The United States formally renounced the International Criminal Court and notified the United Nations that it will not cooperate in any actions of the new legal institution. The administration claims that the court would be a vehicle for political vendettas against U.S. soldiers and citizens abroad.
The establishment of the ICC is a noble one. In principle, it will offer a place where International justice can be served against aggression, genocide and crimes against humanity. The problem is that nobody really knows exactly how to define those crimes.
Ambiguity, however, is not the major problem that the U.S. has with the ICC. The major problem is with the unchecked independence of ICC prosecutors. Under the treaty, they are free to initiate prosecutions and take them in an open-ended fashion. It is very similar to the horrendous debacle known as the independent counsel in the U.S.
To refresh any chronic short-term memories, the independent counsel law in the United States brought forth a seven year investigation into Bill Clinton that started with some land in Arkansas, moved to a White House concubine named Monica Lewinsky and finished off in the boundless land of nowhere.
Instinctively, critics will point to the administration’s history of unilateral action on just about every major international issue since W seized control of government. Instinctively, critics will want to argue that the U.S. has a day of reckoning approaching fast in an international justice system. On that day of reckoning, the critics would be right but this court, as the treaty establishes it, is not the answer to seeking justice.
It is not just the International Criminal Court that has no legitimacy, it is the entire United Nations institution that has no legitimacy. Nobody votes for their country to be in the United Nations. If elections were held worldwide, people would still not vote for their country to be in the United Nations. That is sad because there is precedence for people voting their countries into supernational institutions. Most notably is the European Union.
Withdrawing from the ICC treaty is one unilateral action that Cyberista will not complain about. Our biggest concern is that the United States will never agree to any form of international justice under any circumstance. This issue will return. Next time, U.S. objections to a system of international justice may have no excuse except for hegemonic corruption.
