According to the founders of the International Criminal Court in Rome have delcared that ‘it marks the turning of a new page in human history’. Setting aside, for a moment, the rather pompous tone, they might well be right. But the question is, exactly what ‘page’ is being turned?
The intention of the Court is to bring perpetrators of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and other ‘crimes against humanity’ to justice regardless of where they are in the world. Their jurisdiction will apply where the domestic courts in question fail to act and they can only act in countries which are signatories to the Rome Treaty establishing the Court.
Certainly these are noble ideals. Who wants to see a world where homicidal regimes can get away with it? Certainly not me but my disquiet is borne from the feeling that it is not quite as simple as that.
Bureaucracies, once established, tend not only to grow but also actively seek reasons for their continued existence and expansion. Just now, it is only the above-mentioned type of activities which are under the ICC’s remit but how long will it be thus circumscribed? A brief to tackle ‘crimes against humanity’ can be interpreted in all manner of ways to cover all manner of policy decisions. A tough anti-immigration policy? A lack of welfare benefits? No nationalised ‘free’ health care? No state education programme? There are no end of people who earnestly believe that such things constitute ‘crimes’.. The ICC may be benign but how long will it stay that way?
This is not just theoretical. Within the last few years the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (a welfare-state cartel) launched a war against ‘money-laundering’ and ‘drug-running’ that morphed almost seamlessly into a campaign (led particularly by France and Sweden) against what they laughably referred to as ‘unfair tax competition’. The justification for this neo-imperialism was that small countries providing tax havens were ‘undermining the democracy’ of countries such as France and Sweden. The result of this was that little countries like Malta, Leichtenstein, the Cayman Islands and Monaco were threatened with everything short of war in order to comply with the demands of the OECD for banking transparency and other domestic changes of law. They had no choice but to toe the line.
Thus the ‘quest for global justice’ becomes the imposition of agendas.
There are even greater dangers than this, though. No criminal code is enforceable without armed agents to act in its name. This leaves the ICC reliant on the military muscle of big powers to act as its appointed ‘police force’. But, as we have seen, in a world of complex alliances and interests, that is rarely going to be available. In time the ICC will demand it’s own ‘police force’ to act independently of nation-state interests. And that is a recipe for war without end.
I say this because, does anybody imagine that Slobodan Milosevic would be facing a War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague today had he had a nuclear arsenal at his disposal? At the risk of upsetting some people, the answer has to be no. It is for that same reason that Vladimir Putin will never have to answer for the Russian Army’s activities in Chechnya and Ariel Sharon remains impervious to the plaintiff cries of the ‘international community’.
This is a lesson which will not have been lost on other nations. The message is, if you want to retain your independence, sovereignty and autonomy of action then you better get yourself heavily armed and, preferably, nuclear armed. When you possess both the ability and the will to vaporise a big chunk of the planet, the ‘international community’ is left grumbling and impotent.
I have no doubt that the formation of the ICC was driven by good intentions, by the best of intentions. Unfortunately, they are exactly the kind of intentions that so often pave the road to hell.
