Just a reminder: the ICC was founded in the aftermath of WWII, when Jews had no voice and no one fighting for them.
Israel’s finance minister, one of the most senior ministers in the government:
“No one in the world will allow us to starve two million civilians to death, even though it may be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
Israel’s defense minister:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
Someone should prosecute those bastards.
Milosevic got convicted because his own government wanted that. The government put in by the American campaign during the Yugoslav civil war. And that's basically the only way to get convicted before the ICC: if your own government wants it to happen. But the new government was far less popular than Milosevic so having him convicted in Amsterdam was very useful.
Funny how other people involved who also committed "international crimes" got let of. For example, in the Yugoslav war, at the Srebrenica massacre the leader of the UN forces, a Dutch commander by the name of Tom Karremans, tasked with preventing what happened not only committed war crimes with his forces, but also obviously let the situation escalate. He was given a medal by the Queen of the Netherlands, about 5km from the ICC building. Obviously there were people protesting during the presentation of the medal. Of course, I'm not claiming he was 1% as bad as Milosevic, but he was guilty.
It was all very convenient for the UN and the new Serbian government, as well as the US and allies, to get Milosevic convicted and not by a Serbian court, because of course the new government was very unpopular. That's the reason he got convicted in Amsterdam. Similar stories apply to all cases.
Except, of course, the Israeli case. That's the UN GA pushing to convict the leader of Israel. The ICC changed it's own rules TWICE to convict him (that was necessary because the case satisfies neither the territorial requirements nor the procedural rules of the ICC about who is allowed to bring cases) ... and it still went nowhere. That's why the comparison is made to the Dreyfus affair. Jewish "leader" goes free, French law was "changed" DURING the court case to convict him anyway. Note: in theory the law was not changed, the prosecution just openly admitted they were going to use different rules (NOT from the law) to convict him. Which is somewhat comparable to what the ICC did. Even though Netanyahu is milking it and of course he IS responsible to some extent.
Iranian, Sudanese, Myanmarese, Colombian, ... leaders get excused, half because they're still in power, the other half because governments don't want to be "humiliated" in Amsterdam. Arguably even the Netherlands and the UN itself (Tom Karremans was UN commander) interfered in a case to avoid humiliation, as specified above.
And given that that what usually happens at the ICC, I wonder what the point is. I love the idea of the ICC. But under the territorial limitations, and procedural rules, what's the point? For Milosevic it's perhaps great that he's convicted, as opposed to not convicted, but it would have been 100x better if he was convicted in Belgrade instead of Amsterdam.
Which is double bad, because Milosevic DID have the choice to keep fighting and it would have destroyed many more lives than he already did. He didn't. He eventually made the right choice, if you can stomach putting it like that. Which means this situation won't repeat. If, for example, if Iran's ayatollah, Khamenei junior has any say in the matter, Iran will fight to the death. Because if they don't he'll personally either be killed or locked up for life. Which means the only option for regime change in Iran is now fighting through the IRGC and executing Khamenei junior directly.
But the ICC will never convict Putin, unless they get the support from the Russian government. No Iranian or Hezbollah or Syrian or Chinese or North Korean or ... commander will ever be convicted there.
A state founded to protect a group of people from national socialism ends up... implementing national socialism itself 70 years later.
I guess we'll see if it also ends in the same way
I don’t think that’s correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court:
“The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organisation and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. Established in 2002
[…]
The establishment of an international tribunal to judge political leaders accused of international crimes was first proposed during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 following the First World War”
edit: and indeed the west in general, that has largely said and done nothing while watching events unfold.
Michal Waldiger (Knesset Member): Also in May 2025, during a heated parliamentary session, Religious Zionist Party MK Michal Waldiger responded to a speech condemning the deaths of children by stating, "Yes, they will also have to kill them, because there is no choice," later adding that they are "all enemies like the Nazis"
Nissim Vaturi (Deputy Speaker of the Knesset): In January 2024, Vaturi claimed on the Knesset Channel that "any child" born in Gaza is "already a terrorist" from the moment of birth
For every single person killed in the tragic attack on Israel in October, Israel has killed 64 children[0] (so far). To some people(including here, this argument keeps erupting all the time) this is a completely normal and acceptable trade off. People keep bringing up civilian casualties in Germany and Japan as if we can bend our morality this way. The number speaks for themselves.
[0] https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/more-50000-children-killed...
Some would argue that Hamas continues to exist because no one has prosecutes its members.
Some would argue that Hamas exists because no one prosecutes those in the Israeli government (the "them" of the parent comment) who persecute Palestinians in a way that is bound to cultivate terrorism.
Giving up the best soft-power levers they had in an attempt to replace them with coarse, obvious and ineffective hard-power beat-sticks is not only foolish but history shows never works well or long term.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...?
Edit: I guess you could point out Biden justifying Putin's warrant as a hypocrisy.
The ICC, irrespective of its merits, represents a somewhat narrow point of view.
With the US' war of aggression on Iran, it just doesnt care what it loses in its quest to support Israel.
If it was the “hard power” it claims, what is it that makes “it” so afraid? To me, it is fairly obvious that this is how a threatened being behaves, in “childish ways”, before it fully falls apart.
The only two good things are I think the ECtHR's willingness to demand an investigation, and one can question whether the CoM of the CoE have done their job in ensuring implementation, but they're at least regularly checking whether there are implementation attempts.
But what struck me was the endless deference of the ICC. They've limited their Afghanistan investigation to Afghani perpetrators even though they have access to vast numbers of Europeans with information about the black sites and the investigation of these things is even more tractable than investigating things in Afghanistan, and I think it's this deference that is the ICC's problem.
The ICC actually has powers sufficient to deal with the sanctions completely, with no need for aid from European states in any regard.
It's to the point where anyone participating in anything affecting the ICC's ability to do its job can be ordered arrested and confined indefinitely. The ICC can literally order the arrest of the workforce of an entire bank if it participates in anything having to do with retaliation against the ICC. The only thing preventing milder things like ordering the arrest of the CEO and board is the ICC's insane deference. They can also apply these things to the American political leadership who have passed the sanctions.
So I really don't understand the Americans. The ICC is doing exactly what they want. They're not even subpoenaing Europeans who sit right here with knowledge about the black sites and torture, even under intense criticism from victims who are of course pushing for investigation.
The article really misunderstands what sort of powers the ICC has. The ICC doesn't need the blocking statute to end enforcement of sanctions, they can order the arrest and indefinite detainment of anyone participating in retaliation against the court.
id say it is harmful. like a cancerous tumor that now went into hypergrowth
Edit: They also need to force banks to make a decision. Do you want to do business in the EU? Then you must not close accounts bank accounts because someone in US puts someone on a list. If that means you lose business in the US, so be it. Make a decision which market you want to operate in. If you want to leave EU, do it. Others will take your place.
I've never really thought about the ICC at all other than just knowing that the few countries that possess both hard power (military) and soft power (economic) have refused to join or recognize the ICC since its inception in 2002.
Why would China and USA both not recognize it? It seems like they're the only ones that really matter.
I don't think it actually would happen if it joined but since it's the US I can also imagine someone being pushed to (or doing it for some personal fame) to bend the procedural rules to at least launch an investigation that wouldn't generally be launched if the facts were the same in another western country.
That being said, their accusations towards the ICC as it has operated so far (as opposed to why they don't join) are mostly pretextual and right now they're mostly motivated by their alliance with Israel which is being investigated over Gaza
ICC, embrace-extinguishing EU, exploiting Middle East, South America as colonies - these are not 180 turns, just playing the same game faster and dumber. Notable exceptions may be Canada or Greenland, but even there one might suspect they just surfaced a previously well disguised agenda.
Probably (hopefully) we'll look back on this as the start of the end of US soft influence.
Bush, Obama and Biden wanted to keep the US out of it. Trump wants to destroy it.
- they issued a non-revocable arrest warrant for Netanyahu
- Afghanistan is a member and once threatened to prosecute US military staff for human rights violations.
Its not just the Trump adminstration, the "Hague Invasion Act" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...) was signed into American law in 2002 by G.W. Bush.
Impunity is a drug.
The US isn't subject to it, as it didn't sign up, but he's probably also worried that Americans who are accused of war crimes and then travel to countries which are signatories may find themselves arrested and tried.
American citizens are subject to ICC jurisdiction if they commit crimes in an ICC-member country. Like US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Which is what freaks the US government out.
The infrastructure for it exists with instant SEPA transfers, and Wero is slowly developing into a useful system for retail payments, but without the EU mandating that banks and retailers must support it alongside Visa it will take a while for meaningful penetration to happen.
It is up to each member state to decide how to respond to an increasingly hostile US.
Which is why foreign actors such as US and Russia always seem to undermine the EU and foment dissent in the bloc. A unified Europe would be much harder to push around.
Yes, but
> It is up to each member state to decide how to respond to an increasingly hostile US.
is not true. A member state cannot, for example, decide that it's fine to import and sell US beef. It is perfectly possible to introduce EU laws that protect the population of Europe from the US using European banks as a weapon against law-abiding people.
> Which is why foreign actors such as US and Russia always seem to undermine the EU and foment dissent in the bloc. A unified Europe would be much harder to push around.
It's a scale. I, too, wish for a more tightly integrated Europe, but that doesn't mean there is no integration whatsoever today.
Only if they travel to ICC jurisdiction countries will anything actually occur.
In 2021 they ran a campaign that forced over 200k overseas Chinese to return to the mainland or risk punishment against their family: https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/110-overseas-230000-c...
and several others in UK
The US is sanctioning a foreign court over actions that do not even involve the US itself. There is no comparison here.