Netherlands bracing for potentially devastating US sanctions against the ICC
apnews.com
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Just a reminder: the ICC was founded in the aftermath of WWII, when Jews had no voice and no one fighting for them.
Israel’s finance minister, one of the most senior ministers in the government:
“No one in the world will allow us to starve two million civilians to death, even though it may be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
Israel’s defense minister:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
Someone should prosecute those bastards.
I don’t think that’s correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court:
“The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organisation and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. Established in 2002
[…]
The establishment of an international tribunal to judge political leaders accused of international crimes was first proposed during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 following the First World War”
edit: and indeed the west in general, that has largely said and done nothing while watching events unfold.
Bush also had similar statements after 9-11, don't think he was prosecuted.
WWII ended in 1945.
The law creating ICC was adopted in 1998 and the actual creation of ICC happened in 2002.
Some aftermath.
Founded in 2002. From the article: "The ICC was established in The Hague in 2002 as the court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. It takes on cases when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their territory."
Michal Waldiger (Knesset Member): Also in May 2025, during a heated parliamentary session, Religious Zionist Party MK Michal Waldiger responded to a speech condemning the deaths of children by stating, "Yes, they will also have to kill them, because there is no choice," later adding that they are "all enemies like the Nazis"
Nissim Vaturi (Deputy Speaker of the Knesset): In January 2024, Vaturi claimed on the Knesset Channel that "any child" born in Gaza is "already a terrorist" from the moment of birth
For every single person killed in the tragic attack on Israel in October, Israel has killed 64 children[0] (so far). To some people(including here, this argument keeps erupting all the time) this is a completely normal and acceptable trade off. People keep bringing up civilian casualties in Germany and Japan as if we can bend our morality this way. The number speaks for themselves.
[0] https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/more-50000-children-killed...
Giving up the best soft-power levers they had in an attempt to replace them with coarse, obvious and ineffective hard-power beat-sticks is not only foolish but history shows never works well or long term.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...?
Edit: I guess you could point out Biden justifying Putin's warrant as a hypocrisy.
That aside, you know exactly what my point is. Just because there's a military conflict doesn't mean it's legal to kill anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances.
The ICC, irrespective of its merits, represents a somewhat narrow point of view.
With the US' war of aggression on Iran, it just doesnt care what it loses in its quest to support Israel.
Of course this was motivated by oil interests and not human rights but I can't call them the 'bad guys' here.
If it was the “hard power” it claims, what is it that makes “it” so afraid? To me, it is fairly obvious that this is how a threatened being behaves, in “childish ways”, before it fully falls apart.
Don't like it, don't do genocide or dont visit its member countries.
In 2021 they ran a campaign that forced over 200k overseas Chinese to return to the mainland or risk punishment against their family: https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/110-overseas-230000-c...
and several others in UK
The US is sanctioning a foreign court over actions that do not even involve the US itself. There is no comparison here.
And then there’s the whole bit about the ICC prosecutor who issued the warrants (Khan) issuing them as an attempt blackmail a fellow Muslim ICC employee who he was raping into keeping silent with “think of the Palestinian arrest warrants”: https://archive.is/YrxUF
The future of the world depends on that.
The only two good things are I think the ECtHR's willingness to demand an investigation, and one can question whether the CoM of the CoE have done their job in ensuring implementation, but they're at least regularly checking whether there are implementation attempts.
But what struck me was the endless deference of the ICC. They've limited their Afghanistan investigation to Afghani perpetrators even though they have access to vast numbers of Europeans with information about the black sites and the investigation of these things is even more tractable than investigating things in Afghanistan, and I think it's this deference that is the ICC's problem.
The ICC actually has powers sufficient to deal with the sanctions completely, with no need for aid from European states in any regard.
It's to the point where anyone participating in anything affecting the ICC's ability to do its job can be ordered arrested and confined indefinitely. The ICC can literally order the arrest of the workforce of an entire bank if it participates in anything having to do with retaliation against the ICC. The only thing preventing milder things like ordering the arrest of the CEO and board is the ICC's insane deference. They can also apply these things to the American political leadership who have passed the sanctions.
So I really don't understand the Americans. The ICC is doing exactly what they want. They're not even subpoenaing Europeans who sit right here with knowledge about the black sites and torture, even under intense criticism from victims who are of course pushing for investigation.
The article really misunderstands what sort of powers the ICC has. The ICC doesn't need the blocking statute to end enforcement of sanctions, they can order the arrest and indefinite detainment of anyone participating in retaliation against the court.
I would suggest that the reason that the ICC hasn't done this yet is not deference, but because they don't want to have to force a bank to choose between having their business essentially destroyed by being sanctioned by the US, and being arrested by the court.
Edit: They also need to force banks to make a decision. Do you want to do business in the EU? Then you must not close accounts bank accounts because someone in US puts someone on a list. If that means you lose business in the US, so be it. Make a decision which market you want to operate in. If you want to leave EU, do it. Others will take your place.
The infrastructure for it exists with instant SEPA transfers, and Wero is slowly developing into a useful system for retail payments, but without the EU mandating that banks and retailers must support it alongside Visa it will take a while for meaningful penetration to happen.
It is up to each member state to decide how to respond to an increasingly hostile US.
Which is why foreign actors such as US and Russia always seem to undermine the EU and foment dissent in the bloc. A unified Europe would be much harder to push around.
Yes, but
> It is up to each member state to decide how to respond to an increasingly hostile US.
is not true. A member state cannot, for example, decide that it's fine to import and sell US beef. It is perfectly possible to introduce EU laws that protect the population of Europe from the US using European banks as a weapon against law-abiding people.
> Which is why foreign actors such as US and Russia always seem to undermine the EU and foment dissent in the bloc. A unified Europe would be much harder to push around.
It's a scale. I, too, wish for a more tightly integrated Europe, but that doesn't mean there is no integration whatsoever today.
Yes it is but it's going to be necessary to have an alternative first.
Right now especially in point of sale solutions there's a practical monopoly by visa and mastercard within the EU and it's going to take years to replace that with a local solution.
I am very much in favor of a more integrated EU, including to a sort of federalization. Only with more integration we can stand up to other great powers.
If the US chooses someone sane next time, reestablishing institutional power, and diffusing power to avoid chaos in the future, will have to be part of the plan.
id say it is harmful. like a cancerous tumor that now went into hypergrowth
If this is not a "threat", then what is your definition of one? If anything you could argue this is a step ABOVE threat, since US no longer threats like e.g. North Korea does, but it actively acts as a bully on a world-wide stage.
I've lived in the US for many years and while I appreciate my time there, I can definitely say that as of today, the US is the actual cancer of the world.
Other countries can’t just say that they’ve decided on laws and a justice system to prosecute Americans (in the absence of a US agreed treaty), and if they threaten to detain Americans anyway they are engaging in hostile aggression against the USA, especially if this is done in a politicized way.
Not sure why this is relevant, since the same holds true for any democratic country, no?
Americans have no say on its laws and procedures, and it is not accountable to the American people. Many of its member states are themselves semi-democratic or totally autocratic. People such as Afghani women, for example, have no rights at home and by extension no say on the procedures of the ICC, but they can be judged by it, because their dictators are signatories and do have a say.
Maybe I'm missing your point, but what stops Americans from having a say in its laws and procedures? If the US signed on, Americans would have the same voice as everyone else, no? Though I guess its voice would actually still be louder, because the ICC draws its power from the member countries.
Regarding the accountability - yes, it's not solely accountable to the American people. That's the core idea behind an international court: it is not beholden to any single country.
> Many of its member states are themselves semi-democratic or totally autocratic. People such as Afghani women, for example, have no rights at home and by extension no say on the procedures of the ICC, but they can be judged by it, because their dictators are signatories and do have a say.
While I get the idea, I'm not convinced that the absence of an ICC-like institution would in any way help disenfranchised people with gaining these rights. As the last few years have shown, the US - left to its own devices - will gleefully support an ongoing genocide.
But you can’t force them to accept a foreign sovereignty. It would be like the USA saying that US federal law now applies to Greenland, and they have a right to participate in federal elections.
> I'm not convinced that the absence of an ICC-like institution would in any way help disenfranchised people with gaining these rights.
I’m not convinced that the ICC is capable of helping anyone. They can run tribunals after-the-fact, if some other power has already taken care of the perpetrator, which may be useful in some situations, like when a devastated country doesn’t have the resources to run a trial themselves, but it can’t prevent or stop anything from happening. Doing that would usually mean the ICC would have to raise an army and go to war.
For example, in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas. Palestine, which is a signatory, did nothing to try and arrest them. Neither did any of the other ICC countries, because executing that warrant would require going to war in Gaza (which is what Israel did). Neither has the warrant for Netanyahu made any difference.
...No, that's why the ICC requires us to sign on.
We voluntarily accept a joint sovereignty over each other.
The problem is that for the past 80 years or so, the US has gotten very, very comfortable forcing other nations to accept our sovereignty. Over them. The powers that be really, really don't want to give that up and be accountable to anyone.
That's not sustainable, it's not ethical, and it's guaranteed to lead to more conflict down the line.
The ICC as currently constituted may be imperfect, but IMO it is a good step forward toward a world where we are all accountable to each other, and we collectively enforce an agreed-upon set of ethics for every country's operations.
The list of people killed whereas in ICE detention comprises 67 people just in the last 3 years. Plus the two US citizens executed in the streets [1]. Some died after being denied medical treatments that needed for survive, other were chocked to dead, or shoot, and other were found "unresponsive in the cells", or died with collapsed lungs, kidney failures and other symptoms that shout "being beaten to pulp". This people were also human beings.
And some commit suicide. An example:
"Ge was in ICE custody for 5 days, and was found hanging by the neck in a shower stall. The county coroner report later determined his feet and hands to be bound, but ruled the cause to be suicide and noted rare, known cases of self-restraint in suicide cases"
People killed by ICE comprises citizens from USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Ukraine, Colombia, Vietnam, China, Venezuela, Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ethiopia or Iran.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detentio...
This list does not include people that died shortly after being liberated or that was shoot at the frontier.
- they issued a non-revocable arrest warrant for Netanyahu
- Afghanistan is a member and once threatened to prosecute US military staff for human rights violations.
Its not just the Trump adminstration, the "Hague Invasion Act" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...) was signed into American law in 2002 by G.W. Bush.
Impunity is a drug.
Bush, Obama and Biden wanted to keep the US out of it. Trump wants to destroy it.
The US isn't subject to it, as it didn't sign up, but he's probably also worried that Americans who are accused of war crimes and then travel to countries which are signatories may find themselves arrested and tried.
American citizens are subject to ICC jurisdiction if they commit crimes in an ICC-member country. Like US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Which is what freaks the US government out.
Only if they travel to ICC jurisdiction countries will anything actually occur.
It crimps their style.
Probably (hopefully) we'll look back on this as the start of the end of US soft influence.
I've never really thought about the ICC at all other than just knowing that the few countries that possess both hard power (military) and soft power (economic) have refused to join or recognize the ICC since its inception in 2002.
Why would China and USA both not recognize it? It seems like they're the only ones that really matter.
I don't think it actually would happen if it joined but since it's the US I can also imagine someone being pushed to (or doing it for some personal fame) to bend the procedural rules to at least launch an investigation that wouldn't generally be launched if the facts were the same in another western country.
That being said, their accusations towards the ICC as it has operated so far (as opposed to why they don't join) are mostly pretextual and right now they're mostly motivated by their alliance with Israel which is being investigated over Gaza
- USA
- Israel (active war)
- Russia (active war)
- Iran (active war) - signed but not ratified
- Sudan(active war) - signed but not ratified
- Yemen (active war) - signed but not ratified
- Saudi Arabia (active war)
- North Korea (passive war)
- India (recent war)
- Pakistan (recent war)
- Vietnam
- Myanmar
- Ethiopia
- China
- Turkey
- Qatar
ICC, embrace-extinguishing EU, exploiting Middle East, South America as colonies - these are not 180 turns, just playing the same game faster and dumber. Notable exceptions may be Canada or Greenland, but even there one might suspect they just surfaced a previously well disguised agenda.
Commit 28 crimes against humanity? To jail! For 12 years! https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3070nlqnq3o
Enlist child soldiers? 14 years! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lubanga_Dyilo
> Champions of the court say it deters would-be war criminals, bolsters the rule of law, and offers justice to victims of atrocities. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/role-icc
lol. lmao.
Try to change my mind if you want.