Video Infoblog: US threatened to invade International Criminal Court. Now it loves ICC for targeting Putin
the international criminal court is the perfect symbol of just how unfair the global political system is today the European powers that colonize the world and the United States which has waged Wars all across the world basically live by a separate set of rules and then they impose another set of rules on the rest of the planet and they use biased institutions like the international criminal court to force other countries to abide by those separate principles it really is the West verse the rest the United States is not even a party to the Rome statute which established the international criminal court and yet the United States is now praising the international criminal court for issuing an arrest warrant against the Russian President Vladimir Putin now the same week that the international criminal court which is led by a British Chief prosecutor the same week that he issued this arrest warrant for Putin it was the 20th anniversary of the U.S invasion of Iran which even the former U.N Secretary General Kofi Annan made very clear was a blatant violation of international law and yet no U.S government officials have been held to account for the massive crime against humanity they committed in Iraq that led to more than one million Iraqis dying in this war of aggression and yet the same week the U.S government President Joe Biden praises the ICC which the United States is not a member of again I want to stress this it's not even a member of the ICC and yet the U.S praises the ICC for this arrest warrant against Putin it would be difficult for this to be more hypocritical considering the fact that as recently as 2020 the U.S government imposed sanctions on top international criminal court officials including the former Chief prosecutor who is from Gambia the current chief prosecutor is now a British national and is linked to right-wing politics in Britain it's even more Preposterous when you consider that that same year in 2020 the former CIA director turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a rant in which he condemned the ICC which is the the abbreviation of the international criminal court quote as a so-called Court which is revealing itself to be a nakedly political body again so this is under three years ago less than three years ago the U.S was a attacking the ICC as a so-called Court the U.S said we oppose any effort by the eicc to exercise jurisdiction over U.S Personnel we will not tolerate its inappropriate and unjust attempts to investigate or prosecute Americans he said we want to identify those responsible for this partisan investigation and their family members so the state department was threatening the family members of ICC officials and the U.S government referred to the ICC as an embarrassment saying we are exposing and confronting its abuses so that's what the U.S government was saying in 2020 and yet now because a British prosecutor is in charge who has been biased and is now doing these political cases against Putin the U.S is now singing the Praises of the international criminal court in fact Mike pompeo's successor the current Secretary of State Anthony blinken is pressuring other countries to comply with the ICC arrest warrant against Putin this is Reuters reporting that U.S Secretary of State Anthony blinken urged all members of the international criminal court to comply with an arrest warrant that the court issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin this was on March 22nd two days after the 20th anniversary of the U.S invasion of Iraq again not a single U.S official has been held to account for this I I need to again stress how absurd how hypocritical it is that the U.S is not a member of the ICC and yet the U.S government is pressuring members to comply with this arrest warrant that the U.S technically legally doesn't recognize because it's again against Putin now it's pretty easy to point out that Donald Trump administration's hypocrisy but this is also a clear example of the Biden administration's hypocrisy because well Pompeo under Trump is the one who imposed sanctions on the ICC blinken removed those sanctions and claimed that the U.S was going to support the court and yet in 2021 under the Lincoln State Department under President Biden the state department released a statement condemning the ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories and Anthony blinken he first of all he referred to it as the Palestinian situation which is absolutely absurd I'll come back to that later but it shows this euphemism it's Israeli war crimes committed and occupied Palestine and in order to to delegitimize the investigation that the ICC had opened into Israeli war crimes Anthony blinken said the ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter Israel is not a party to the ICC see and has not consented to the Court's Jurisdiction well neither is Russia and neither is the United States so once again it shows the outrageous hypocrisy where one day the U.S says the ICC is bad because we don't like it because it's going after our closest Ally Israel and the next day it says the ICC is good because now it's going after Russia even though neither the United States nor Russia nor Israel is a member of the ICC I'll talk further about this in a second because he also Anthony blinken says that that the ICC investigation of Israel is not valid because the Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state so here we have the U.S also admitting that it doesn't consider Palestine to be an actual state so it just shows the hypocrisy the U.S always says one thing and does something completely different and as if that hypocrisy weren't already enough in 2002 the U.S government passed a law that is known as the Hague Invasion act and even Human Rights Watch which is a biased billionaire oligarch funded Western Group that's very biased in the interests of the United States in the west even they admitted in 2002 that this is completely outrageous they noted that U.S President George Bush signed into law the American Service members protection act of 2002 which is intended to intimidate countries that ratify the treaty for the international criminal court the new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or a citizen of a U.S Allied country being held by the court which is located in The Hague and that's known as The Hague Invasion clause and it actually angered the Netherlands where the heck is based which is ostensibly a U.S Ally so not only does the U.S refuse to become a member of the ICC but quite literally the U.S government says in its law that it reserves the so-called right unilaterally to militarily invade the Netherlands invade the Hague and remove not only any U.S citizen but an Israeli a French citizen a British anyone who that the U.S deems to be important to U.S national security the U.S says it's going to invade the international criminal court to prevent the Hague from trying from Prosecuting them for their war crimes this is the definition of a rogue state if this is not being a rogue State no country on earth is a rogue State the United States frequently claims that Iran and China and Russia and Venezuela are supposedly Rogue States but this is the perfect example of what an actual Rogue state is now the cherry on top of this hypocrisy is that the Pentagon the U.S Department of Defense has also been preventing the bite Administration from sharing evidence of supposed Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine with the ICC because as the New York Times put it U.S military leaders fear that they could set a precedent that could wave pave the way for U.S war crimes to be prosecuted so while Biden is publicly praising the ICC and blinken is publicly praising the ICC for the arrest warrant against Putin the Pentagon is blocking cooperation with the ICC because they don't want to be prosecuted for their own war crimes one set of rules for the U.S another set of rules for everyone else this is the reality of the so-called rules-based order this is a map of the countries that recognize the international criminal court officially and they did this in 1998 by signing the Rome statute that established the ICC you can see the United States originally signed it but then the George Bush Administration removed the U.S signature so for 20 years the U.S has not been a member of the international criminal court it is not a party neither is Russia neither is India neither is Saudi Arabia neither is China Indonesia is not either now before I move on here I want to explain something very important that is not often very well conveyed the international criminal court is a very new institution it was only officially opened in 2002. it's just over 20 years old and the Rome statute that laid the foundations is only from 1998 and the international criminal court is not a United Nations body it's very important to emphasize this the United Nations does have a legal or organ a legal arm that is the international court of justice the icj what's confusing is both the international criminal court the ICC which is not a U.N body and the international court of justice the icj which is a U.N body both of them are based in The Hague which is Den Hogg in the Netherlands the city so that's what's confusing about it when people refer to the Hague they could mean the icj or the ICC but there is a reason that the ICC was created one the ICC is it has basically been a tool of Western governments and the ICC is used to go after individuals whereas the icj has been used to litigate cases between states and in 1986 the international court of justice the U.N organ found the U.S government guilty of violating international law and war crimes for putting Minds in Nicaragua's ports and supporting the Contra fascist Terror death squads that were backed by the CIA that murdered and tortured civilians found the United States guilty and said that the United States owes Nicaragua billions of dollars worth of reparations and yet what was Washington's response because the United States is a permanent member of the U.N security Council the U.S used its veto to Brock to block any enforcement of the icj case so that is to say that because the icj the international court of justice is a U.N organ and because the U.S is a permanent member of the U.N security Council which is the enforcement mechanism and has a veto power the U.S can block the icj if the U.S doesn't like a case so the ICC was established as a separate institution because the the way that the U.N security Council is set up giving the U.S Britain France Russia and China permanent seats and veto power it basically prevents any major case from the icj from going forward if you know that history of the U.S government blocking the enforcement of the icj ruling in the Nicaragua case in 1986 it makes perfect sense why the international criminal court is by many countries in the global South seen as a completely illegitimate and neo-colonial institution now if you want to know what the ICC really is this article from the Los Angeles Times says it very clearly only Africans have been tried at the court for the worst crimes on Earth this is from back in 2016 it's slightly changed since then but basically not really it's essentially the same since the Inception of the international criminal court in 2002 only Africans have been brought to trial it's completely ludicrous how is this legitimate in any way so if you looked at the cases which is a small number of cases that the ICC has done since it was officially opened in 2002 almost all of them were against Africans you would think that the only criminals in the world are Africans this explains why so many African countries have campaigned against the ICC and have even left the ICC this is a report in CBC mainstream Canadian State media in 2016 international criminal court faces Exodus of African nations over charges of racism it notes that three African nations wanted to withdraw from the court alleging that the ICC is racist and Burundi Gambia and South Africa all said that they plan on withdrawing and they said that the ICC unfairly focuses on Africa gambia's information Minister said the action is warranted by the fact that the ICC despite being called the international criminal court is in fact an international Caucasian court for the prosecution and humiliation of people of color especially Africans so according to Gambia the real name of the ICC is the international Caucasian court and the article pointed out critics note that only that nine out of the ten cases currently under investigation by the ICC are based in Africa 90 as of 2016 of the cases were against Africans so it's very easy to see why they were so critical of the ICC in 2017 in fact the African Union called on members to have a mass withdrawal from the international criminal court this is the BBC reporting the African Union has called for the mass withdrawal of member states from the ICC and some states did it in 2016 Gambia withdrew from the international criminal Court South Africa also withdrew from the ICC although in 2017 its high court revoked that ruling it overturned it and prevented it from withdrawing I want to briefly look here at an article in the conversation which is an academic focused website and this is by everesto benera who is a professor at the department of political science at the University of South Africa and it's called how colonialism's Legacy continues to plague the international criminal court he pointed out that the previous ICC prosecutor not the current British one but the previous one was herself a gambian although she was a Critic and opposer of the government um her name was fatou bensula and he pointed out that despite the fact that an African was in charge of the ICC ostensibly during her tenure all of the 12 cases that were tried were against Africans so this is an example of you know you know neoliberals frequently say the solution to systemic racism is putting a a proportionate represent representation of black people and Latinos and women and Etc in positions of power but not fundamentally changing the institutions that exist well here's an example of the international criminal court having an African in charge and yet it continued the very same neocolonial racist practices of before because having you know faces in high places doesn't change the systemic institutions themselves that are deeply unjust this professor at the University of South Africa points out that there is a resilience of colonialism that has hampered the ICC he referred to the court as a colonial project and said it represents the current asymmetrical relationship between the former colonizers and the formerly colonized people which is a continuation of colonialism executed in other forms you can call it neocolonialism and he says the international criminal court has simply gone down a neo-colonial path and it carefully avoids power politics by navigating around the world's superpowers and their allies and instead only focuses on Prosecuting Africans although now we see that it's going against the West's big Boogeyman Putin well George Bush is painting in his mansion without suffering any consequences for launching an illegal war that killed more than one million Iraqis I also want to stress The Point again that the former un Secretary General Kofi Annan said very clearly that the U.S invasion of Iraq was illegal and violated the U.N Charter so if the U.N security Council was not set up in such an unjust way where the U.S could block any ruling using its veto power the U.S could very well be taken to the international court of justice and tried for the war crimes it committed in Iraq but of course we know that the U.S won't be well and now that I've established that the international criminal court has a noted history of extreme bias against the global South and particularly Africa I also want to look at other comments made by U.S officials especially in the Donald Trump Administration where the ICC finally opened an investigation into war crimes committed in Afghanistan at that time the war was still going on the 20-year U.S war in Afghanistan and in response to the ICC for the first time ever opening an investigation into war crimes committed by the U.S military the U.S Secretary of State and Mike Pompeo went berserk he was extremely Furious and he said that the ICC think that they ought to be able to haul these young men and women in we will never let that happen we're look working among many fronts to prevent it from happening so he's saying we'll never allow the ICC to prosecute U.S soldiers but this article in Politico points out that it wasn't just the beginning it wasn't just the Donald Trump Administration that began this attack against the ICC the George Bush Administration also launched a full frontal attack on the ICC in 2002 when the Bush Administration announced it would withdraw from the Rome statute that established the ICC John Bolton who was a top state department official called it quote the happiest moment of my government service and Donald Trump showed how he was supposedly resisting the Deep state by bringing on John Bolton to be his National Security adviser John Bolton was one of the main architects of the Iraq War John Bolton was he is the pope of neoconservatism he is the neocon the arch neocon he was part of the project for The New American Century and Donald Trump made him one of the most powerful figures in his government and under Donald Trump's Administration in 2018 John Bolton Said quote we will not cooperate with the ICC we won't provide no assistance to the ICC we will not join the ICC we will let the ICC die on its own after all for all intents and purposes the ICC is already dead to us and John Bolton under Trump he referred to the ICC as a threat to U.S national security so that was the government a few years ago this is the US government today praising the arrest warrant against Putin so once again it shows that the United States says there's a set of rules for everyone else and there's a set of rules for us and we make the rules that's the whole idea of the rules-based order that's why the United States doesn't talk about international law and the international law based order the United States talks about the rules-based order because it's Washington that makes the rules and orders everyone around now earlier I mentioned the Hague Invasion act in which the U.S government reserves itself the so-called right to invade the ICC but that's not the only example of Washington leading a legal and political war against the ICC the George Bush Administration back in 2002 launched a an attack on the ICC and even Human Rights Watch again despite its bias acknowledged that the United States government is extending its campaign against the new international criminal court later on that same year Human Rights Watch published another report that acknowledges that the U.S attack on the ICC was rejected at the U.N noted that U.S attacks on the new war crimes Court keep in mind that the ICC was only established in 2002 so it's very new the U.S attacks on the ICC were rejected again today at the United Nations but the principle of universal justice is still under serious threat from Washington the U.N security Council rejected a U.S proposal that would have Exempted peacekeepers from the authority of the ICC so here is even a biased U.S based so-called Human Rights group funded by billionaire oligarchs admitting that the U.S government was threatening the principle of universal justice again this is what a rogue state looks like this is the definition of a rogue state and of course as with all of the worst crimes committed by the United States this is completely bipartisan now it was the Trump Administration in 2020 that imposed sanctions on the ICC the Biden Administration when it came in in 2021 rhetorically for marketing reasons claimed that it was going to do a 180 and going to support the ICC and the U.S lifted the sanctions that had been posed on the ICC and its top prosecutor Fatu Ben suda however blinken The Head of the State Department under Biden he made it clear that the U.S was not actually supporting the ICC if you read very carefully what he said in his rhetoric he said that the Trump sanctions were inappropriate and ineffective he said ineffective it was not about the fact that it was a blatant violation of every principle that the U.S claims to support in the so-called rules-based order rather he said it was ineffective and blinken said instead the United States was going to continue to disagree strongly with the icc's actions relating to Afghanistan and the Palestinian situation and to object to ICC efforts to assert jurisdiction over Personnel of non-state parties such as the United States and Israel so here Lincoln made it clear that even though he was removing the sanctions the U.S was still leading a campaign under the Democrats against the ICC preventing the ICC from Prosecuting war crimes that the U.S committed in Afghanistan and preventing the ICC from Prosecuting Israel for the war crimes it committed in the occupied Palestinian territory so again this is what Democrats always do they claim rhetorically on paper to do something and yet in reality they're continuing these that exact same policies of the neoconservative Republicans like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo in the Trump Administration this brings me back to the statement that I looked at earlier which was in 2021 in March right after the binding Administration came in in which blinken the head of the state department condemned the ICC for opening an investigation into Israeli war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories and blinken said the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel because Israel like the U.S is not a party to the Rome statute and he said Palestinians do not qualify as a sovereign state so while the U.S claims on paper it supports the so-called two-state solution while the U.S claims that Palestinians deserve a state in reality the U.S does not actually plan on ever giving the Palestinians a state instead the U.S is going to perpetually support Israeli colonialism as it takes over more and more Palestinian territory and the irony is that it's not the United States the European Union and the European countries that are members of the ICC that are parties to the Rome statute they also have been blocking for years they had been blocking Palestinian membership in the international criminal court Human Rights Watch again despite its biases admitted in 2014 that the EU was blocking Palestinian membership in the ICC even while Israel says it does not intend to become a member of the ICC Human Rights Watch noted that leading EU member States including the UK which at that time was still part of the EU as well as France have publicly opposed Palestine seeking access to the ICC and Human Rights Watch wrote that opposing ICC membership for Palestine nurtures impunity and undermines international Justice EU countries that pressure Palestine to forgo access to the court also violate their commitment as ICC members to support access to the ICC so it's not just the United States that is insanely hypocritical when it comes to the ICC it is Europe as well the countries in Europe that are members of the ICC and when the ICC on the same week of the anniversary of the U.S invasion of Iraq when they announced the arrest warrant for Putin the European Union was ecstatically excited they were so happy about this the EU released a statement saying that it welcomes and encourages these efforts to ensure full accountability accountability for war crimes they say that they express their support for the investigations by the prosecutor of the ICC in Ukraine and calls for full cooperation by All State parties they see the decision by the ICC as the beginning of a process of accountability and holding Russian leaders to account so while the EU opposes the ICT taking action against Israeli war crimes against Palestinians it supports the ICC taking action against Russia once again it's a set of rules for the west and a separate set of rules for everyone else that is the so-called rules-based order it is the global North the Imperial powers that colonize the world and wage war across the world they have one set of rules and the global South the formerly colonized countries they have another set of rules now finally before I conclude here I want to say a few points about the new leadership at the ICC the new prosecutor who I mentioned is a British national and he's very biased and because people might say well wait a second if the ICC is so biased and if it only had tried Africans basically for its entire history of 20 years why did it in open in these investigations into U.S war crimes Committee in Afghanistan and Israeli war crimes committed in occupied Palestinian territory well the reality is that those were some of the few good things that were done under the former prosecutor Fatu benesuda who was the gambian prosecutor but what happened in 2021 her nine-year term ended and she was replaced by a British prosecutor named Kareem Khan and he's been extremely biased in support of Western governments and Reuters noted in 2021 right after this new British prosecutor ended that he is not going to prosecute U.S military forces over the war crimes they committed in Afghanistan Reuters note prosecutors had previously looked into suspected Crimes by U.S forces and Afghan government troops but Kareem Khan this is the new British prosecutor six months into his nine-year tenure said they would now de-prioritize that element due to a lack of resources and instead focus on the scale and nature of crimes committed within the jurisdiction of the court and now that's a lie we know that's a lie because Russia is not a member of the ICC so this is another blatant example of there's a set of rules for the west and one for everyone else a British prosecutor at the ICC is Pros is using those resources to prosecute Russia which is not a member of the ICC while refusing to continue the investigation into war crimes committed by the U.S and Afghanistan that had already started before he even entered I mean it it's just completely illegitimate it's so hypocrite vehicle Reuters quoted an Afghan human rights activist huria mossedek who was helping victims to support the ICC probe for many years who called the announcement quote an insult to the thousands of other victims of Crimes by Afghan government forces and U.S and NATO forces in fact the new British prosecutor of the ICC cream Khan is so biased that even the Jerusalem Post which is one of the main mainstream newspapers in Israel and strongly anti-palestinian they praised him because they said that in the year after he took office this new British ICC prosecutor did not issue a single public statement or take any single public action regarding Israel Palestine so previously the gambian prosecutor Fatu bensura had been investigating Israeli war crimes but not anymore they're very happy to say that they said many Israeli officials believe that Ben suda would already have taken actions and maybe even have issued arrest warrants had she continued in office past her nine-year term however the British prosecutor Kareem Khan has not taken any actions or even made statements about Israeli war crimes and by the way I should point out that the new British prosecutor of the ICC is the brother of a right-wing British politician named Imran Ahmad Khan of course of no relation whatsoever to the Pakistani prime minister who's overthrown in a western-backed coup Imran Khan Khan is of course a very common last name but anyway the point is that this brother this former conservative party member and Member of Parliament he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in Britain over the sexual assault of a 15 year old boy so this is the brother of the current prosecutor of the international criminal court who dropped the investigation into U.S war crimes in Afghanistan and has dropped the investigation into Israeli war crimes in occupied Palestinian territory I mean this just speaks for itself and briefly while we're on the subject of Israel and the ICC in response to the icc's opening of an investigation into Israeli war crimes committed the far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019 he accused the ICC of anti-Semitism which again shows that any time Israel faces consequence oh it never faces consequences it faces criticism over the war crimes in apartheid that it commits against the Palestinian people and the colonialism and ethnic cleansing and racism it always accuses the other party of anti-Semitism including and up to the international criminal court it's a completely ridiculous smear and it also is it cheapens and downplays the very real anti-Semitism that does exist but Israel doesn't care about that now as I wrap up I want to look at one final report that shows what the U.S government actually does on the world stage which is Mafia Behavior the United States acts as a rogue State as a mafia Dawn that that threatens and Bullies countries around the world and attacks multilateral institutions when it doesn't serve its interests and then claims to support those institutions when it does serve its interests and the clearest example of that is not just with the hypocrisy over the ICC but with another multilateral organization the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons and The Intercept publisher report in 2018 titled we know where your kids live how John Bolton once once threatened an international official and this article includes quotes from Jose bustani who is a Brazilian Diplomat who previously was the head of the opcw and in 2002 a year before the invasion of Iraq the Bush Administration was putting intense pressure on bustani to quit as director general of the opcw why is that because he negotiated with Iraq to allow opcw weapons inspectors to make unannounced visits to the country thereby undermining Washington's rationale for the regime change War and in response John Bolton who was then working in the Bush Administration before later coming back in the Trump Administration John Bolton called bustani on his phone and said Dick Cheney who was then Secretary of State and he was a former General top Pentagon official Dick Cheney wanted bustani to resign and the U.S says we can't accept your management style and then the U.S government threatened him he said quote you have 24 hours to leave the organization and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington we have ways to retaliate against you we know where your kids live you have two sons in New York so this is how the US behaves on the international stage this is the behavior of a rogue regime of a mafia Dawn it violates international law on a daily basis it threatens countries that don't go along with its bullying it threatens International institutions that don't follow its orders it refuses to become part of the international criminal court it refuses to sign the Rome statute and yet pressure as other members of the ICC to arrest Putin which Russia is not a member of the ICC either but the U.S wants the ICC to prosecute Russia and yet at the same time the ICC set the U.S says that the ICC cannot prosecute U.S officials or Israeli officials because they're not parties they're not members of the Rome statute the hypocrisy is impossible to overstate this is the reality of the so-called rules-based order the United States makes the rules and orders everyone round it is a global dictatorship the U.S loves to portray itself as the protector of democracy and and its adversaries as so-called autocracies or dictatorships but what the U.S has what it wants to protect although it's over the unipolar imperialist order that it created after the overthrow of the Soviet Union in 1991. was a global dictatorship in which the U.S told every country on Earth to follow its orders and if it didn't the U.S would invade them and post sanctions on them organize regime change operations through the CIA uh or support so-called color revolutions by funding opposition groups and media Outlets to spread propaganda and fake news it was a global dictatorship and that's why the U.S is now so desperate to prevent the emergence of a multi-polar world that's why the U.S is waging a new Cold War on both Russia and China trying to overthrow their governments trying to organize regime change to maintain its unipolar imperialist order which is really a global dictatorship so the U.S can use institutions like the ICC when it serves its interests and attack them when they no longer serve its interests with that said I'm going to conclude here I'm Ben Norton this is geopolitical economy report if you like the work that we do here please go to geopoliticaleconomy.com support and you can also become a patron over at patreon.com geopolitical economy any support you could provide would go a long way we are completely independent and have no big institutional donors I want to thank everyone for watching or listening these episodes are available as both a video and a podcast if you're watching or listening Please Subscribe whether it's YouTube or SoundCloud or whatever platform and you can get notifications for the next episode which will be out soon thanks a lot I'll see you next time
