My question, though, is does pushing these kinds of toothless resolutions make any difference beyond showing that the ICC essentially has no power to enforce its warrants?
It's clear that the most powerful militaries in the world (US, Russia, essentially China too) have declared the "rules-based world order" dead. Does it do anyone any good to pretend this hasn't happened? It reminded me of the post Elizabeth Warren put out complaining that Trump was breaking the law because he didn't sign some ethics pledge: https://x.com/SenWarren/status/1856046118322188573. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. All Warren was doing was showing how pointless these laws are when there are no consequences for breaking them.
The rules-based world order was always a bit of convenient fiction, but I'm afraid it's a fiction that a large part of the world no longer believes in anymore.
> My question, though, is does pushing these kinds of toothless resolutions make any difference beyond showing that the ICC essentially has no power to enforce its warrants?
Absolutely this matters.
This effectively limits where Netanyahu and Gallant can travel to. That's a big deal for a head of state. It sends a signal to all of Europe to be wary of doing business with Israel, which is a big deal.
We also don't know if there are any hidden warrants for other Israelis, and more importantly, if this is a precedent for future warrants. If the court starts issuing warrants for other IDF military personnel, that becomes a huge negative for Israelis.
At some point Netanyahu will be out of power. He's been voted out of office before. He's in trouble politically. He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead. The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.
But I think some of your analysis is really incorrect, unfortunately.
> He's been voted out of office before.
Yes, he was out of power for about a year of the last 15 or so years, and got back into power.
> He's in trouble politically.
True, and I hope it stays that way. However the elections are still two years away, there doesn't seem to be any pathway to forcing the elections to happen sooner, and he is gaining ground, not losing it. It is very much a possibility that he holds on to power.
> He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead.
I'm not sure he actually promised a short war. That said, the war against Lebanon is probably the most successful thing he's done in terms of restoring his power. It's entirely possible that acting more aggressively against more enemies is a winning strategy for him.
> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.
This basically reads as completely wrong to me. Almost every politician on every side of the aisle in Israel has condenmed the ICC. The intrusion into Israeli sovereignity is a big blow to Israel, implying that Israel's democracy isn't trusted to hold people accountable by ourselves.
Even if privately opposition leaders would want Netanyahu gone, giving him up would be suicide politically.
> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.
That seems very unlikely. If the next gov really hates him they might prosecute him domestically (the things he is accused of are all illegal under israeli law), but i can't imagine they would hand him to the icc.
Not just because that would look bad, but also because icc is supposed to be a court of last resort only to be used where domestic courts fail.
There was already a cold war with Iran before Oct 7, and many warned it could pop any moment. It could be said to the detriment of Netanyahu that he ignored that and didn't want this on his watch. Iran was priming and planning for a moment where a joint Hezbollah-Hamas ground invasion would have put the Israeli military to a stress beyond its means, and with many thousands casualties on the first day. It would have happened sooner or later if it wasn't for the Hamas independent action.
Also, on Oct 2023 he and other officials said it is going to be a long battle from the beginning. He never once promised this to be short. And also, a clear victory from a long war gets him more electorates, so he aligns his own victory with Israel's.
It will not happen to that next administration would turn over Netanyahu to the ICC. Even if they wanted to, he would seek asylum in the U.S. Embassy and he would certainly be granted asylum.
One thing I've learned these past 20 years: when an awful political leader seems to obviously be undergoing a downfall and on their way out of power, you can be sure they'll be there 20 years later. And they'll outlive all of us too, even if they're already geriatric.
> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC
The next person to win a fight for a most exclusive position may decide it should be of substantially less value.. But usually only as a tactic to get the position.
International crime or not, the long war with Iran like the long war with Russia is not a choice by Biden/netanyahu. It is always Iran here … can Iran promise a short one. Russia will as well. Just no Isreal or Ukraine.
I have no idea how to resolve this. It is a mess. But one side needs to be PC and the other side was constrained to do this and that. When is icc warrant on putin and get him really arrested.
We hope for peace, rule based … but that is hope. One side disarming will not help.
> We also don't know if there are any hidden warrants for other Israelis
Honest question, are "hidden" warrants a thing at the ICC? Seems like it would be difficult, as the ICC doesn't have an enforcement arm of its own, so I would think warrant information would need to be circulated to all the treaty signers, at which case it would be pretty impossible to keep hidden. I tried searching but couldn't find anything - all the results were just about this Netanyahu situation.
>What this really does is remove the ICC's authority.
Not yet. The UK and Italy both declared that they would be legally obligated to abide by the decision, which is unprecendented and historic in itself. Sure, Netanyahu could call their bluff and go to these places, and if they backpedal, then it would undermine the ICC's authority like you said. But Netanyahu would have to call their bluff for that to happen, or they would have to do an about-face before he arrives.
But until then, I would suggest that even the fact that just two well known western democracies quickly backed the ICC's authority (regardless of what they thought of the ruling) just gave the ICC more authority than it ever had before.
> It sends a signal to all of Europe to be wary of doing business with Israel, which is a big deal.
They can resume business once Netanyahu is gone.
In fact Viktor Orban has already invited him to Hungary to the dismay of EU officials. His plane would need permission to fly in other countries' airspace anyway so it would be qiite a risky stunt.
I'd argue that the "rules-based world order" as most people perceive it never really existed. Some will say that it existed for a brief moment in the 90s-2000s. Back then, most countries played nice with the international treaties even if there were no penalties for noncompliance, right? No - it just appeared that way. The 90s and 2000s were a unipolar world, the peak of the American Empire, and America made it eminently clear what would happen if you didn't get in line. If you're a small irrelevant country you would comply with the Treaty on Migratory Slugs or the Convention on Widgets not because of any written penalties, but because to not comply would be to reject the single world power and bear its wrath.
Now we're back to the state of the world as it has always been - multipolar - and it has once more become obvious that things only matter when backed up by force, leverage, and incentives. Look at things with teeth behind them - NATO borders, export controls and ASML, artificial islands in the South China Sea, control of Hong Kong, Russia in Syria or any of the other treaties with military bases. There are papers and laws and declarations on both sides of all of those things, but real-world control always follows force, leverage and incentives.
The UN mediation and general work in Palestine was objectively a failure.
Korea... it preserved South Korea's dictator in power, which allowed for a modern democratic and prosperous South Korea to happen. Back then it was little more than protecting the US-backed dictator against the Soviets-backed one. Both were pretty terrible and murderous.
In regard to Korea -- it was also about the principle of maintaining recognized borders, and their involiability. The UN was also instrumental in bringing the conflict to an end (along with Stalin's death and the general state of exhaustion on both sides -- but nonetheless, it was instrumental). And yes, they were both awful dictatorships at the time (and the South would continue to be, for decades to come) -- but's also not like there isn't a considerable difference between the two societies, now, generations later.
Palestine - many failures, but there've also been many important resolutions that have kept the conflict (at least somewhat) framed in terms of the RBWO and the rights of the region's indigenous inhabitants.
We also have the Geneva Conventions, etc.
So in sum - yes, many failures, but on balance I see the glass as more half-full than half-empty, on this issue.
The Nuremberg Trials were backed by the most force the world had ever known! And even then, the Allies wiped their ass with the rules (that they mostly made up ex post facto) and grabbed any Nazis that were useful and plenty that were not. Even putting aside all the Paperclip scientists, who absolutely knew what they were involved with, the US took plenty of SS officers - Otto von Bolschwing, Klaus Barbie, Alois Brunner, etc. Everyone violated their own “rules” left and right and occasionally, if they could be bothered, made up justifications later. This is not a controversial view: in fact the contemporary British opinion was that you can’t make up laws ex post facto and the Nazis should just be executed. The Soviets anticipated a show trial and their “judges” did nothing before phoning Moscow first. The Nuremberg trials were the 1940s legal equivalent of Calvinball.
To the mediators, I’m unsure why that would be an example. We’ve had mediators for a very long time and UN mediation is only the latest flavor of that.
I mean a tiny proportion of nazi war criminals were ever prosecuted and the (covertly pro-nazi) West German government pardoned pretty much everyone who weren’t executed in a handful of years.
Also the Soviets (and even the Allies) continued doing whatever they wanted with no consequences.
Of course at least establishing a clear precedent was a huge achievement.
> I'd argue that the "rules-based world order" as most people perceive it never really existed. Some will say that it existed for a brief moment in the 90s-2000s. Back then, most countries played nice with the international treaties even if there were no penalties for noncompliance
The utter disrespect for the CFE treaty during that period is exactly what got us the Ukraine war right now.
No, Putin's decision to launch the full-scale invasion in 2022 is what "got us" the war in Ukraine right now.
None of his claimed grievances in regard to the CFE Treaty amount to casus belli, by any rational metric. And they certainly weren't the core of what ultimately moved him to make that decision. They were just another part of his giant smokescreen, basically.
As his Deputy Foreign Minister put the matter, quite succinctly:
Bondarev also recalled that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov screamed at US officials, including First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, stating that ”[Russia] needs Ukraine” and that Russia will not ”go anywhere without Ukraine” during a dinner amidst the bilateral US-Russian strategic stability talks in Geneva on January 10, 2022.[67] Bondarev added that Rybakov vulgarly demanded that the US delegation ”get out with [their] belongings [to the 1997 borders]” as US officials called for negotiations.
"The ICJ is at least holding out against that future."
ICJ? Are you implying that what I said, implied or inferred was against the ICC?
Let me be clear, I nether said, meant nor inferred any of those things. In fact I'm in favor of the ICC despite the fact it's a paper tiger in areas where it's most needed.
Edit: that said, like many, I've some criticisms all of which other comments have echoed. Like most things the ICC is a compromise in an imperfect world, it's better than nothing though.
Justice is self hypnosis and self idealization that settles in when there is plenty to go around. If there isn't its just a threatening word , whose values is mostly "we get you all when the good times roll back around ." Which they usually don't do unless there are major scientific breakthroughs generating surplus and a amnesty after armistice.
Reflecting on these words, it’s clear that many people take a “realist” perspective on power in and between human societies, and see no reason at all to strive to create better conditions for all or even most humans.
My take: it’s a luxury position that probably only makes sense if you’ve been a winner in the birth lottery of the global elite. They are the enablers of power-for-power’s sake populists and dead-eyed bureaucrats because they are certain, at least until too late, that bad things won’t happen to them of their loved ones.
"Justice has to be declared as an essential principle of human organisation."
Rereading your post days later perhaps I should have added to mine that justice has long been essential for the proper functioning of society.
Likely the quintessential example of just how long justice has been considered important to societies comes from a text written over two millennia ago—Plato's Republic.
Plato considers justice so significant that he begins in Book I to ask 'What is Justice?' and then goes on to explain why it is so important to society. Therein, he constructs one of the most satisfying and logical debates ever written.
Plato pits the sophist Thrasymachus up against the philosopher Socrates in a battle of wits. Thrasymachus opens with a salvo of reasons why justice is everyman for himself and bit by bit Socrates systematically demolishes Thrasymachus' arguments and rebuilds them into the notion that justice is much broader and more important concept—a matter for society as a whole to embrace rather than the sophist's narrow, selfish view which only has self-interest in mind.
This is a wonderful dialogue and I've read it many times since I first learned about it in philosophy decades ago. And I'd posit that it has survived for so long throughout the ages because so many consider what it has to say about justice as being too important for it to be lost.
Not only do I consider Plato's take on justice just as important now as when it was written but also this cleverly constructed dialogue ought to be taken as a template for how political debate should be conducted both on and off the internet instead of the disorganized rabblerousing where only the loudest and outrageous are heard, as is so often the case nowadays.
There are many copies of the Republic in English on the internet, perhaps the best known is Benjamin Jowett's translation/revision of 1888 (it's the version I learned from). Here's a link to that copy on Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55201/55201-h/55201-h.htm
Edit: this MIT version is better formatted for smartphones and other mobile devices but it's sans intro (Gutenberg and the MIT download versions do have the full intro, foreword etc., but that's not necessary except for diehards and students):
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html
If they just wanted to hop on a regular commercial flight to the US that might be a problem, but I'd expect they would fly on military aircraft.
Instead of taking the most direct route which would fly over Europe they could stay over the Mediterranean until they reach the Atlantic and then head straight to the US.
That adds about 500 miles or so to the trip which probably isn't a big deal on a trip that long.
Now I'm wondering if airspace spreads out horizontally from the coast the same way that shipping rights do.
I'd assume so, but a quick skim-read didn't tell me either way.
If it does, then they'd pick between going through Spanish or Moroccan airspace, because the straights of Gibraltar are narrow enough you can see Africa from Gibraltar.
From what I've read, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea when you have things like that strait where it is the only reasonable route between two bodies of international water ships and planes that are traveling between those two bodies have the right to pass through unimpeded.
If you want to do something other than just a continuous and expeditious passage through the strait than you do need permission from the bordering countries and have to obey their rules. But if you are just going straight (no pun intended) through then it legally counts as being on the high seas all the way through.
Presumably if they get invited to Europe it will be with assurance from the state that nothing happens to them. And traveling uninvited is probably a bad move anyway. So not much difference.
If you mean to imply that Europe is somehow going to shoot down their planes if they fly over that’s obviously absurd.
Specially when half the Israeli population hates your guts (probably a higher proportion among secular Israelis who are likely over-represented among aircraft maintenance personnel) and could accidentally on purpose forget a spanner in the jet engine...
From what I've read the Strait of Gibraltar is covered by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which guarantees ships and planes that are just traveling through to get from one area of international waters to another area of international waters the right to do so without interference.
You will find that you'll get much better discussions if you do some introspection on how you might misinterpret someone when you think someone says something that you think is 'obviously absurd'. Why would they say something that is obviously absurd?
Maybe it is more revealing that you jump to the obviously absurd interpretation rather than the even more obvious, and not absurd one?
Putin went to Mongolia, which is a signatory to the Rome statute establishing the ICC, without being arrested.
President Orbán of Hungary also extended an open invitation to Netanyahu despite the ICC arrest warrant, but he isnt' exactly known for being a stickler for the rule of law.
"Invitations" for government officials are pretty much invitations in name only.
Many of the emails of Assad and his government have been leaked and show in great detail how various governments interact with each other. And how Assad ran his country by forwarding NYT articles...
Should Russia’s military really be included among the most powerful in the world? They haven’t been able to defeat Ukraine which is much smaller and weaker. On paper Russia is a dominant military power but in reality their equipment is poorly maintained, their training seems limited, and the leadership full of nepotism or incompetence.
China likely has a much better army, but it’s hard to say without a large scale conflict. Hopefully we won’t find out.
Lots of things that have a real effect in the world are a convenient fiction. The fact that most people on the planet believe that the small paper rectangles printed by the US government have some value, is a consensual belief simultaneously held but no less a fiction.
The rules based order of the world was once something people believed in, and therefore expected others to conform to. Until they didn’t (for lots of reasons all of which cumulatively perturbed the system such that it’s flipped from a stable state and into a meta-stable state).
There are a finite amount of the small paper rectangles available (yes the supply is increasing, but it is finite at any moment) AND these small paper rectangles are required in order for US residents/citizens that earn income in any currency in order to stay out of prison. So, in other words, not a fiction.
And yet not all pieces of paper are believed to be equal. Some pieces of paper will buy you a loaf of bread and others will buy you a tank full of gas. The difference lies in the magic squiggles printed on the pieces of paper. In other words, the belief that a certain number value equals a fair exchange for a physical good or service. This is a consensual belief. If an extra 0 appeared magically overnight on every piece of paper, what has changed? People will believe they have “more” than they did before. If instead of magic, the government announced a policy of reissuing recycled bits of paper that have had an extra zero printed on them, would people believe they had “more”?
Bear in mind that most of the time, sanctions not only prevent you from doing business with the sanctioned entity, but also with any other entity that's doing business with them.
It definitely does; my point is that sanctions aren't very granular (essentially like surgery with a spade), and make life miserable for a whole bunch of people and companies that you didn't want to sanction. Of course, you inflict a lot of damage to yourself as well, as we're experiencing in Europe currently.
But the whole bureaucratic issues are not to be underestimated. At some point, the US eased the sanctions on Iran a bit (under Obama I think), and my former colleague tells me that quite a few European companies were up for doing business with Iran (related to your regular old passenger cars in that case). At some point the sanctions got reinstated, and several German and French companies were threatened with sanctions if not outright sanctioned. My former employer (before my time there) had 2 projects worth ~$5M (of 2010s US dollars, not the monopoly money I earn now) total with some of these companies, and both were axed, even though the company itself had absolutely nothing to do with Iran. They got some compensation, but like not even 10%. Apparently, the whole sanctions thing is considered a "special case" in contracts.
It does, actually. Secondary sanctions are an impediment to free trade and frequently argued to contravene against international law as a result. You could take it up at the WTO if the US didn't just destroy it a couple years ago.
I think you are agreeing with that. There is not some international law that says countries must deal.with countries they don't want to. It's a national thing.
The rules-based order was always a fiction; international law is a tool used solely against America’s enemies.
This arrest warrant could be executed in a day if the US would stop supporting this genocide, but that won’t happen. They will sooner invite Netanyahu back to the UN to order more air strikes on refugees.
The standard isn't harm, it's war crimes. There is clear evidence that Israel deliberately withheld food and medicine from civilians in a calculated manner, which is a war crime that no one is alleging in the fight against ISIS.
There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States. If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries. Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.
> If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries.
It could possibly conquer many countries by largely destroying them as was done to Germany and Japan, but since the US is a democracy and a sizable portion of its people have morals and aren't sociopaths, it's politically impossible to fight a war this way in the modern era without some kind of extreme provocation. Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.
And even back when America did pretty well take the gloves off, doing nearly everything it could short of nuclear weapons in Korea and Vietnam, it still couldn't win. So I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that any decent-sized country could be conquered easily even if the 'will' was there.
Fair enough. I guess my point is that even if military and political leaders did want to take this approach, they'd face massive popular resistance. So it kind of depends on what you mean when you say a country 'wants' something.
To wit, some ~60% of Americans currently oppose offensive arms sales to Israel[1], and yet it continues. Would you say America wants this to happen?
<< There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States.
Yes. However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working. Now even that pretense is gone.
<< Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.
Eh. No. I am not sure where the concept this weird concept of 'bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from. I accept your premise that some of it is the question of will, but you have to admit that two decades with nothing to show for it is not.. great.
> bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from.
To be clear, bombing is not colonizing. Colonizing entails undoing the current culture and replacing it with your own. You don't replace culture with bombs, but rather by taking the young people, educating them in America, and then shipping them back a la Britain (among other things). You have to do this for several decades, or maybe even a century, maybe multiple centuries.
This is a weirdly interesting distinction. Can you elaborate a little on this point? I am not sure what I think yet, but I am curious what you think could have been done differently in Iraq ( or Vietnam for that matter ).
It's clear that the most powerful militaries in the world (US, Russia, essentially China too) have declared the "rules-based world order" dead. Does it do anyone any good to pretend this hasn't happened? It reminded me of the post Elizabeth Warren put out complaining that Trump was breaking the law because he didn't sign some ethics pledge: https://x.com/SenWarren/status/1856046118322188573. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. All Warren was doing was showing how pointless these laws are when there are no consequences for breaking them.
The rules-based world order was always a bit of convenient fiction, but I'm afraid it's a fiction that a large part of the world no longer believes in anymore.