What's your point? I agree with some of this but disagree with most of it, but either way, it doesn't intersect with anything I wrote.
I think domestic politics are certainly a factor, but not a big one in an ICC case, because Americans, to a first approximation, do not give a shit about the ICC; further, we aren't a party to the ICC, so it's not as if the administration is being asked to do something or help adjudicate.
I want to say again that I think this particular case is well-founded. But an ICC warrant against the leader of a non-signatory is fundamentally a political act, and while I don't take issue with the stated intent of that act, I don't get the theory of change behind it.
I put it to you directly: what good comes of this while Netanyahu remains in power?
It would if Israel has any sense of self preservation at all. They need the support of the American government more than they need Gazan land.
(I also think it's not at all clear that serious policymakers in Israel "want Gazan land", let alone need it; the messianic nutballs bolstering Netanyahu's coalition are, to put it mildly, not representative of mainstream Israel policy thinking.)
A reminder that we're just talking about this stuff here; this is HN, not the UN Security Council. If we're going to have threads like this here, we're going to have to accept that we're having curious conversations, not high-stakes deliberations. So: I can be wrong about all of this stuff, and I'm glad to hear why. But we're not going to solve Israel/Gaza on a thread.
(You didn't say anything to prompt that disclaimer, it's just a stress reaction from previous threads).
Or just make them themselves. That seems fully within their capabilities if push comes to shove. After all, we are talking about bombs not fighter jets.
Being able to purchase weapons from the US also gives them significant political latitude internally. When a significant amount of your economy and government spending goes to making weapons, you're going to affect domestic budgets, which will make coalition building much harder especially in a country with as many small parties as Israel. We see this in Russia as well but because Russia is not democratic when it comes to defense allocation, it simply throws its dissidents in jail or encourages them to leave.
And yet are regularly re-elected. And have been for decades.
Reagan did it with a single phone call: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/13/world/reagan-demands-end-...
(I kind of like Bush 1, at least as a competent operator with some discernible principles, and think Israeli settlement of the West Bank is abhorrent).
Which of the facts I stated do you disagree with? I'm sure I can find you a source for any of them.
Biden, in _theory_, could say to Israel that "continued arms supplies are contingent on surrendering Netanyahu and Gallant to The Hague immediately", but a) it's not at all clear that that would work, b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse, and c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
I hate all of that too, and it doesn't speak well of us as a society or species, but what _should_ happen and what _would_ happen are two very different things.
Tptacek is demonstrating this well by editing the part of the comment I quoted, then acting confused. However, I don't subscribe to the idea that facts are not material to discussions involving claims of fact.
The claim Biden is preventing deaths in Gaza while sending the bombs that are killing them and vetoing ceasefire resolutions left right and center, even against the will of his own voters, would require stronger evidence than has been provided.
Also, international law, including the Genocide Convention, is binding on all signatory states. 'Realpolitik' is not a defense for complicity in genocide.
However, let's look at your abc points, ignoring international law for the moment:
a) it's not at all clear that that would work
We've skipped past the issue, which is that we shouldn't be sending arms at all at this point. We also have other leverage which hasn't been used yet - sanctions, trade restrictions, etc.
b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse
This has merit - Israel did threaten to use more unguided bombs if the arms flow stopped. Too bad Biden's people vetoed the UN ceasefire resolutions three times, against the will of basically the entire planet. What about the realpolitik of that loss in our global standing?
c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
Believe it or not, and despite tptacek's claims above that most people don't care, polls in fact show that significantly more registered Democrats disapprove of Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza (sending arms) than approve, and that this is affecting their vote [0].
> "This issue is a stone-cold loser for Biden," said Douglas Schoen, a pollster and strategist who reviewed the Reuters/Ipsos poll results. "He's losing votes from the left, right and center."
0 - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democratic-divide-gaza-war-...
Bigger picture - this disagreement seems fundamentally rooted in conflicting political philosophies, as alluded to above. More facts are not going to change that.
An example... "'Realpolitik' is not a defense complicity in genocide." Says who? I mean I agree with you on the face of things, but who gets to decide what genocide means? And what does it mean for international law to be "binding on all signatory states"? Some view overconfidence in this notion as Wilson's great and lasting mistake.
Unfortunately, there is no compiler that can adjudicate these types of questions for us.
0 - https://www.natesilver.net/p/your-friends-are-not-a-represen...
Maybe your court of carrier strike group says the ICC judges are committing war crimes, issues a warrant for their arrest, the SEAL team executes the warrant against the fugitives from justice, and tries, convicts and executes them.
If you still think realpolitik isn't a defense, look at a practitioner of it like Kissinger, ask yourself why Pinochet, et al, were tried, but say Kissinger was not for Operation Condor.
Outside of a courtroom, and ignoring all international law and externalities, sure. Within the Hague, or the parts of the world where international justice is respected, not so much.
> the court of the carrier strike group is superior to the court of the ICC.
Until your 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms. Or no country wants to trade with you any more, because you can't be trusted and their citizens are furious.
Or until China utterly dominates you economically and geopolitically, because they invested in growth instead of carrier groups. Or until you're stretched too thin on too many fronts and no one wants to help any more, or any of the other unintended (possibly world-ending) consequences of our wilful and belligerent disrespect of long established international law.
... But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
Realpolitik, in the sense Morgenthau and Kissinger understood it, absolutely takes into account management of public opinion and risks related to violation of international standards. It just does not only take those into account in decisions related to national interests.
> But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
This is stated as a fact and dismissed on the basis of a tacit moral argument rather than reasoning. Why would the claim be silly? I see no reason for those statements to be cast aside as un-addressable or 'farcical'.
On the other hand...
> 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms
If this were possible Houthi drones would have done it already (against a single carrier).
> because they [China] invested in growth instead of carrier groups
China has been investing heavily in their military for three decades [0]. And we will see about that growth part... it is not looking so rosy for Xi currently.
0 - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/chi...
Juries in and of themselves are realpolitik, it's why most countries don't use them, because they deliver verdicts the legal professions dislike.