ICC FIRES BACK

The ICC Communications Director, Harpinder Athwal, co-authored a piece that appeared in the Asia Times today called "White House Hobbles World Security." The article appeared first in Foreign Policy in Focus.

One paragraph should catch your eye:

Ending aid meant to strengthen our national security is not the only negative outcome of this adamant campaign for bilateral immunity agreements. In the first part of June, the US administration sent a formal demarche to all 15 European Union member states, declaring that their relations with the US were at risk - not over trade barriers, not over lack of cooperation in the "war on terrorism", not over Iraq or the Middle East, but over the ICC. The European Union had sent letters to candidate countries drawing their attention to EU conclusions about the illegality of the US agreements, a move that this demarche referred to as "unfriendly acts", diplomatic speak usually reserved for openly hostile actions.

American conservatives are likely to dismiss such European complaints as either irrelevant or simply petulant. That strikes me as a mistake.

The statutory basis for the scheme by which countries that don't agree to immunity for Americans will stop receiving funds unless the President grants them a waiver is the American Servicemembers' Protection Act of 2002 (title II of Public Law 107-206), which was part of an appropriations bill in 2002, the text of which you can access here. John Shminkus (R-IL, 19) recently introduced legislation to grant automatic waivers to all countries that have concluded negotiations for entering NATO, but as far as I can tell the bill has not passed. He's also part of the Congressional Baltic Caucus, so it's pretty clear where he's coming from on this one.

It's also worth noting that in addition to giving the President authority to issue waivers on the prohibition of military funding to countries that are party to the ICC, the Armed Servicemembers' Protection Act notes several categories of permanent members in the exclusive club of countries whose military assistance will not be cut off:

(1) a NATO member country;

(2) a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand); or

(3) Taiwan.