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Public Statements Letter to the National Post on the International
Criminal Court By Geoffrey Pearson The recent move by the United States to threaten pulling out of its United Nations peacekeeping duties should not come as surprise to those who have been paying even passing attention to the development and foundation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Both the former and current US administrations have consistently maintained that the United States would not ratify the treaty establishing the Court. But the Bush administration has taken the rejection of the ICC to a whole new level, first announcing, in early May, that the US would not only not ratify the treaty but would also revoke its signature on it and then, on Sunday, vetoing a routine Security Council motion to extend UN peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia for an additional six months. The message that the veto is intended to give is as clear as it is unfortunate: the US will not participate in the quest for global justice so long as its citizens are as likely to be held accountable for international crimes as anyone else’s. This is indeed a regrettable development in the field of international cooperation. The ICC is the first permanent international court with a mandate to try those accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Individual countries always have the first opportunity to prosecute their own citizens for these crimes before they are brought before the Court. While the US decision did not prevent the Court’s entry into force on Monday, which was guaranteed in April when the 60th ratification was received, it does mean, in the words of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, that the United States is “no longer bound in any way to its purpose and objective.” More importantly, the decision sets a dangerous precedent that may undermine prospects for multilateral cooperation in the name of human rights and international justice. The United States, of course, is no stranger to accusations of exceptionalism. It has spurned a variety of virtually universal multilateral agreements relating to everything from arms control to the environment (most recently, it backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and away from the Kyoto Protocol on climate control). But its decision to "unsign" the Rome Statute risks setting a precedent for other governments to either abandon their own multilateral commitments, or to undertake future commitments without any intention of substantively following through. For an international community that still relies more heavily on shared norms of right conduct - and on multilateral enforcement regimes - than on supranational law, the risk is considerable. For the US, the risk is also considerable. Whether or not the political strain between the United States and its allies who support the ICC will hinder ongoing efforts to expand a global coalition against terrorism, the decision will retard (if not undermine) a growing faith in multilateral solutions to the problems that affect us all. As the world's sole remaining superpower, the US may now find itself in a position from which it can afford to opt out of widely accepted multilateral regimes. If history has taught us anything, however, it is that sustained, effective international leadership requires active participation in international regimes.
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