More than half of the countries - members of the ICC, the International Criminal Court, expressed outrage at the “hitting” of Americans at this important court of justice. President Trump was dissatisfied with the ICC's timid steps against American and Israeli war crimes and, not limited to statements, ordered the arrest of bank deposits and the abolition of visas for judges and the ICC apparatus. Like, before you condemn us, we will condemn you. Such impudence could not but outrage the other signatories of the Rome Statute, and there are no less than 123 sovereign states. America (and Israel) tend to consider themselves God's chosen, not like everyone else, not subject to the judgment of lower individuals. This approach is annoying and makes international justice ineffective.
Before Trump, the US position was exactly the same. Back in 2002, the Americans adopted a law allowing them to use military force to release persons arrested by the ICC. They always believed that the ICC, and other courts, did not have the right to judge Americans and Israelis, no matter what crimes they committed.
The ICC generally took into account this position of the “only superpower” in the post-Soviet world and carefully avoided sharp corners. They wanted to preserve this authority and cope with little excesses on the ground, at the same time not messing with too large criminals. They did not undertake such matters as US aggression against Iraq and Libya. Every time judges were pointed out the atrocious crimes of Americans in Afghanistan (which is worth at least the kidnapping of hundreds of Afghans and their removal to the terrible prisons of Guantanamo and the torture chambers of the CIA in Poland, Lithuania and other countries) and Israelis in Palestine (with thousands of children and women killed ), they usually carefully put these cases on the back burner or stated that, supposedly, such an investigation did not contribute to the cause of justice.
The ICC was eager to judge the Africans. So eagerly that the Africans became angry and began to call him "the court of colonialists." And the ICC white gentlemen tried not to annoy.
But the situation was unstable, and it was shaken from two sides. The idea of God's chosenness and jurisdiction of Americans and Israelis not only annoyed, but also seemed outdated in the era of multipolarity. The United States was no longer the only superpower, and the demands to apply the same laws to them as to all mortals began to sound louder. On the other hand, President Trump became the head of the United States, who acted like an elephant in a china shop, not even accepting the gutta-percha restrictions of international organizations. He withdrew the United States from the Human Rights Committee, from the WTO court, from WHO and decided to give a powerful counter to the ICC.
Already what these organizations were meek, how carefully they took into account American interests, but Trump was not enough. He wanted them to follow his commands like trained poodles. And other members of the world community liked it less and less.
It may well be that President Trump wants to bring down the entire international legal architecture, including the UN, and restore peace to the 19th century, in an era of absolute dominance of power and power blocs. This, of course, is unpleasant. We are somehow accustomed to a somewhat hypocritical, but useful system for protecting human rights.
Yet hypocrisy is a step forward in comparison with overt cannibalism. And Trump, with his frankness, leads humanity into such a gloomy jungle that we are sad about the hypocrites. Moreover, there is an alternative - from hypocrisy to go not back to cannibalism, but forward to international respect for law.
This is the position of Russia. Russia is proud of its sovereignty, and respects the sovereignty of other sovereign states, and recognizes the superiority of law over arbitrariness. If, in response to prosecution, countries arrest judges, the legal process will be impossible. But while the United States and Israel remain untouched, there is no sense for Russia to persuade you to the yoke of The Hague. Russia, China and India, following the United States, found themselves outside the Rome Statute, but unlike the United States, Russia cooperates with the ICC, as, for example, in the proceedings on the events in South Ossetia in 2008 (it was practically frozen when Georgia stopped cooperating with ICCOM).
The ICC was desperately careful. Even with regard to Afghanistan, the ICC basically brought to justice the members of the Taliban *, only hitting the Americans at the very edge. And only this year, under pressure from the world community, the ICC decided to tackle American crimes. Then Trump's decree fluttered.
Can the court in The Hague recover from this blow? Has humanity ripened to create a single international legal authority? It is difficult to give an unconditional positive answer. The idea arose long ago; among the pioneers was the Russian emperor Nicholas II; while there was a cold war, it was not worth counting on, and only after the fall of the USSR did things slowly move away - and ended with the advent of a multipolar world. However, the position of the majority of the ICC members against the steps of the United States indicates that the people of the world would like to have effective justice that would besiege the aggressors and deter war criminals. Russia fully shares these aspirations.
* “Taliban” - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of February 14, 2003.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.