ICC and the international law buy-in
According to the U.S. the International Criminal Court has a clear role in the world: This court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin.
Back in 2018, the U.S. threatened to arrest ICC judges if they dared to investigate U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. It worked, because the ICC dropped the investigation.
“I made a decision, based upon the evidence, that the worst crimes in terms of gravity and scale and extent seem to be committed by the so-called Islamic State [in] Khorasan and also the Taliban,” Khan told a meeting of ICC countries in The Hague on Monday.
The U.S. then turned around and backed the ICC when the question of charging Putin for war crimes.
After watching this debate on Breaking Points it got me thinking about international law. Saagar made a lot of good points. He is right that the current international order is corrupt and has been used by the U.S. for its own interests. OTOH, I don't think that embracing naked power is the way to go. It's one thing to make laws that uphold higher moral ideals, and then ignore them most of the time. It's another thing to embrace the Law of the Jungle.
Let me give you an example. Many people are unaware that in 2017 the ICC nearly imploded.
Burundi on Friday became the first nation ever to leave the international criminal court, set up 15 years ago to prosecute those behind the world’s worst atrocities.
...“The ICC has shown itself to be a political instrument and weapon used by the west to enslave” other states, said presidential office spokesman Willy Nyamitwe. “This is a great victory for Burundi because it has defended its sovereignty and national pride.”Set up in 2002, the ICC based in the Hague has often come under fire from some countries who claim it is unfairly targeting African nations.
But Burundi’s snub triggered a wave of copy-cat moves from other African countries. South Africa and Gambia said they would both follow suit, but later reversed their decisions. And Kenya and Uganda have also threatened to leave, but not acted on it yet.
Quite simply, Africa rightly noted that the ICC was built for Africa and for thugs like Putin, while it ignored the crimes of the west. So once Africa pulled out the ICC would essentially be completely worthless.
So what happened? In 2019 the ICC announced that they would start an investigation of Israel's war crimes in Palestine. This is the Buy-In. If Israel could commit genocide without the ICC issuing arrest warrants, why should any nations be bothered with it? The ICC literally has no other option than to act, no matter what amount of pressure the U.S. pushes upon it.
In case you were wondering, this is what they wanted Burundi's government for.
Overall, the violence in Burundi has claimed between 500 and 2,000 lives, according to differing tolls provided by the UN or NGOs, and more than 400,000 Burundians have fled abroad.
Yes, that's bad. But it's a fraction of Israel's crimes.
You can see this buy-in level being tested all over the world. The U.S. has seized $300 billion in Russia's foreign assets and wants to spend it rebuilding Ukraine, while also threatening China with all sorts of sanctions. What happens when the rest of the world decides "we can't trust you not to steal our money, so we're going to stop using dollars"?
In America the question of how little can our federal government represent its citizens, before working people finally say "fuck it, this isn't a democracy"?
It seems like the global elites have not learned the lessons of the French and Russian Revolutions after all. If you don't let the people have at least a few scraps from your table, then you will wake up one day no longer in charge.
Comments
like so many other terms in modern dialect
.
.
democracy no longer means its original designation
yes, people are beginning to realize the deformation
of language is not in their best interests
bodies such as the ICC, IJC, UN and others are no more
than rubber stampers for the dictates of globalists
US will openly admit international law is invalid against the
'national interests' of the cabal in charge.
I don't think so
It's already been happening...
There have been plenty of clues over the years that the US dollar was getting less and less attractive to the rest of the world. I'm reminded of that big, hearty handshake between Putin and the Saudi Royal Prince, with big smiles, announcing that they would trade oil for gold. Possibly the beginning of the end for the Petro-Dollar, AND the only time I ever saw Vladimir Putin smiling like crazy. The theft of Russian reserves held by the West is madness; or should I say, senility? The saddest part of this, to me, is that it was all so avoidable. Our ruling class has still not learned a fairly simple lesson: If you want other people, or other nations for that matter, to like you, then you have to do likeable things.
From the OP: "Yes, that's bad. But it's a fraction of Israel's crimes."
Yes, it is; but those of Israel are a vanishingly-small fraction of America's crimes. Iraq comes to mind. A war of aggression is in fact a war crime, and what was the body count for that? Six figures, for sure. Add in our OTHER wars of aggression, and you get seven figures pretty quick. Where are the ICC arrest warrants for "W", and every President since then, for that particular WAR CRIME? Ditto for Afghanistan. -And Vietnam, for that matter. The arrogant hypocrisy didn't start yesterday.
The problem with the ICC, as I see it, is that we still want and expect justice, while ignoring the fact that most modern courts are set up to benefit the wealthy and powerful, only rendering ACTUAL justice occasionally or accidentally. Witness that Trump and Biden are not in prison yet. If they were poor blacks, they would likely have already been shot in the back during arrest until dead. -Or possibly made it to trial, for summary judgment and "harsh sentencing", DECADES ago. But no, they skate away from their crimes, pretty much for their entire adult lives. -And so with nations. The problem with the ICC is that they don't have their own armed forces, complete with nukes, OR a giant network of their own police, to back up their judgments. They must rely on volunteers to make what they say 'stick'. -Which means that only the nations with enough surplus to do that, bother to volunteer, which means that if it doesn't benefit the West, it won't happen. This will only change as World power blocks change. -And it still won't mean that actual Justice will be done. Any nation with a large enough pile of nuclear arms will STILL ignore any judgments against it. Witness Russia, China, and (probably soon) Iran. Hell, N. Korea has been doing so, with a handful of nukes. As long as Israel is under our nuclear umbrella, and we don't exert any real pressure on them, they will continue to do what they want... IMO...
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt