Rob Grace: U.S. vs. ICC?
[Rob Grace, a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, blogs for the Foreign Policy Association. He is also an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced around the world.]
The recent Council on Foreign Relations report "From Rome to Kampala: The U.S. Approach to the 2010 International Criminal Court Review Conference" tells one side of a complex story. The author Vijay Padmanabhan asserts that the "United States has historically been the leader in international justice efforts," but now must oppose the International Criminal Court's (ICC) endeavor to activate its power to prosecute crimes of aggression.
Why the need for a sudden change in U.S. policy? Actually, there has been no change. The United States has consistently tried to evade international jurisdiction and control the way it is imposed on others. By skirting this central fact, Padmanabhan misses the ways that this U.S. policy falls short. In particular, he overlooks how an aggression-prosecuting ICC, even if it prosecutes U.S. leaders, could serve U.S. security interests.
Decoding History
The claim that the "United States has historically been the leader in international justice efforts" relies on a selective reading of history. Padmanabhan correctly notes the U.S. role in establishing the Nuremberg trials, the corresponding prosecutions of Japanese officials, and the more recent international tribunals dealing with crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Lebanon.
However, the other half of the story is that the United States has always worked hard to prevent its citizens from being subject to international justice. This tradition began even before the United States came into existence. As a recent Heritage Foundation report notes, British vice-admiralty courts were high on the list of colonial grievances that sparked the American Revolution. The United States also declined to join the 19th-century international slave-trade tribunals established by Britain.
This pattern held in the 20th century as well. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson rejected Britain's proposal to try German leaders in international tribunals. And though Wilson promoted the League of Nations, which included the Permanent Court of International Justice, the United States of course never joined. Nor were the Allied powers prosecuted for any of their actions during World War II, even though, as Robert McNamara famously admitted in The Fog of War, U.S. leaders "were behaving as war criminals." The United States also joined the Soviet Union in striking down proposals for compulsory jurisdiction for the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Since then, the United States and the ICJ have not been the best of friends.
Current U.S. resistance to the ICC fits this historical pattern....
Read entire article at Foreign Policy in Focus
The recent Council on Foreign Relations report "From Rome to Kampala: The U.S. Approach to the 2010 International Criminal Court Review Conference" tells one side of a complex story. The author Vijay Padmanabhan asserts that the "United States has historically been the leader in international justice efforts," but now must oppose the International Criminal Court's (ICC) endeavor to activate its power to prosecute crimes of aggression.
Why the need for a sudden change in U.S. policy? Actually, there has been no change. The United States has consistently tried to evade international jurisdiction and control the way it is imposed on others. By skirting this central fact, Padmanabhan misses the ways that this U.S. policy falls short. In particular, he overlooks how an aggression-prosecuting ICC, even if it prosecutes U.S. leaders, could serve U.S. security interests.
Decoding History
The claim that the "United States has historically been the leader in international justice efforts" relies on a selective reading of history. Padmanabhan correctly notes the U.S. role in establishing the Nuremberg trials, the corresponding prosecutions of Japanese officials, and the more recent international tribunals dealing with crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Lebanon.
However, the other half of the story is that the United States has always worked hard to prevent its citizens from being subject to international justice. This tradition began even before the United States came into existence. As a recent Heritage Foundation report notes, British vice-admiralty courts were high on the list of colonial grievances that sparked the American Revolution. The United States also declined to join the 19th-century international slave-trade tribunals established by Britain.
This pattern held in the 20th century as well. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson rejected Britain's proposal to try German leaders in international tribunals. And though Wilson promoted the League of Nations, which included the Permanent Court of International Justice, the United States of course never joined. Nor were the Allied powers prosecuted for any of their actions during World War II, even though, as Robert McNamara famously admitted in The Fog of War, U.S. leaders "were behaving as war criminals." The United States also joined the Soviet Union in striking down proposals for compulsory jurisdiction for the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Since then, the United States and the ICJ have not been the best of friends.
Current U.S. resistance to the ICC fits this historical pattern....