A friend sent me the article below, posted at the
Global Policy Forum. I was sorry to see that it was immersed in some really skewed logic:
As the International Criminal Court came into being on July 1, 2002, ratified by 90 nations, the United States took many steps to undercut it, complaining that the new court would subject US nationals to politically-motivated international justice. The US insisted that the Security Council adopt an omnibus resolution exempting all UN peacekeepers from the jurisdiction of the Court or, at least, that each new renewal of peacekeeping operations would include an exemption provision. Under threat of a US veto of all UN peacekeeping missions, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1422 in July 2002, granting Washington a twelve-month blanket immunity from the ICC. The US again used its veto power and successfully renewed its immunity arrangement a year later. However, with widespread outrage over US treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Washington was unable to garner support for further exemption agreements in 2004. Since then, the US has not openly lobbied for any yearly provisions, but makes its position clear by routinely placing its opposition on the agenda and seeking ad-hoc immunity.
US unilateralism provokes strong opposition from most other nations. Security Council members hold that the Council should not be used to override international treaties and they expressed shock that the US would be willing to wreck UN peacekeeping missions in order to demonstrate its objections to the Court. By forcing the Security Council to arbitrarily defer prosecutions, the United States is striving to do exactly what it seemingly denounced: it is creating a multi-tiered standard of justice. But the battle has wider significance than the jurisdiction of the ICC alone. It may prove a defining moment in the relations between the superpower and the rest of the international community, creating hostility and counter-alliances to challenge the domination of the US hegemon. ("The ICC in the Security Council"; my italics).
This misrepresentation of the situation notes that the US wants exemption for “all UN peacekeepers” and then contradicts itself by accusing the US of trying to create a “multi-tiered standard of justice.” You get the implication, of course: The US wants one standard for itself and another for the rest of the world.
This claim is transparently nonsense. First, the US wants what the rest of the world wants — that is, it wants not to have outsiders impose their ideas of justice. Second, it’s not as if the US came up with the plan for the ICC and is now, hypocritically, trying to get others to commit to an agreement without subscribing itself. The idea came from others. The US just isn’t buying into it. Third, the US isn’t forcing any other nation to sign on. It’s only insisting that its own sovereignty not be compromised.
Because the UN rejected the exemption for all peacekeepers, the US is bound to do precisely what the supposedly united “rest of the international community” is already doing: looking after its own interests. The writer seems to think the UN is a theoretical world-civics exercise, in which philosophical coherence and “fairness” (translation: equal power for all) are the ultimate values. But this isn’t the way the UN, or the world itself, works.
But let’s play along for a moment. Let’s think of fairness. From the outset, the ICC arrangement would be unfair to the US, if you want to put it in those words, in two ways:
1) As the superpower, the US would theoretically be most involved in peacekeeping. Therefore, it would expose itself to a disproportionate level of liability; and
2) The US would have to surrender much more of its power relative to the rest of the world than others to achieve whatever good might come of it.
I can understand the argument that the US should surrender authority over its own citizens unilaterally out of virtue. Yet it’s too easy by far to rhapsodize about doing so “for the greater good.” Other nations don’t want the ICC for some greater good. They want it for their own good — which, perversely, they suppose to be a weakening of American power. It’s easy to see why: it’s a net gain for them. They surrender some sovereignty, but they leverage over the US and other nations. The US, however, loses power in this exchange because the result is a net loss of American sovereignty. For the US, then, the problem is this: what’s the upside? And is whatever good that might come of such an arrangement worth the price?
To date, supranational government has yet to prove viable, or even virtuous.
It’s not hard to see the point the article is trying to make. In a sense, its implicit claim may be true, in that the US insists that it be the one to choose and enforce its own standard of justice on its own military.
So?
Given the prosecutions that have followed Abu Ghraib and other situations, it looks to me as if the US military can police its own without the ICC’s help.
