BY MATTHEW DIMMOCK
John Bolton did time in US President Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s. More recently, he was vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a member of the Project for the New American Century, two key components of the "neoconservative" cabal that now runs Washington.
While at the AEI, Bolton firmly and unequivocally stated his opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC), or more precisely, the United States' participation in it.
In a presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 23, 1998, Bolton derided support for the ICC as "emotional appeals to an abstract ideal of an international judicial system". A week earlier, the United Nations had adopted the Rome Statute establishing the ICC, with an overwhelming 120-7 vote in favour (with 21 abstentions).
By December 31, 2000, 139 countries had signed, and 91 ratified, the Rome Statute. US President Bill Clinton also signed the agreement on that day, noting the ICC's "imperfections" and expressing a sincere desire to fix them, no doubt in terms favourable to continued US expansionism.
The Bush administration quickly put an end to that, deciding that refusal to participate in the ICC outright was much simpler, and subsequently "unsigned" the agreement in a letter to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan dated May 6, 2002. It was signed by none other than John Bolton, now US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
Bolton explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1998 that "emotional appeals to an abstract ideal of an international judicial system" are largely based on the "mistaken notion that it traces its intellectual lineage directly back to the Nuremberg (and Tokyo) war crimes trials after World War II". Apparently, it is just coincidence that the ICC's guiding principles resemble in detail those promulgated at the conclusion of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials.
Bolton put into context the success of these trials by listing the unique circumstances under which they came about and from this simply concludes that the ICC is "almost certain to fail", inferring that any universal application of the principles established by these trials is impossible.
Universal applicability
It is an interesting conclusion, especially if one reads the proclamation made by the US prosecutor at the trials, Robert Jackson, who insisted that the Nuremberg principles should be regarded as universal in their applicability: "If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
The current actions of the Bush administration make a mockery of this, arrogantly dismissing the ICC and the jurisdiction of international human rights law over US citizens, and in so doing espousing the double standards Jackson so adamantly rejected. Since "unsigning", the US has set out to undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of the ICC by pressuring other countries to sign bilateral agreements granting immunity to all US citizens.
A major tool used to achieve this is the new American Servicemembers Protection Act, which cuts military aid to countries that refuse to sign a bilateral agreement. Less formal (yet just as serious) threats have also been made, including the withholding of money to disaster relief funds and rural health programs in less-developed countries.
According to a Human Rights Watch press release on July 1, coinciding with a letter of concern sent to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, at least 48 countries have signed Bilateral Immunity Agreements, with 38 of these classified as "less developed" or "least developed" by the United Nations Development Program index. Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at HRW, accuses the US of "acting like schoolyard bullies... The US campaign has not succeeded in undermining global support for the court. But it has succeeded in making the US government look foolish and mean-spirited."
"US officials are engaged in a worldwide campaign pressing small, vulnerable and often fragile democratic governments... Because most ICC member states are democracies with a relatively strong commitment to the rule of law, the threatened aid cut-offs represent a sanction primarily targeting states that abide by democratic values", the HRW letter stated. At the same time, Washington has increased aid to governments with poor human rights records and questionable democratic institutions, all in the name of the "war on terror".
Put simply, US government opposition to the ICC is based on its refusal to forfeit any of its power to an international body, so as to preserve its global dominance and to safeguard it against any future "hindrances" to the expansion of the US empire.
Accordingly, Bolton views advocates of the ICC as motivated "by an unstated agenda" to bind the US to international organisations and therefore leave the US in a "far weaker position internationally". He laments that the ICC is relatively independent of the Security Council, with explicit reference to the veto power of the US. What Bolton is against is a far more democratic and universal forum for the pursuit of international peace and justice, where each member-states enjoy equal rights and where there are no Cold War relics such as the right of veto.
Bush: 'very troubling'
The US wants the issues of international peace and justice to remain the responsibility of the Security Council, which it can effectively control, so that it can define the limits of justice and only pursue cases that hold strategic or other advantages for the US, while ignoring others in which it could be implicated in. In addition, the imperialist and corporate agenda of globalisation can be allowed to continue unabated at the expense of human rights and sustainable development.
It is understandable that Bush finds the prospect of an ICC "very troubling". Speaking to reporters on July 2 last year, he expressed his fear that "as the United States works to bring peace around the world, our diplomats and our soldiers could be drug [sic] into this court". We can assume that he meant to say "dragged", but what is more puzzling is how exactly is the US bringing peace around the world that would warrant Bush to fear an international body also dedicated to peace and justice?
By being unaccountable to the US and its "national interests" and foreign policy objectives, the establishment of the ICC elicits substantial uncertainty and fear among the US political elite. And with good reason, best explained by Bolton: "A fair reading of the treaty leaves one unable to answer with confidence whether the United States would now be accused of war crimes for legitimate but controversial uses of force to protect world peace. No US presidents or their advisors could be assured that they would be unequivocally safe from politicised charges of criminal liability."
If these measures to "protect world peace" were indeed legitimate, why is there a lack of confidence regarding their legality? Why are charges motivated by the sincere pursuit of justice, not political attack or vengeance, automatically deemed impossible? The arrogance inherent in this statement is astounding; it is simply beyond comprehension and even contemplation that a US national could be legitimately brought before the ICC.
The ICC is designed to complement, not inhibit, national legal structures, with the Rome Statute making it explicit that the ICC would step in and investigate or prosecute cases only if countries (both members and non-members) proved "unwilling or unable" to conduct the investigations or prosecutions in a good faith themselves. Therefore, if the US is simply "protecting world peace", as it claims, then it should have no qualms about the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Amnesty International has noted that "our allies do not share our fears", with Britain, America's closest and most vocal ally in the "war on terror" also one of the biggest supporters of the ICC.
US officials are quick to point out their commitment to international justice and accountability, with Powell continuously boasting that the US is "the leader in the world with respect to bringing people to justice", and with the "highest standards of accountability of any nation on the face of the Earth".
If this is true, then its government should have nothing to worry about, for such high standards of accountability ensure non-interference from the ICC. But Washington is worried because professional and respectable ICC judges independent of the Security Council, and hence US control, may discover that some of the world's worst violators of human rights, the most hideous and unrepentant war criminals, could indeed be "US presidents or their advisors". These people have legitimate reasons to fear the wrath of international justice for any crimes they may have committed.
The ICC embodies the hopes for justice of millions of people the world over; a justice that is truly universal, free of double standards and not subject to the economic and geopolitical concerns of the world's elite masters. A crime against humanity is exactly that, and those responsible must be brought to justice regardless of their nationality.
[Matthew Dimmock is a freelance journalist currently living in Thailand.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 17, 2003.
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