US announces new sanctions on top ICC figures
bbc.com
bbc.com
So why is the US doing this with such intensity right now?
( My question was rhetorical, you can see in the initial ICC sanctions from the Whitehouse it was all about Israel + Netanyahu: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo... )
This administration attacks any body or authority that has the power to hold them accountable. See: attacks on the judiciary, attacks on the media, attacks on academia, etc.
It is ideological. Both of them and their close rich supporters feel ICC goals are abomination on itself, they put limits on power and they are therefore "bad" and "tyranny".
Hegseth dont plan. As evidenced by Iran war daily. Trump dont plan legal issues. They dont exist in his head at all.
Oh no! An international body is taking action against some of the worst criminals on the planet? I'm glad the U.S. is taking actions to prevent those people from doing their job. America is doing great!
The US withdrew its signature all the way back in 2002, the same year the ICC came into being.
It's only "their job" where they have jurisdiction.
This is like Ofcom trying to require overseas companies/providers to enforce the Online Safety Act.
The ICC doesn't even automatically have jurisdiction of signatory nations either -- it's only when that nation fails to actively pursue prosecutions in their own courts.
All UN member states are de facto part of the ICJ. If you have a valid claim against a nation, the proper place to pursue that is the ICJ.
Hate what the US and Israel are doing or not, what the ICC is doing here is entirely political posturing and theater.
I don't necessarily agree with it either but what do you expect to happen in response to the ICC's action.
The ICC is trying to set a precedent that the US views as against its interests.
Go ahead and poke the bear.
"The bear" (rah rah, bro) is governed by laws. These sanctions are allegedly authorized under e.g. IEEPA and the National Emergencies Act. What's the emergency? Assume that's valid, then what powers are made available to the President in response to that emergency?
It's absolutely not clear at all that this action is "perfectly legal and enabled by acts of Congress."
This admin's last broad interpretation of IEEPA-originating powers was already struck down by SCOTUS.
The underlying executive order authorizing these sanctions was based on specific concerns about the actions of the ICC, including specific arrest warrants against government officials of a country the president believes is a close American ally. So it's not arbitrary and capricious.
Again, I emphasize that whether US law authorizes doing this does not at all answer the question of whether it's a good idea. In a healthy country, Trump would be impeached on the spot for trying to pick this fight, because even people who don't like the ICC would fear discrediting their ideology. But there's no question under US law that these sanctions are valid.
Also: the US acting as a rouge state is not a power move it is a sign of moral decay, corruption and a critical failure to uphold the principles laid out in its own (wonderfully written!) Declaration of Independence.
It is just sad to see how hollowed out these great ideals have become.
These ideals were always hollow. There is no law between sovereign entities, only martial might and political game theory tactics. It’s why the EU struggles so heavily with tighter integration. None of those sovereign states who are members want to give up the ability to do what they want and be subordinate to another power.
Yeah, I guess international law was rather incompatible with their ambitions at the time. Fair play to them though, they certainly made the most of it.
In this case, the ICC has jurisdiction because the alleged crimes were committed in the territory of a signatory (Palestine) and because Palestine indeed found itself unable to prosecute them.
And the live-streamed genocide that the world has watched over the past 3 years doesn't qualify as evidence? That's odd because I could have sworn the United Nations, The International Association of Genocide Scholars, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and Human Rights Watch had all labeled Israel's actions against Palestinians as genocide.
America's evidence against that? Israel says so.
> US defense requires the ability to do everything Israel did against Gaza
Since when does defence require killing innocent women and children indiscriminately? At what point does that sort of defence reach a level of inhumanity that you're willing to concede that it's genocidal?
As a Jewish man following true Jewish morals, I will stand by the statements of these international bodies that find Israel and its leaders guilty of committing genocide. Never again cannot mean only for jews; it can only be morally just when applied to everyone.
Apart from Europe, the number large, powerful non-signatory countries is pretty significant: US, China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and more.
I've always thought it is interesting that the concept of international law is by definition in conflict with the de facto anarchy of international relations. I've always had mixed opinions on the topic, simply because you can look at an institution like the UN, and see that it functions much more successfully as a simple forum than a deliberative body. The idea that somehow we are going to implement something as difficult as a criminal court on an international basis seems... very idealistic. A court like this always seems sensible at first glance, but I'm not sure it can really exist effectively at all over any serious time horizon.
not 'by definition'. There's a fairly good case to be made that playing by, and being able to set, international norms is in the long term interest of powerful countries. For one because you don't know when you'll cease to be powerful, which will happen given enough time and secondly because even smaller players can cause significant damage when acting without constraint, a lesson several great powers are currently learning for the umpteenth time.
It's very meathead schoolyard bully coded to think that anarchy benefits you just because you happen to be the biggest dude around. It speaks more to the intellect of current leaders than it does to some fundamental contradiction.
>There's a fairly good case to be made that playing by, and being able to set, international norms is in the long term benefit of powerful countries.
Yes, but it doesn't matter. The entire concept of truly sovereign states existing is the point. The second a state wants to leave the agreement, they just stop cooperating. There is no "greater sovereign" with which you can enforce these rules, and if there is -- say, a bigger country invading a smaller country to enforce the rules -- you're once again in a state of war, and none of the rules mattered in the first place.
Ah, but are the interests of their leaders aligned with the interests of the countries?
(Side note: it's so charmingly cute we now [pretend to?] care about AI alignment, when the much simpler problem of politician alignment remains unsolved.)
There's also a fairly good case to be made that not playing by international norms is in the long term interest of powerful (and not powerful) countries.
For example, China didn't get to be the likely second superpower by respecting intellectual property rights, South China Sea territorial claims, human rights, intellectual pluralism, environmental protections, or any of the other things that the post-Cold War international order considered important, especially prior to 9/11.
The only thing that ultimately matters is if you make the right people the right amount of money at the right time. China does this through cheap labor and by setting up supply chains that the rest of the world either can't or won't, particularly with regard to workers' rights and environmental concerns.
China actually did spend a huge amount of energy to join the international institutions like the WTO. Whether they maximize their leeway within them is another story but they've consistently pushed for an international approach and expanded their influence within international institutions, not outside of them. That's why they're so well networked now.
And that's also btw the reason the US is throwing a big old fit in the first place, they feel like they've lost their influence largely to China and other emerging economies. Even though China may not meet your standards for what a liberal society looks like, China has not gone rogue, quite the opposite.
Well, the idea, particularly before 9/11, is that they could be.
You'd have increased manufacturing in developing countries lifting up their peoples out of poverty. You'd have democratic republicanism in more places so that people would have a say in their government. Trade disputes would be handled by international bodies like the WTO.
Otherwise, you have the norms being the opposite, and what we're regressing to. You have a powerful elite that wants to rent-seek off the rest of the population, install totalitarian regimes to secure their place at the top, and form international blocs that resolve resource and economic disputes in more belligerent ways to both secure and expand their area of totalitarian, rent-seeking control.
Especially as ultimately the only way to actually enforce any law is with violence (without which a court is impotent and its laws meaningless).
Research, investments and talents are all avoiding the US. AI won't save the US economy either as there is no moat as we can all see.
How many of the cameras operated by the state security apparatus of the CCP do you reckon are shot, cut down, spray painted, stolen, or otherwise made ineffective on a weekly basis?
I don't have to think either isn't "abusing its power to force deals".
If this is meant to be in reference to China, the problem is, you cannot truly ascertain competence given the current regime. It's totalitarian. Everything within the state, nothing without it. The flow of information in and out of the country, and within it, is heavily controlled with a hope of increasing positive perception of the nation abroad. Otherwise, totalitarian control cannot be maintained, as this introduces something outside of the state.
This contrasts with the United States, where the flow of information is relatively uncontrolled and people will regularly bring up the ways that things are handled incompetently in the national dialog. Sometimes, they even do this when no such incompetence exists.
However, I can look at broad indicators, many of which are easy to investigate from the outside.
When e.g. people suggest that China is having "economic problems" and growth is "slowing", over the last 30 years the Chinese idea of "normal" (5-8%) is the USA's idea of "extraordinary".
(I'd describe them as heavily authoritarian, but not quite as far as "totalitarian", though I accept the exact boundary is a somewhat fuzzy and subjective one and that it is not unreasonable to paint the line on either side of where China is today).
It's all relative. It's easier to make five cents out of one dollar than it is five dollars out of one hundred dollars.
Furthermore, you might wish to enquire why, exactly, you see the growth rates you do in China, and whether that makes it a good broad indicator from the outside.
What made the PRC so attractive to development over the last 30-40 years? India also has a large workforce and a low cost of labor, and Eastern Europe instituted market reforms similar to those that China undertook at around the same time, yet neither were the darlings of those who wanted to export manufacturing jobs from the West to cheaper markets.
The answer likely involves, at least in part, the fact that China doesn't allow for people to exercise their innate human right to organize. India is a democratic republic, and most Eastern European countries were transitioning to democratic republicanism around the time that their market reforms were enacted, same time as China did their market reforms. People in a democratic republic can do things like form labor unions, petition to block the construction of factories in sensitive areas, and do other things that reduce capital's ability to transfer value as profit.
These things regularly happen to some extent in Eastern Europe, India, and the US. We saw what happened when people in China wanted more say in their government in 1989, as did business leaders. If cutting manufacturing costs meant some student got crushed by a main battle tank for wanting the right to cast a ballot or run contrary to the Party's platform, so it was.
You have to be careful with the broad indicators.
Unfortunately, that's not how humans work.
> the one abusing its power to force deals since the 80s us obviously the worst.
Agreed. China's behavior towards its own people, its neighbors - Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India - and the international community as a whole since Dengism took hold have been inexcusable, no matter how much cheap manufacturing they're able to pull off.
They've blatantly enabled the totalitarian DPRK in its quest to defy UN sanctions over its nuclear program, and have violated the sovereignty of their neighbors in the South China Sea. Now they're undercutting manufacturing around the world by producing goods without the consideration of environmental concerns that places like the EU and US try to take into account with their own industrial development. PLA hackers have attacked numerous international targets. PRC agents have worked to abduct Chinese citizens exercising their basic human rights to free thought abroad through a system of secret police stations.
All of this since they ran over protestors with main battle tanks in 1989.
What's truly frightening is that the powerful in the rest of the world seem to want to emulate this sort of behavior, particularly totalitarian control of their own populations.
Interesting times indeed. The foreign affairs secretary of the most corrupt US administration cries foul of the ICC.
> Despite its significant global representation, dozens of governments are not parties to the ICC, including China, India, Israel, Russia, and the United States
What a great club to be in, ripe with war crimes and human rights abuses.
The move is the Trump administration's latest escalation in its campaign to "dismantle" the court which is empowered by more than 120 member countries to investigate war crimes."
The Trump administration is saying the quiet part out loud: they are pro war crimes.
Hegseth tells his “warfighters” that they must ignore the Geneva convention. The president goes on social media and threatens the destruction of civilian populations (“an entire civilization will die tonight”) as well as civilian infrastructure (bridges, power plants).
Giving your own personnel or enemy personnel the impression you are pursuing a policy of no quarter is itself a war crime.
"This court is for Africa and thugs like Putin. It is not for democracies like Israel and the United States of America."
It's like they heard of the ICC from a facebook meme and develop policy around that.