When Donald Trump became president everyone thought (and many still do) that he would be so incompetent, so stupid, so utterly dysfunctional that all we had to do was survive the next four years and then return to a semblance of normalcy. Well, guess again. Trump is certainly many of those things I listed above, but he has been quite adept at ramming his agenda through Congress, the judiciary and the federal bureaucracy. His ambitions are vast and he is succeeding in realizing many of them.
His new Supreme Court justice will guarantee the most right-wing Court in the history of the country for the next two to three decades. He has almost single-handedly set back civil, voting and human rights in this country by decades. He is well on his way to destroying foreign trade and commencing multiple trade-wars with his extensive tariff program. In foreign policy, he has sought not just to negotiate a deal of the century, he’s thrown a bomb into conventional U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine.
Ditch the whole two-state rhetoric. It’s dead not only because the Israelis refuse to implement. It’s dead because Trump’s plan is for a one-state solution in which Israel is a Jewish supremacist state. There will be no Palestinian state. If Jordan wishes to absorb a few villages in the West Bank, perhaps that would be acceptable. There will also be no Palestinian refugees since Trump will disappear them from that category with some rhetorical hocus-pocus. With no refugees there will be no Law of Return. Trump is essentially erasing the Palestinian people. That is his solution to the conflict.
It’s quite breathtaking in scope. Not even the most ambitious American president could ever have set forth such a vision. It remains to be seen how successful Trump will be. But in a sense he doesn’t have to be fully successful. If he implements even half of this agenda, the Palestinian cause will be set back decades, if not permanently.
Today, John Bolton laid down his cards (full speech) regarding his vision of U.S. foreign policy. It too is a stunner. For the past hundred years, America, despite a certain tendency toward isolationism, has embraced an internationalist approach to solving world problems. We not only founded the United Nations, we’ve signed most of the international treaties negotiated (with a few recent glaring exceptions), and participated in nation-building and peacekeeping efforts. Our largess has enabled the international bodies to function effectively in pursuing their agendas.
Trump and Bolton have brought all this to a screeching halt. They hate the world (except for the brutal dictators who rule and think like them). They hate anything that isn’t American. Any nation or party that stands in the way is likely to get a bloody lip, if not worse.
Bolton’s speech today lowered the boom on the International Criminal Court. He not only took issue with the Court and its very reason for existence; he did so with merciless and cruel intent:
…It [the speech] represents the Trump administration’s most devastating and unrestrained attack to date on the global rules-based order and its legal flagship, the international criminal court.
Put bluntly, it is an all-out bid by Donald Trump to end the ICC, the world’s foremost criminal tribunal, and with it, the very concept of international justice. Bolton is the man wielding the knife. And there is a strong possibility they will succeed.
Trump’s third choice as national security adviser [Bolton] is a fitting assassin.
He wants nothing less than to eradicate the ICC and everything it represents. Or as he says it so elegantly, he wants to “strangle it in its cradle.” I’m sure the ICC is, as far as he’s concerned, low-hanging fruit. His sites are set much higher. Eventually, he would destroy the entire international order including the UN itself. This is the most radical agenda ever set forth by any American president. And that’s saying a lot.
What’s especially alarming is his direct attack not just on the ICC as an institution. No, this is personal for him. He’s promised to target every staff member and judge of the Court if they go after the U.S. in legal proceedings. What could that mean? Threats? Assassination (character or worse)? Kompromat al la Putin? Whoever would guess that an international jurist might be targeted as an enemy of the United States?
Not just that, Bolton has also promised to take up the cause if the Court targets our allies. Several of them are in the Court’s sites. But the most interesting for my purposes is Israel. Recently, the Court announced pre-trial proceedings against Israel for its invasion of Gaza in 2014, which murdered 2,300 Palestinians. Further, the massacres in Gaza over the past three months have also galvanized world opinion and influenced the Court to consider a case against Israel.
If Israel is tried, Bolton wants the world to know he will attack the ICC and take no prisoners. Even without such a threat, I doubt very much the Court, which has as much tenacity as a paper clip, would try Israel. The current director general earlier twice refused to accept a case against Israel for the Mavi Marmara. Why would her attitude change much now?
The world needs to resist and do so urgently and aggressively. I’m not talking about Chuck Schumer or Hillary Clinton’s Democratic brand of resistance. I’m talking about resistance that throws a spanner in the works. We need an Occupy-Black Lives Matter movement that brings the country to a screeching halt. Finally, here is Ariel Dorfman’s sobering cri de coeur warning us that what happened in his homeland in 1973 can happen here.
Obviously, we’re resigning from being global hegemon.
‘The US has threatened sanctions against the International Criminal Court if it goes ahead with prosecutions against Americans.’
You can’t say the Church is bullshit if you want to be Pope.
Colin.
Richard.
It is a foundational principle of customary international law that a State that has not become a party to a treaty or other international convention is not bound by the terms of such treaty or convention. See, e.g., Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, art. 34, opened for signature May 23, 1969, 1155 U.N.T.S. 331.
In other words, a non-party state to an international convention is not bound by the terms of such convention without its consent.
And since United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, United States nationals are not subject to the jurisdiction of a court created by a treaty to which the United States is not a party.
If the OTP (Office of the Prosecutor) is overstepping its legitimate bounds, than Bolton’s reaction is justified.
@ Li Hing Lo: That is not true. You’ve said something is “customary” and a “foundation principle” without offering any proof. The ICC is full of international law experts, distinguished lawyers and judges. If you think they would lightly undertake taking the U.S. before the ICC and do so without any foundation in international law, you’re nuts.
The key distinction here is that you’re talking about “states.” The ICC doesn’t try states for war crimes. It tries individuals. And it doesn’t matter what the individual’s nationality is. Anyone can be prosecuted as long as the ICC has jurisdiction over the place where the crime was committed. And in the cases under consideration it clearly does.
Here is HRW on this issue:
Here is an article from Forbes:
Oh and the Center for COnstitutional Rights disagrees with you as well:
I don’t mind people disagreeing with me. But when you pretend to be something you aren’t, and I, not a lawyer, can see through it–that’s pretty low. Now, you may think you are right when you write such trash, but when the slightest bit of research proves you wrong, don’t you think you should do better?
“But when you pretend to be something you aren’t, and I, not a lawyer, can see through it–that’s pretty low.”
Richard. You may want to fine tune your X Ray glasses, and reconsider insulting me.
While individuals, for instance, CIA operatives, and not states, will be named in ICC indictments, there will be cases in which those individuals are indicted for official acts taken pursuant to state policy and under state authority.
These official-act cases may well include cases in which an official state act is characterized as criminal by the ICC prosecutor while the state whose national is being prosecuted maintains that the act was lawful; be it military intervention, or recourse to a certain method of warfare, or other official conduct that the responsible state maintains was lawful.
In these sorts of ICC cases, notwithstanding the presence of individual defendants in the dock, the cases will represent bona fide legal disputes between states, and since the United States isn’t a signee of the Rome Statute, the ICC cannot confer jurisdiction over United States citizens.
This is the argument of the United States, in a nutshell, and has been it’s argument ever since the Rome Statute was first enacted.
For a more in depth analysis, you may consider reading, HIGH CRIMES AND MISCONCEPTIONS: THE ICC AND NON-PARTY STATES, by MADELINE MORRIS.
*https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1200&context=lcp
@ Li Hing Lo: INteresting that after your first lame claim that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the U.S. based on the claim that we aren’t a signatory to the Rome Statute, you’ve now at least gotten slightly more on track. Now you concede ICC has jurisdiction over some individuals (but not states, as in your red herring argument) it just doesn’t have doesn’t have jurisdiction over these individuals. You’re still wrong. But at least you’ve tacitly acknowledged you were on the wrong track earlier and I was right. Or perhaps I caught you in a fib/red herring argument and you’re tacitly conceding that by changing the direction of your argument.
That is simply false. I offered you several credible, knowledgeable sources which reject this claim. Yet you still offer it as if it’s credible. It isn’t. I don’t care what the Trump or Bolton argument is. It has no validity. Not only that, but the ICC has released a strong statement declaring its rejection of Bolton and his argument and their steadfastness in pursuing these cases over which you claim it has no jurisdiction. So it’s ICC vs. Li Hing Lo. I know who I chose in that matchup.
I do not like commenters using multiple IP addresses unless there’s a very good reason for it. It usually indicates you’re trying to hide something or protect your identity. If you’re using a proxy server, don’t.
You are done in this thread.
John Bolton is an ignoramus with regards to International Law.
The number of jurists in the world who are competent to argue issues of universal jurisdiction number very few. Madeline Morris, who I cited, and Dapo Akande, are two figures included in that small number.
Your sources have made conclusory statements with regard to the ICC’s jurisdiction over non-party States. They are probably correct, but absent a landmark decision by the ICC’s Appeals Chamber and the United States Supreme Court, we cannot say that your sources, or ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, are 100% correct as to whether the ICC has complete jurisdiction over non-party citizens.
I did not use a red herring argument.
“In situations not referred to the Court by the Security Council, disputes arising from protests by non-states parties with respect to whether the court may exericise jurisdiction over their nationals are not resolved by treaty (as they would be, by reference to the UN Charter in the case of a Security Council referral, or by reference to the Rome Statute in the case of a state party), as there is none.”
“Instead, the dispute is resolved under the customary international law of jurisdiction.”
“Customary international law must permit a state to delegate the exercise of its enforcement jurisdiction to an international court for that delegation to be lawful. If customary international law does not permit a state so to delegate, the issuance and circulation of an ICC arrest warrant would in such circumstances be the exercise of an exorbitant jurisdiction. This has relevance both before the Court and at the national level, as the exercise of an exorbitant jurisdiction might render national surrender proceedings unlawful or otherwise an abuse of process.”
http://opiniojuris.org/2018/09/12/method-to-the-madness-john-bolton-and-us-objections-to-icc-jurisdiction/
@ Li Hing Lo: Why would you say that the U.S. Supreme Court has to rule in favor of ICC jurisdiction in order for the concept to be confirmed? Nothing of the sort is true. In fact, this far-right Court would never approve it. So your adding another red herring into your argument is interesting and telling. I completely reject the idea that the U.S. has to first approve its citizens being subject to the ICC. THat’s a preposterous notion. But no doubt there are right-wing “experts” you can cherry pick to support your notion. The very notion that there is a “method” to John Bolton’s “madness” is offensive on its face & speaks volumes to the political orientation of your chosen sources. I note that both men have defended mass murderers. Given that, it’s not surprising that they would argue for severely constrained powers for the ICC. But it certainly doesn’t make them correct in their claims or assumptions.
I told you you were done in this thread. Yet you ignored me. Don’t do that again or you will be moderated. When I tell you you’ve published your last post in the thread, you’re done.
HI Richard. I have just joined as a subscriber and I use TOR Browser which changes IP address about every 15 minutes, so does that mean I am banned here as well?
I have been this fight since the late 1960’s, before the Internet and when I didn’t hide my identity, I was attacked viciously as were 2 of my partners, for our Libertarian activities. Those 2 died strange deaths at a relatively early age.
I survived by disappearing for a few years and becoming ‘Freespirit”, which handle I use to this day, and shall continue using. I have made over 16000 comments on DISQUS alone and that does not include other sites, which do not use DISQUS nor my emails, one of which you will receive this week, some time
Before banning me here is my assessment of .”Li Hing Lo” based on my many years dealing with TROLLS
“Lying Low” is how that name sounds and could very well be a truth “Hidden In Plain Sight” a common tactic used by Zionist Trolls especially
What I like about DISQUS is that commenters like myself can investigate the accounts of those I suspect of being a TROLL.. My suspicions are usually well-founded
Take from it what you will
@ Freespirit: First a few points to make. I only suspect commenters who I believe may be using IP proxies in order to conceal their identity from me, so that they let loose in comments here without consequences or accountability. For someone who has a legitimate reason to use a proxy such as protecting their identity for the sake of physical safety, I have no problem with that.
So you will not be penalized or banned for your use of a proxy.
In addition to us nationally, Trump’s presidency is challenging the world order we have collectively painfully established. There has got to be strong resistance bigtime pushback on all fronts. All hands on deck!. It’s a test.
Then you need a military invasion of the US after the UN declares this country “World Enemy Number One”…..or you need to find all the bottlenecks in the food and goods delivery systems and block them up. The former should have happened during the Bush II administration, the latter will be the ultimate project of the activist Left.