Who should be responsible for enforcing the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian law? Or are we finally admitting that the only "international law" we officially recognize is Might Makes Right?
It has always been might makes right, are you under the impression it wasn’t that way at some point? I’m not endorsing the actions of the current administration, simply stating how global geopolitics works. There’s no such thing as a supranational organization that can force a nuclear power to do anything of consequence.
The only people that get prosecuted by the ICC are people that lose wars (no winner has ever been prosecuted) and are also from nations that do not have nuclear weapons / nuclear protection.
All signatories to the Geneva Conventions are responsible for enforcing it. The USA never ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and thus has no responsibility to enforce it.
The us does actually agree that the crimes in question are crimes. They are crimes domestically in the united states, and the US has supported punishing people for them internationally. The US is arguably the group that came up with the idea of prosecuting people for international crimes in the first place (nuremburg)
they dont like the specific court, and more generally they dont like when the rule of law applies to them and their allies instead of just enemies. But they do recognize all these things as crime
Which is fine, inside the US. But when Americans leave the US, they are no longer under US law, theyre under the law of whatever country they enter. Which means, if the country acknowledges the ICC, any American in that country falls under it. Just like a tourist in America has to follow American laws.
Not exactly. Tourists are one thing, but US military personnel stationed in foreign countries typically operate under a status of forces agreement which limits the ways in which they are subject to the host country's laws.
yes when it comes to allies, but typically war crime stuff happens during conflicts, and usually in a conflict they are there without consent by definition.
People forget, that a war crime is simply a crime that (state) combatants dont have immunity for in war. The geneva convention gives immunity for everything that is not a war crime.
I mean... just about every 'enforcement' of international norms has been by american hard and soft power. Might has always made right, it's just that the guy with the biggest gun happened to have western liberal values.
Seems like that changed a little in the last decade. Hopefully it's not forever, but who knows.
We're repeating old social tropes the 50+ year old leadership lived through.
It's sad and pathetic. The youth reliance on old leadership and putting that on them is elder abuse. McConnell and Feinstein handlers should be prosecuted for such.
This is 100% on lazy, low-skilled, younger American public that doesn't need Depends expecting better from the generation glazing over live on TV and vanishing from office only to be found months later in an institution
The censored for TV era propped such olds up on screen for decades and refused to challenge their speculations and bullshit; everyone actually believes the elders are cogent and capable but they never were. Just puppets of a bygone era of televised circuses beamed to the Wonder Bread eating masses
And yet the poorest 25th percentile of Americans are not enjoying a better quality of life than the European middle class. If those numbers are accurate, all they tell us is that personal wealth is an even worse indicator of having a life worth living than we would have thought 20 years ago.
It's the obvious reality around me here in Eastern Europe. We were starving under communism before 1990 but are now enjoying the amazing wealth capitalism brought.
