Comment by rendx
2 months ago
ICC claims jurisdiction in Palestine. Whether Israel or the US accept that is their business. Nobody is interfering with their national autonomy. I see no "imposition" of jurisdiction here by the ICC. The only country that is imposing their jurisdiction here, and enforcing it outside of their own jurisdiction, are the US. The ICC merely issues documents; everybody is free to agree or disagree with their documents. They have no power of enforcement. The ICC is only doing what they received as a task by the signatory countries of the Rome statute, which ultimately decide what actions to take or not. As such, you could say the ICC merely writes "policy recommendations". The US is the one taking action.
Can you point me at any action that the ICC has taken in the United States or Israel? No, because it is a court. It publishes documents. Legal opinions. You're totally free to decide whether you accept it as a "court" or not.
Can't you see that it is exactly this kind of US exceptionalism and international interfering that stirs hatred, and does not bring peace but breeds terrorism and war?
> ICC claims jurisdiction in Palestine. Whether Israel or the US accepts that is their business. But that still doesn't explain the legal basis of going against individual employees of the ICC. I see no "imposition" of jurisdiction here by the ICC or any of the countries that signed the Rome statute.
The ICC is attempting to have arrest warrants enforced through cooperation with states that are parties to the Rome Statutes for claimed offenses by citizens of countries that are not party to the Rome statute. The US views this as an attack on sovereignty essentially and essentially has decided to retaliate by imposing sanctions.
> The ICC merely issues documents; everybody is free to agree or disagree with their documents. They have no power of enforcement whatsoever. The US here is taking action.
The ICC issues documents that Rome Statute signatories have agreed to enforce(whether they actually enforce in practice is another matter. Regardless it seems pretty clear that the US considers any threat of enforcement to be sufficient grounds to impose sanctions against the organization they view as attacking it.
> Can you point me at any action that the ICC has taken in the United States?
The ICC has made it difficult for the head of government of a strategic ally of the US to travel to many countries at a time when that ally is under attack by many other countries. The ICC has in effect threatened to do the same to US citizens as well. There's a bit more nuance than this but it's not hard to see why the US views the ICC as a real threat worthy of sanctions. This is not really a new thing either, the US has even strong-armed many countries into signing "Article 98 agreements" in order to ensure ICC doesn't have jurisdiction over US citizens.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat...
The fundamental difference is that ICC invites partners to agree with their legal assessment. It is each country’s sovereign decision to enforce it or not. The US applies force and boldly assumes they not only have the power but the right to do so, outside of their national jurisdiction. That is US exceptionalism at its best.
If you act like a bully, you will not make friends. It’s as simple as that.
> The fundamental difference is that ICC invites partners to agree with their legal assessment. It is each country’s sovereign decision to enforce it or not.
This isn't really accurate from a strict reading of the Rome Statute, there are treaty obligations for party states under the Rome Statute to enforce arrest warrants issued by the ICC, in practice countries obviously can choose not to comply but doing so is arguably a violation of the Rome Statute treaty as written. The EU considers a failure to enforce an arrest warrant to be a violation of obligations under the statute.[0]
> The US applies force and boldly assumes they not only have the power but the right to do so, outside of their national jurisdiction. That is US exceptionalism at its best.
Since the US considers the ICC a serious threat to sovereignty I think it's rather unsurprising that the US would attempt to apply sanctions quite broadly to those judges or individuals at the ICC that take positions which conflict with the US positions on ICC jurisdiction.
> If you act like a bully, you will not make friends. It’s as simple as that.
IMO this is a rather simplistic view of foreign policy/relations, the goal of foreign policy is generally to advance the interests of a country, this can be done by making friends in some cases but that approach isn't always going to be effective. Making friends is not really the end goal of foreign policy.
[0] https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/mongolia-statement-spokesper...
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