So I guess 2016 claimed its biggest victim yet - America

Bill Clinton signed, but the treaty has (as far as I know) never been sent to Congress for ratification. Bush Jr (unsurprisingly) was very much against the ICC, but Obama was willing to support it’s work even though he also didn’t (I believe) support ratification.

(Parentheticals!)


You reject the constitution’s declaration that all treaties into which we enter must be considered the law of land?

The Rome Statute (ICC) hasn’t been ratified by the US Senate, so that doesn’t apply.

This.

If we wanted to step in, we could

I mean, what exactly would the UN or ICC provide, when it comes to actually taking action? Basically nothing.

This is why giving power to something like the ICC would be an objective dumb move for a country like the US. Their enforcement arm would be essentially… The US military. We already control the US military, so we midaswell just enforce things as we see fit.

We certainly don’t have a problem with it when they are chasing down Serbians.

Legitimacy?

I mean why do we need courts in the US? What exactly do they provide when it comes to actually taking action? Basically nothing. Their enforcement arm would be the police, and we already control the police.

Nope.

Because they are a fundamental part of our system of government. International courts are not. As citizens, we have a Justice system because it protects us as individuals. This is a dumb question, because it falls prey to the mistaken notion that there is some larger government that our country is a citizen of. There’s not.

We don’t need protections from an international criminal court, because they can’t offer us anything that we can’t already do for ourselves.

The courts are part of a Justice system in our country, which also includes enforcement mechanisms.

In the international court, there is no enforcement mechanism. It would just be us.

We would gain nothing from it.

You’re making an argument that because we have power, we can do as we like internationally, with a corollary that we can (and should) ignore international institutions which might have the effect of constraining our behavior.

The question I’m asking is this: If that is a reasonable approach to international governance, why isn’t it a reasonable approach to domestic governance? An answer of the form ‘because that’s what we do’ isn’t really responsive. I’m asking why you think ‘might makes right’ is right for international governance but not for domestic governance. Aren’t the principles the same? Shouldn’t the powerful in our country have the same freedom of action domestically that you want for our country internationally? If not, why not?

I disagree. I’d say we can’t prosecute former leaders for war crimes like torture, because our politics seem to make that unthinkable. The ICC could do that for us, and it would be to our benefit. It would constrain the more base instincts of our future leaders.

Yes, because don’t do is simply giving away our power in exchange for nothing. And we are giving it away to other countries that he have no control over in terms of electing them.

I get to vote when it comes to The election of the US government. That’s not the case in international bodies. Many of those countries aren’t even Democratic at all.

If there were no police, and i was already in the position of having to provide all of my own security, then it would be a reasonable approach to domestic governance.

That’s the key element that you aren’t getting.

If you want to have an international court system, then you need to have entire international criminal Justice system. But you don’t. Your proposal is that we acquiesce to the international courts, but then we continue to act as the world police and enforce those laws for everyone.

For us, since we are the ones spending all the money on that enforcement, it makes no sense to give anyone else a say in how it’s used.

This is nonsensical on its face.

You are suggesting that there would be stuff that the is would want to do internally, but couldn’t, so somehow we need an external body to force us to do it. That’s absurd.

You are essentially just hoping that the international body would force us to do things that our Democratic institutions don’t result in, but that you personally want. But that’s not Democratic at all. That’s just tyranny. And you are handing over that tyrannical per to other countries that you have no control over. It’s absurd.

If you think the us should do stuff, then you vote. Then you elect a government to do that.

There’s litteraly nothing you gain by handing the reigns to someone else.

I mean our Democratic institutions have failed utterly to prosecute dozens, perhaps hundreds of people involved in torture and the murder of civilians during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, so, you know, maybe we do need someone on the outside to give us a push now and again. Bush and Cheney should be behind bars, and instead they’re living large and swapping candies with Michelle Obama.

I recognize the enforcement angle, but let’s not pretend our system of governance is always up to the task of policing itself. Christ, just look at the ongoing Trump saga.

This seems like an interesting discussion of Realpolitik vs more liberal politics. Considering that influence, money, and power cross national boundaries, I am not sure why basic justice shouldn’t.

No, I’m getting that quite clearly. I pointed to it right here:

But this is transparently false, because there is an international court system, and there is not an entire international criminal justice system. So you can have one without the other. It requires national cooperation, but assuming that, it functions. So that’s not an argument against cooperating, is it?

Unlike a government with an administration which illegally seizes people, tortures and kills them; and then is replaced by another administration which suggests we ‘look forward, not backward’ rather than try Very Important People; and then is replaced by another administration which campaigned on the idea that we need more torture. That’s not tyranny at all. That’s freeance and libertitude.

And that’s why it doesn’t work.
Laws and a court with no ability to enforce anything is entirely irrelevant.

This is ridiculously obvious.

If we want to hold those people accountable, THEN WE CAN. Nothing about some external body enables any of this.

Your problem is that you want to do stuff that or country as a whole doesn’t, and so you want to hand over control to some other body in the hopes that they will force your personal will upon the population of our country.

And i use the term “hope” very intentionally, because that’s all it is. Since you have literally zero say in the leadership of other countries, you have no reason to believe that they will actually impose your will.

You have a say in what our government does. It’s just a ridiculous fantasy to think that you’d be better off under the control of some other government that you have less influence over.

On a related note, our government is doing stuff that the majority of its people don’t want but we can’t really do much about it. I mean sure, you can say GO VOTE but the money infesting politics combined with the GOP’s tricks to stay in power are a bit hard to overcome. It’s going to take years to undo the shit that’s being inflicted on the nation right now.

I thought countries entered into mutually binding agreements all the time. The EU, for example. I know there is a unilateralist streak in American psychology but pragmatic international politics is a bit more complex, I thought.

So the real secret to getting your country to change is not to “GO VOTE”, but to “MAKE MORE MONEY” and then use that money to influence politicians and elections.

Want to change the world? All you have to do is become a billionaire and buy your own Senator!

A GIF I made today:

My gf feared this might be interpreted as overly patriotic. For the sake of understanding the joke as intended, please imagine that the flag is screaming at the top of its nonexistent lungs :)