nentorask

> If the US signed on, Americans would have the same voice as everyone else, no?

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.

Correct, but it doesn’t hold true for the ICC.

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.

The USA has a robust legal system that draws its powers from the people, who elect legislators that can rectify situations where the law is wrong or if the courts have wronged someone incorrectly. From the perspective of US citizens, as a non-signatory country, there is no higher authority than the US justice system.

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.