The Weakness of the International Criminal Court

In some cases, the presence of a standing court could prolong the tenure of despotic regimes. For example. it is certainly the case that Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, could be convicted of leading a cruel and murderous regime. However, the settlement that ushered in a democratic government promised amnesty to both the military government and anti-government rebels. Without the amnesty or with threat of prosecution by a third party international court, the Chilean military government may have found it in their interests to hold out longer to avoid prosecution and punishment. In such a case, the price of a standing international court might be unnecessarily prolonged suffering.

In the United States, it took the prosecution of Democrats and Republicans by various independent prosecutors to convince both parties that an unregulated prosecutorial office is open to political abuse. There can be no doubt that the European-dominated ICC will be subject to the same political imperatives. Given the European culture and the broad language of ICC protocols which allows prosecutions for such vague crimes as imposing "mental harm," one can envision that such a court would prosecute US officials for genocide in allowing for capital punishment, for collateral damage in Afghanistan, or for the suffering caused by the embargo against Iraq. Israelis will face prosecution for anti-terrorist activities.

At the same time, Europeans are too busy sunning themselves on vacations to Cuban beaches to ever bother prosecuting Fidel Castro for four decades of oppression and murder. Europeans are too dependent on drinking at the spigot of Iraqi oil to prosecute Saddam Hussein for his use of biological weapons against Iraqis. Even if the court could bring itself to prosecute the leaders of such regimes, without the ability to enforce their decisions the prosecutions become fruitless.

Yes, it is heartening, that Bush sees through the posturing and moral chest beating of European and American supporters of the ICC and refused to follow the fantasy. Without the US, the ICC will just become another small and irrelevant bureaucracy providing lifetime employment for another generation of European intellectuals.

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