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E.g. Switzerland (a country I'd argue as having a far more genuine independent spirit) was labeled as a currency manipulator by the US [0], despite the designation being fairly arbitrary, and you know, her being her own country (and so surely subject to her own laws).
What you're describing as "independence" looks a lot more like "rules for thee are not rules for me", which the US just happens to have the privelage of preaching due to its preeminent position in the world.
[0] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/switzerland-branded-as...
Currency manipulation is meant to benefit the country doing manipulation (in this case Switzerland) at the expense of another country (in this case U.S.)
It's very much the role of U.S. government to protect U.S. from other countries trying to do harm to U.S., be it by bombing U.S. territory, tariffs on U.S. goods or currency manipulation that economically hurts U.S.
You could present an argument that Switzerland wasn't trying to harm U.S. economically via currency manipulation but instead you're trying to delegitimize the very idea that U.S. can defend itself from other countries trying to harm it economically by pretending that it's purely internal affair that has no effect on U.S.
Currency manipulation does hurt U.S. and that's the reason U.S. has the right to push back on it.
So I haven't claimed that Switzerland is a currency manipulator, nor that this would be a good thing, nor that its efforts to devalue its currency had anything to do with the US. I don't see what the contention is here - unless it's that only the US is allowed to be "independent" (i.e. above all international law), here wrt the ICC, while other countries must curtail what is in their national interests (like not having their export markets decimated) for fear of provoking this one special, privileged land?
If the argument is that the US can enforce its agenda on other countries and they must just suck it, then sure. But that's not an argument about fairness or what's right, that's an argument about what to expect from the actor with the biggest stick.
At least that was the reason I was given in the US military. YMMV
The US military told people whatever they needed to tell them to follow orders. That's why they follow unlawful orders like those to extrajudicially blow up non-combatant US citizens abroad, and imprison people in Guantanamo for decades without trial, assist the disarming of innocent US citizens in NOLA in the aftermath of Katrina, blackball soldiers in Vietnam that reported war crimes, and all manner of other things that hardly anyone seems to be held to account for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
> The ICC is intended to complement, not replace, national judicial systems; it can exercise its jurisdiction only when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gallagher_(Navy_SEAL) is more the norm.
> At least that was the reason I was given in the US military.
That's obviously nonsense. For many reasons:
(1) ICC jursidiction does not supercede national jurisdiction that is actually exercised—that's explicitly a basis for ICC jurisdiction not to be applied (it can be applied in the case of sham proceedings designed to provide cover). So it wouldn't stop the US from trying, and applying the death penalty to, any war criminals.
(2) The actual reasons for the the US opposition, including Congress passing a law threatening the ICC, are matters of public record, and are much more about the US wanting impunity for accused (American) war criminals than any fear of inadequate punishment.
(3) The US response to its own war criminals that it has had the opportunity to punish since the establishment of, and its refusal to join, the ICC has shown a singular lack of capital punishment. And even the occasional Presidential pardon after conviction.
Even for US military propaganda directed at is own personnel, that's pretty lazy, low-effort stuff.
God willing, someone in this country or in another one will work up the nerve to erase such a malignant cancer out of existence eventually.