"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Considering the relations between the US and the Netherlands it is inconceivable that the Dutch government would allow US military personel to be detained that way on its soil, and if that did happen I think a call from the White House would "clear any misunderstandings"...
Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics. Between humans might does not make you right.
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
Yes and no, there is a bit more to it. When dealing with democracies hypocrisy tends to actually harm the people practising it to some extent. If a polity insists on living in a fantasy rather than reality the political process will start optimising for outcomes in that fantasy world rather than reality. It is quite funny watching US politics where the voter base are unprincipled and opportunistic in how they vote then get hoist on their own petard when they get leadership that reflects their voting patterns. It is also interesting to think how effective a country could be if the voter base tended to be honest and forthright.
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
Correction: it was created to advance own geopolitical goals and harrass unfriendly regimes using human rights abuse as an excuse. So in that sense nothing has fundamentally changed.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
Very good that they have. Francesca Albanese is conducting warfare, one that's political and using bureaucracy (she was retaliated against with the same measures).
There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
There's no such flaw in most cases brought to the ICC
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
If the country itself has a justice system that can prosecute the individual, the ICC has no jurisdiction.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
I think this comment shows how far removed is the modern person living in a sheltered, matcha-sipping western environment from actual human historical reality. Do you seriously suggest that during an active war one side would bring the other to trial rather than just destroy them?
I agree. Having lived with a civil war and with non-western roots I find the Western attitude to things like this to be hopelessly naive. It is the product of a golden age following the collapse of communism and the subsequent unrealistic "end of history" optimism.
Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Why is the US doing this just to cover the crimes of one small country? It seems like they’re really going above and beyond.
Surely couldn’t have that much blackmail on him. You’d need something so shocking that it’d ruin him and his entire family forever. Where just mentioning the name would cause disgust for generations. Surely there’s nothing like that in the archives.
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
The long term consequence is that the US is proving that the rest of the world how dangerous it is to rely on US financial institutions. I very much doubt destroying the trustworthiness of its financial institutions in order to protect war criominals is beneficial for the US in the long run.
Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction. A state need not be a member of the ICC to be subject to its (or any other entity’s) jurisdiction in investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating such crimes.
https://archive.is/DFHM6
"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Meet the "Hague Invasion Act":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Considering the relations between the US and the Netherlands it is inconceivable that the Dutch government would allow US military personel to be detained that way on its soil, and if that did happen I think a call from the White House would "clear any misunderstandings"...
Given the current us government, I would not be surprised if it happened instead
Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
USAs superpower is their inability to see their own hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is an argument losers make. Might makes right.
That’s why it’s extremely important to remain mighty. The US is in serious decline and I don’t see them turning that around anytime soon.
I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics. Between humans might does not make you right.
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
Yes and no, there is a bit more to it. When dealing with democracies hypocrisy tends to actually harm the people practising it to some extent. If a polity insists on living in a fantasy rather than reality the political process will start optimising for outcomes in that fantasy world rather than reality. It is quite funny watching US politics where the voter base are unprincipled and opportunistic in how they vote then get hoist on their own petard when they get leadership that reflects their voting patterns. It is also interesting to think how effective a country could be if the voter base tended to be honest and forthright.
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
Most people are hypocrites.
"What is the purpose of the American sanctions mechanism?
Initially, it was created to address human rights violations[...]"
Yet here we are: it's being used to harass judges who address human rights violations.
Correction: it was created to advance own geopolitical goals and harrass unfriendly regimes using human rights abuse as an excuse. So in that sense nothing has fundamentally changed.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
The U.S. has also sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
Very good that they have. Francesca Albanese is conducting warfare, one that's political and using bureaucracy (she was retaliated against with the same measures).
You're gonna look back on comments like this in about five years and realise that you're an idiot
There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
There's no such flaw in most cases brought to the ICC
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
This only applies if the individuals are a) protected by their country of residence and b) never leave it.
Neither of those are certain and even for people that a) applies to, b) can be a big hassle.
Just ask Netanyahu.
If the country itself has a justice system that can prosecute the individual, the ICC has no jurisdiction.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
Whether Israeli courts are able and willing to prosecute Israeli war crimes is... up for debate.
Regardless, the international law is that they are supposed to be given a chance to do so, which they weren’t.
> So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
...without trial. And assuming guilty and sentenced to death.
Trial by which court?
This is standard rules of war. Soldiers don’t have to convene a court before shooting at enemy combatants.
I think this comment shows how far removed is the modern person living in a sheltered, matcha-sipping western environment from actual human historical reality. Do you seriously suggest that during an active war one side would bring the other to trial rather than just destroy them?
I agree. Having lived with a civil war and with non-western roots I find the Western attitude to things like this to be hopelessly naive. It is the product of a golden age following the collapse of communism and the subsequent unrealistic "end of history" optimism.
Indeed, conflating execution without trial with ‘justice’ is utterly bizarre.
There are no trials in combat.
Time to protect EU citizens from US human rights abuses. Require EU banks to ignore foreign sanctions and call the US bluff.
Yeah, the EU should just call the bluff. The US is not going to do anything other than shake their fist angrily.
Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.
It's receiving criticism in the UN because of the horrible crimes it's committing
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
The US has any soft power left?
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46432107
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Cash is more anonymous and less trackable than Bitcoin and the society didn't collapse.
Then why should we use bitcoin?
Cash is a bit bulky and can't be sent over fiber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
Because it’s faster, easier, safer and cheaper to transfer large volumes of capital than say loading a plane with gold or sending a bag of cash.
As long as you're quick to cash in and cash out of it. Potential gains are fun, but losing 10% a month isn't.
Why is the US doing this just to cover the crimes of one small country? It seems like they’re really going above and beyond.
Surely couldn’t have that much blackmail on him. You’d need something so shocking that it’d ruin him and his entire family forever. Where just mentioning the name would cause disgust for generations. Surely there’s nothing like that in the archives.
Brunel ran "modeling" agencies. Who else decided that was a good business to get into? The whole thing is not even close to the worst part of it yet.
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
The long term consequence is that the US is proving that the rest of the world how dangerous it is to rely on US financial institutions. I very much doubt destroying the trustworthiness of its financial institutions in order to protect war criominals is beneficial for the US in the long run.
Israel committed crimes against humanity in Palestine over which ICC does have jurisdiction. Whether US supports the ICC or not is irrelevant.
Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction.
Palestine has. The actions took place there.
The ICC didn’t ‘pick on Israel’…
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction. A state need not be a member of the ICC to be subject to its (or any other entity’s) jurisdiction in investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating such crimes.
The crimes took place in Palestine, which recognizes the ICC.
They prefer war to justice. Got it.
Nitpick:
> Both men are indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the destruction of the Gaza Strip.
Role in destruction isn't a war crime they are being indicted for and as such irrelevant in this context.
The destruction of Gaza is obviously the context in which the war crimes and crimes against humanity occur(red).