Comment by mrexcess
16 hours ago
>Might makes right in international politics.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
>But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
The whole point of Nuremberg was to put on a show against the defeated, and establish the "good guys" who now run international order.
Acts like Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the rest of allied abuses weren't on trial there or elsewhere.
Yes, imagine the ICC existed in 1945 and ... let's say ... Bolivia ... petitioned for the arrest of Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower over the Dresden bombing and whatever else.
Better, imagine the ICC ordered the arrest in 1943 of Franklin D. Roosevelt over ... let's say ... the forced relocation of Unangax̂ (Aleut) villagers in the Alaska Aleutian Islands.
The result wouldn't have been better for the ICC than the Gaza warrants.
You were there? No? You watched the taped proceedings then?
I don't think you appreciate the way justice becomes irrelevant in fascist and tyrannical countries.
The 'show' of fair justice, dispensed with care and deliberation, is something you seem to take for granted.
In most countries you get put up against a wall, and shot, for saying the wrong things about the right people.
I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny. And the position that tyranny should be the norm is something an evil or cowardly person espouses.
Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
I kind of feel like if one of the superpowers always been against international law although trying to enforce it on others, and not really wanting to participate in ICC in any shape of form, already made the whole idea dead in the water.
Lots of people realize the importance of this, but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
What you say is true, but idealists should not give up just because a murderer exists.
While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
>While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
Idealists create worse outcomes than realists and pragmatists.
Violence going down 10% can be worse than it going down 0%, if the difference comes from reducing counter-violence done by the oppressed - and reducing based on the agenda and whims of the big time abusers responsible for a big chunk of the other 90%.
> violence going 10% down is better than 0%
This is also what protection payments look like on paper; surely we can reduce violence much more.
I say: let every country have nukes, or let no country have them. This halfway bullshit is worse than either.
> Nuremberg
You may be mixing up the ICJ, which “settles legal disputes submitted to it by states” and is 80 years old [1] and the ICC, which was created in 2002 [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute
International Law predates Nuremberg by at least 300 years (see the School of Salamanca). I am not trying to nitpick, honestly, it is that the rights of other nations and peoples were recognized well before the US even was an idea.
There was already a world court before Nuremberg: the Permanent Court of International Justice, established after WWI, as part of the League of Nations. It didn't stop WW2 and the holocaust. After WWII, they form the exact same thing with new names: the International Court of Justice, as part of the United Nations.
You know why the League of Nations didn't work (supposedly)? Because the US wasn't involved. So with the United Nations, the US is involved. What do you think happens when the US decides to not abide by the United Nations' decisions? Nothing.
The US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times. It voted against Palestinian rights, and its Iraq war and ongoing foreign drone strikes go against the UN charter. Basically, whatever the US wants, goes. If they don't want you to have rights, you won't have them. If they want you to control some piece of land and anyone who lives on it, it's yours. If they don't like your government, they'll take it away and install their own, or call it terrorist and sanction it.
The whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it. There is no justice, there's just the powerful and the powerless.
> US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times
So have China and Russia. The rules-based international order has been explicitly rejected by the world’s great powers.
> whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it
There was a legitimate attempt. It had flaws. But so does any system of justice. It was ultimately done in by a combination of Russian and Chinese revanchism, American neoconservatism and global nihilism.
You’re in for a big surprise once you discover what happened after Nuremberg.
>If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
So what, you should just keep your head in the sand instead? Not that I accept that claim anyways (quitter talk).
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The sovereign legal authority of any government derives from its monopoly on violence. If, at the end of the day, men with guns will not come to your home and force your compliance, then the "law" is nothing but paper.
The ICC could never be anything but what it is -- powerless against those with bigger guns. This is the fundamental nature of law and power. Barring the subjugation of all states to a supranational sovereign capable of universal enforcement, there is, ultimately, no such thing as international law.
It should be renamed to currently accepted “international traditions and customs” (ITAC)
Queue’s/line’s in shop are not formally enforced by some authority to my knowledge, but most participants adhere to such order. (I would call it tradition)
> But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
That seems a little silly on the face of it when you realize most people complicit during the war in what we would now call war crimes weren't even charged to begin with. Many on the losing side found lucrative jobs with the side that won, and the side that won wasn't even considered for charges.
> In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged?
That also seems a little farcical any way you twist it
> If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Actually, I think we're moving towards a world that is more earnestly determined by market forces. Or, these were always the same concepts; we just can't force the world to take our "deals" anymore.
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