The International Criminal Court is a farce. How can you tell other sovereign nation what is a "crime" or what "is not a crime"? It has literally zero authority to decide such matters.
Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!
You seem to have arrived at a suitable definition of "authority"
I have to applaud coming up with a sentence like that. The same sort of beauty one might find in an Escher piece.
Let me address the point underlying that contortion by asking a question: In the alternate semantic universe we're constructing, if that Russian later passes through a US-friendly country and is arrested, did the US court turn out to retroactively have had the authority to issue the warrant, and we pretend it always had it, or is it supposed to work some other way?
And undoubtedly I agree that if Putin or Netanyahu pass through Europe they should be arrested. But I'm not sure if that's a legal decision or a political one.
There was no hostile intent or ill feelings. Some things were meant to be humorous, but in good spirits. If anything came across otherwise, that's a communication failure on my part. I'm sorry.
Likewise I think where I'm uncertain with Putin is that while he's undoubtedly a nefarious guy and we have written down rules and norms he has broken, those norms do not apply to the Russian world. We claim they apply, but we could only make them apply through force of arms which runs opposite to the rule of law. That is rather the rule of "might makes right."
I'd say that these things are not opposites. Rather the rule of law is a way of tempering the power of force of arms. Look at your Nuremberg example - having won the war and enacted occupation by force of arms, the Allies were in a position where they could have simply imposed summary execution. Legalization was a stepping back from this dynamic - likely due to the amount of unilateral killing that had just gone on.
> those norms do not apply to the Russian world
The crux of the matter here is that parties on the receiving end of aggression (Ukraine, Palestine) have assented to adopting those norms. The legalistic theory is that by aggressing onto those parties, the aggressors become subject to the jurisdiction of whom they're aggressing against. I personally don't particularly like this model of international jurisdiction, but it is on solid longstanding ground. And so while I'll argue against this sort of thing at an individual level (especially where the nexus is say electronic communications), I don't feel much sympathy for leaders who end up suffering this dynamic because they decided to attack other countries.
In reality of course yes, to apply those laws requires force of arms - for there even to be something to temper in the first place. So Ukraine/Palestine assenting to those treaties is essentially asking would-be allies to defend them in some well-scoped circumstances, modulo the underlying diplomatic concerns.
Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?
Rules for thee, not for me.
This pivot to brute force exposes the hypocrisy not in the world, but specifically in America, as represented by the American citizen I am talking to.
It's also not "how the world works", it's how the world works while America has the power to make it work that way.
Thankfully, it is a self-defeating approach.
As a simple counterexample to this universalism, think of the European Union. Germany and France could impose their will on smaller neighbors (and did, in less enlightened times!), but they don't, because y'know, they actually believe in rule of law, consent and consensus.
Or as an example closer to home - the Canada / US relationship before recent American aggression.
Things don't have to work by unilateral aggression. It is a specific ideological choice, it is not a law of nature. Now I understand it might feel different while enveloped in said ideology (it literally determines what we perceive to be possible after all!), the same way a Muslim fanatic would attribute everything to Allah's plan, but I'm not really interested in self-justifications.
and do...
For example Hungary is being fined daily for attempting self-determination https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clww729180po
It is hilarious that you think they WANT to be fined.
Additionally, this is from 2024, Hungary has since democratically elected a government on the express platform of getting rid of the wannabe dictator that got them fined.
You've mistaken the mere existence of enforcement for domination, just like you keep mistaking ideological preference for natural law.
Also notice the words you used: "attempting self-determination". Weren't you just making the point that might makes right? In that view, Brussels has the power, Hungary doesn't, News at 11, yada yada.
But nobody actually lives by "might makes right", you included. As soon as its somebody you're sympathetic to, the cold realism drops and we're back to consent and sovereignty. That is my point. It's just a line people use to defend power arrangements they like, to be dropped for ones they don't.
If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.
If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.
Then they got mad that the rest of the world didn't approve of actually doing the horrific things.
And then no one wanted to buy bonds from the country endorsing the horrific acts.
Our founders smartly chose against direct democracy. The more I look around, the more right I see they were.
EDIT: forgot the peace prize, trump likely mad over that again.
That is authority if you like it or not.
The U.S., along with China, India, Russia, and many other nations, are not members and do not grant any weight to ICC rulings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...
The U.S. had peripheral involvement in these actions.
I am upvoting you, as I don't find your line of questioning abrasive enough to warrant down votes.
I am not talking about the current ethnic conflict between Israel and Palestinians because that is a century worth of conflict has gone far beyond what courts can rule on. I am talking about USA absolving itself from being accountable in presence of evidence.
Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.