ICC AND THE U.S. AS GLOBAL BULLY

The Bush administration suspended military aid to 35 countries that refused to give American military troops waivers from prosecutions by the International Criminal Court. Read the NYT article here, an article in the Globe and Mail here, and an article in Le Monde here.

I think that the administration's moves here look bad. First of all, the Bush administration's general position on the ICC makes the rest of the world suspect that we want to play by our own set of rules. The fear of "frivolous prosecutions" is a term designed more to appeal to the American public (since it resonates with tropes in American political and legal culture) than to refer to any particular problem with the Rome statute itself, since we basically got all the concessions that we wanted during the negotiating rounds. Second of all, the Bush administration has shown its willingness to compromise on this issue anyway by issuing dozens of waivers to countries where continuing military partnerships are in the national interest. So at the end of the day, we end up looking like we're trying to bully Fiji, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Malawi, Ecuador, and the Baltic states -- since we can't actually bully the EU. And everyone knows what you do with bullies: you stand up to them.

For some international coverage of the issue, see this article in El Tiempo and this article in El Pais on Columbia; this article in the Independent online and this article in the Mail and Guardian on South Africa; this article in the Trinidad Express and this article in Newsday; this article in the Barbados Daily Nation; this article in Nacion (Costa Rica); this article (and related coverage) in El comercio and this article in La Hora (Ecuador); this article in Correo (Peru); this article in La Republica en la Red and this article in El Pais (Uruguay); this article in El Universal (Venezuela); this article in the Bulgarian News Network; and this article in the Malta Independent.