On Wed, 17 Jul 2002 topp8564 at mail.usyd.edu.au wrote:
> Chomsky says quite specifically that the ICC would be an imperfect
> institution since there is practically no chance it would ever prosecute
> the war crimes of US nationals.
As I understand the ICC, it wouldn't prosecute the war crimes of any nationals whose courts were willing to prosecute them themselves. This is one of the key differences between the ICC and the court that has jurisdiction over Yugoslavia. The latter refuses to allow Yugoslavia's successor states to try their own.
If the court developed in this direction, it might be worth supporting.
There is a clause pertaining to "sham" trials, of course. There has to be, and the rub is how this clause gets interpreted in practice. Theoretically it would be taken so far as to emulate the Yugo court. But at the moment, the dominant conception is the opposite: that the court would act mainly act by shaming and enabling national courts to go into action -- much as the Pinochet trial threat ended up working out in effect in Chile. And that it would only conduct trials itself when there was no working judiciary -- as in Rwanda, where a competent pre-set-up court system would have been better for all concerned, most especially the accused.
In which case the question of whether US or French or German nationals would get tried by the ICC is moot. Faced by sufficient evidence of war crimes, all those countries would try their own. In fact if the US had any brains it would see the advantage in this scheme in that it would legitimize its right to keep its soldiers beyond the grasp of local courts, which is often a flashpoint in places like Japan or Korea.
Michael