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But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
The U.S. openly assassinates foreigners in foreign countries without even faking a trial.
It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial. Do you think it is inappropriate for a high school moot court team to put U.S. Presidents on trial? Or for speech and debate teams to argue the morality of the actions of U.S. politicians?
How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
If I were neutral on America and if a neutral disposition, you might be correct. However, I’m not.
The President of the United States is elected to be a civil and military leader, as the Head of the United States Government, as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and to represent the United States abroad as our Head of State.
All other things being equal, I would prefer the POTUS to also be moral and to generally be a good moral leader in his capacity as the POTUS, but that is not the same as being nice, and “nice” is not what the elected President is elected to be.
So, would I for example, prefer to capture people like Qasem Soleimani and try them in an open court? Absolutely. Is that more practical than having killed him when the opportunity presented itself dealing a blow to an enemy nation, taking out one of the most important men in his nation which is openly hostile to America and our ally? Not really, but I’d rather see someone like that dead than in a position to threaten American assets and personnel in the region. You can even debate whether American assets or personnel should be in the region, but as long as they are, it is absolutely the President’s job to defend them, because it is under his orders that they are present at all and the American military is formed from the people of our country, and nowhere is it written in our Constitution that the President’s decisions should be second-guessed or tried in an International Court. Even our own courts shy away from this as it relates to foreign policy and the policy of the military.
> It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial.
It would be pretty easy to complain if they pursued trying American citizens when we don’t recognize their jurisdiction over American citizens. The ICC, whatever else it is, is still a court with the backing of real sovereign nations. They’re not a high school debate club.
> How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
A combination of morality, the law, diplomacy and hard power. You can even concoct scenarios if you wanted to where the United States may even been in the losing moral position but still win on all other fronts, but for starters, we’re not party to the Rome Statute, we do have our own laws on trying war crimes, and we also maintain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
My point was that even without the moral victory, there are real problems and limits with an International court attempting to second-guess our actions against hostile powers and serve process to our leaders, and that in reality, they’re not winning that fight. Certainly not today they’re not.
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
In a similar vein, Poland has said Netanyahu would have been welcome to visit the liberation of Auschwitz, without having to worry about out any arrest.
Depending on how Hungary’s actions are resolved, the ICC will lose much of it’s use if member states just ignore the treaty.
Hungary though technically still a party, is withdrawing from the Rome Statute: https://www.reuters.com/world/hungarian-lawmakers-approve-bi...
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
They would not have to. It will be up to your military to come to allied country and shoot their way through. This might be physically possible but I would imagine that the consequences of it to the standing of the US would be cataclysmic. So unless it is a former president I suspect the US will rather use some severe sanctions and still risk a payback.
Should the Marine Corps. actually be put into a position to roll in and say “hi” to the people of The Hague for less than peaceful purposes on their leisurely stroll to the ICC’s courthouse, who in their right minds is also going to stand in their way and exchange fire?
Not to mention that whoever arrested the President has now effectively declared war on the United States.
I already said "...someone who is not the president, sitting of former....". You are just repeating.
US politics should not be "winner takes all", the entire point of having a distributed body of leadership and not just the Supreme Leader is that a wider variety of American interests are supposed to be represented.
Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding. Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
We do.
> Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding.
Other Americans. You’re also discounting the impact small-dollar donors have had in American politics as of late and the public primary system.
> Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
1) The Electors of the Electoral College are in turn elected by the people of the United States.
2) This only applies to the President and Vice President of the United States and no other public office.
3) Most States have laws against faithless electors, but the slate of electors appointed by each State’s elected legislature reflects the popular vote within that State.
> The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
Half of what you’re doing is just describing politics, but yes, the elected President makes appointments, and the elected Senate confirms or denies them.
Yes, we all saw it. It's a very small impact and it attracts the opposition of every big-dollar donors. Bernie Sanders proved it.
The massive infusion of cash from small-dollar donors and politicians playing to their base on TV to boost their fundraising is doing far more to undermine both the Democratic and Republican parties than large donors ever have.
Anything that violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice can land a soldier in the Army on that list up to and including killing random civilians abroad with military equipment outside the scope of an operation. You can look up the dockets for the other service branches yourself, but you don’t get impunity for all of your actions just for being part of the military.
Or if you want something more specific, here’s a rather high profile example: https://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/prosecutions_convictions/
You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am talking about your Orange Guy. I am not. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden all murdered people and should be held accountable.
I’m not. (EDIT: just edited this in, though I thought I’d already written this part earlier when I quoted you. My bad.)
> You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.
We do defend America’s interests, but the President—any sitting President—sets the agenda for how the American State and Military goes about it. Resource allocation is a part of leading. What part of that is difficult to understand?
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
The US has several ways to acquire jurisdiction over foreign defendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_over_int...
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
If you look at the real history of the ICC, it’s effectively toothless over any nation that can safeguard its own sovereignty, and otherwise a fig leaf for the supposed lawfulness of foreign intervention into nations that cannot.
Pinochet was arrested after he was no longer president. He expected Chilean amnesty laws meant he was untouchable for his crimes. He was wrong.
If I commit an international war crime and get the US President to issue a pardon, then I'm free from legal problems in the US, but why should I expect to be able to visit The Netherlands without being arrested?
State visits are a different topic, with promises of safe passage/diplomatic immunity arranged before hand.
Castro visited the US several times during his presidency, for example, and Hungary recently promised to ignore the ICC arrest warrant on Netanyahu before his visit.
If guarantees cannot be made, the visit doesn't occur. It's as simple as that.
Why should becoming the president of France give Macron the right to sell old GREs online to people in the US, without fear of lawsuit and being tried in abstentia?
If such an exception exists, then Macron could make good money selling illegal drugs online to US citizens.
You can't have it both ways, we're intrinsically tied together. I think its important part of friendship to call one another to account.
All of that said, our Government, our problem, and while weighing what kind of intervention you might hypothetically support, also weigh how that stands up to the power of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. So, really, we can have it both ways, even if that makes us hypocrites. Also for what it is worth: people can be hypocrites, organized entities led by different factions of people over the course of their history like nations cannot.
Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable? I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
That's selling the Mai Lai massacre short. Hundreds of rapes and murders, convicted by a court of law.
Commuted to three years house arrest.
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
Then here you write that Nurenmberg was appropriate and necessary.
You don't seem to be able to hold the thread of your own argument.
If you don’t care about any of that, sure, you can make the argument the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.
Do note that the key difference between America in 2025 and Germany in 1945 is that we’re not a diminished State without really any sovereignty left to claim and haven’t recently invaded pretty much the entirety of Europe with the intention of subsuming it into a greater Empire and spent the last 4 years systematically destroying the entire Jewish population therein. That’s some important context and shouldn’t be overlooked in your zeal to put American Presidents on trial.
I was raised inside the United States. I have a very deep love for America. But the America I love is not a place. It is a collection of principles. It is an ideal. In as much as that ideal has been realized in the place I grew up, it makes that place America to me. But America the place and people have not been perfect executing America the idea. What group of humans ever were perfect? One of the beauties of America the place, and one of the things I cherish most about it is the constant willingness to put itself and its ideals on trial. I love an America that asks "What is right?" before asking "What are you going to do about it?"
I believe it is un-American to refuse to ask the first question, but constantly ask the second question without considering the first. Using the second question to intimidate all those who ask the first question is repugnant to me. It threatens the America that I love.
America is on trial whether you like it or not. The America I love will always be on trial as long as it exists. To end the trial would kill that America.
Agreed, but I’ll put forth that the context for the first question also matters.
The context within this particular sub-thread which is within a larger thread regarding the ICC, the warrant issued againstNetanyahu and American sanctions on ICC staff is whether America and Americans as a non-signatory of the Rome Statute should be subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction. Actually it was originally Presidents, current and former, but there’s been some scope creep.
My answer is “No”. Your answer may be “Yes”, but I’m making the case for my “No”, not advocating for discarding all morality and total lawlessness and might-makes-right behavior, even if I think “might” is a mighty great deterrent for backing up that “No” to non-Americans that believe the answer should be “Yes” and would be willing to try out that “Yes” in the real world.
The rest of the Nazis were given amnesty and continued working for the USA, or continued living/serving as usual as part of West Germany's Wehrmacht forces.
The whole process was heavily politicized and completely sham, massive tortures were used to obtain "evidence" of guilt.
How could you think that 161 convictions was enough for this? Far more than that had direct agency and culpability for those crimes.
this basic contradiction basically tells you that it was all bogus, either there was no systematic extermination, or there was not enough people brought to justice for their crimes.
How many people do you think are required to do anything systematic on the territory spanning from France to Belarus ?
161 people is probably the headcount of my local DMV office.
also, the fact that mainstream western history over-indexes on the plight of one ethnic group (6 mln dead), and completely ignores the deaths of Soviets (27 mln dead) or China (20 mln) pretty much seals this whole thing as bogus politicized process.
Typical eurocentric history rewriting, while simultaneously white-washing the crimes of the same white europeans
I am not even mentioning genocide of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki via nuclear bombs and genocide of civilians in Dresden: all three cities were basically civilian with no large military armies in there. Mostly women elderly and kids died
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?
Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?
A core principle of American justice is judgement by a jury of your peers from your community according to our laws, not by foreigners on the other side of the planet according to foreign laws. Violations of our core principles through means we were not a party to is a violation of our sovereignty.
When a US president signs a death list - the assassination of someone, does that person get a trial by a jury of their peers first?
Or do they just get a predator drone missile in their direction?
I think it's accurate to say that a core principle of American justice is that there is one set of rules for the in-group, and another for the out-group. And any institution that tries to normalize this is anathema to that principle.
(I'm not saying that's what happened, just explaining why I think it is morally right for the ICC to exist, however impractical when dealing with powerful nations.)
when it comes to Crimes against humanity (genocide, mass killings, tortures, etc) - our peers are whole Humanity, and everyone who support United Nation's Human Rights Declaration.
You cannot have American human rights to live, and at the same time deny the right to live to non-Americans. Which is what America is doing: extrajudicial murder of foreigners (drone strikes + collateral murder) and sponsoring of terrorism and genocide (Israel-gaza war).
the point is not to argue specific bullet points on obscure US codes, but 30 very basic unalienable universal human rights.
if USA denies these rights to the whole world, then there is no reason to expect the whole world support america in any way, like lending money by buying US treasuries, exchanging oil for freshly printed worthless USD, respecting US tourists' right to live when they are exploring the world, etc
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it if the goal is checking the U.S. and its allies, or China and its allies. (Maybe it’s useful for checking Western Europe? Idk.)
The ICC is a cool idea in theory. The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
How is that?
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_City_Hall_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Morocco [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Turkey#...
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
And yes, I do agree with your general point: the ICC idea is beautiful. The problem is that the parties to the Rome statute (the real "meat" behind the ICC) has no intention to provide justice to the world, but want to use the ICC as a political weapon, in some cases to prepare for war.
If you intend to do nothing, a center that keeps files on individuals, nothing more, documenting all known human rights abuses, would achieve more.
> Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
Isn’t this because they are non-members?
> A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
No. For non-members it is assumed that they by default ask the ICC to not investigate any human rights crimes either involving their state, or on their soil. Which the ICC then has to respect ...
Or that WAS the case until last year. In the middle of their existing court case against Israel it became clear that Israel requested ICC drop the case on their territory, and of course Palestine has neither borders nor are they a member of the ICC (despite Palestine signing the Rome accords to immediately afterwards start screaming on TV that they wouldn't respect them as they relate to Palestinians themselves), and therefore there were no grounds for the case. So South Africa, amidst allegations of Qatarese bribery, was allowed to bring a claim, and that South Africa has now twice helped people convicted at the ICC escape ICC justice did not negate that (they helped Bashar Al-Assad, and Putin)
So then the ICC modified their own statutes, which they're not allowed to do, so that the particular kind of non-member that Palestine is, would be allowed to put disputed territory as valid territory retroactively for such complaints (because despite how the press presents it, Palestine's claims relate to the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, specifically underage ones, on Israeli soil, NOT about what happened in Gaza. You see, the court has accepted an argument that since neither Hamas nor the PA allow investigators or journalists on their soil, claims there cannot reasonably be the basis for any conviction)
In other words, the court allowed what is effectively Hamas (not the PA) to enter Tel Aviv as territory for this court case.
You see, this is about Hamas scoring a PR victory. The idea that Hamas, through Qatar, via South Africa, is worried about the treatment of a West Bank resident Palestinian boy is utterly absurd. The only thing they care about is that it is an argument they might win, at which point the papers will be full of "Israel convicted at ICC for human rights abuses". This is the same Hamas that has mounted a suicide vest on an unwilling underage girl who was being treated in Israel for cancer, forced her to try to cross the Israeli border, and blew her to pieces when she tried to get help from the border guards, you see, THAT organization, is really worried about whether children who killed someone people get to see their parents sufficiently often in prison ...
Yes, Hamas is a party to the Rome statute (they agreed to respect it so they could partake in elections, elections, I might add, that ended with Hamas executing election officials in the emergency ward of a Gazan hospital) and plenty of other treaties at the UN. Including treaties that they'll prevent any and all terror attacks against civilians ... Meanwhile they AND the PA, pay Palestinians a monthly pension based on how badly they hurt Jews [1] (sorry, this organization that signed treaties to arrest any terrorists they know of "has stopped doing that" 4 months ago. They promise. Needless to say, the payments continue)
Obviously this ICC rule change is insanity and will lead to disaster, and they'll retract the rule when it is used by anyone else, for example, when Kurds enter a claim about abuse in Ankara for example, Iran or Iraq, or Druze against Syria, or ...
And while this is the most egregious example of abusing the ICC, it is far from the only one. There's a similar conflict with the US. The problem with the ICC is really quite simple: a lot of signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to respect any court decisions made by the ICC, and the ICC allows states to openly defy their treaty obligations without any consequences. The US and Israel, when they realized they didn't either, publicly withdrew so they'd remain honest. South Africa, Mongolia, Palestine, Hungary and others just started violating the treaties they agreed to without withdrawing.
When push comes to shove, a LOT of nations want war, but can't do it, or can't win it, and they see the ICC itself as a weapon of war. A weapon against "the international order" (ie. what the security council represents). The ICC lets them.
> How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...
This seems like an incredibly charitable reading of the US withdrawal given the ASMPA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I’m curious, are you Israeli yourself?
> Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
> However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
> That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
Nope. Not even close.
> I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
This is international law, which is a name used for a huge mess of international treaties. What is there to say? There is no international police. If you don't respect international law, there is nobody to compel you to do anything. In essentially every case, you're beyond the reach of the counter party to the treaty (especially in this case since the ICC has zero reach). This is true whether "you" refers to a person or a country.
Hell, there's even valid reasons this keeps happening like that the political situation sometimes changes far faster than treaties can be negotiated.
There were some truly exceptional times in history, like the ending of WW2, where everyone agreed on a few rules and some limited things happened, but that time is long gone. Most countries find the international order deeply unfair, especially the "you're not allowed to move any borders unless you're one of the original nuclear powers" part. Russia is allowed to attack ... Iran is not. The "non-aligned movement" is essentially aligned on a single point: they all want to start limited wars against one or multiple of their neighbors but would face total economic collapse or worse if they did that and the US responded. That is the last straw holding the UN treaties in existence, the only enforcement mechanism that has survived 80 years of UN disintegration.
And now Trump got elected and has been sighted near said last straw with scissors, asking for money, complaining the straw costs too much. But don't be fooled: there's a lot of shouting at Trump, but nobody working to strengthen the treaties with a few more straws. And while I hate Trump, you have to give him this one: if he cuts, he may be giving the start signal for WW3, but saying he's causing it, is absurd.
as they should, if the US' actions warrant it