in the end does our military actually answer to?