WHY DOES AMERICA FEAR THIS COURT?
>By Chris Patten
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>
>Robert Kagan may be right that "Europe should be more sensitive
>to American concerns" [op-ed, July 1]. I cringe when I hear
>Europeans attacking the United States and Americans in terms that
>would be condemned as outright racism if they were leveled
>against any other country or its people -- just as I bridle at
>hearing Americans dismiss Europeans as a bunch of unprincipled
>wimps. We owe a very great deal to the United States, and I am
>the first to acknowledge it. But Kagan is on weak ground when he
>uses the International Criminal Court (ICC) to illustrate his
>argument.
>
>It is hardly surprising that unjustified criticism of the United
>States -- often fueled by fear and envy -- has made American
>policymakers wary about submitting to the authority of an
>international court. As Kagan says, the United States is called
>upon more than other nations to send its troops overseas, and
>that makes them more vulnerable to prosecution. So the United
>States was right to seek safeguards to ensure that the ICC would
>be used only for its intended purpose: to prosecute perpetrators
>of genocide and other crimes against humanity -- not pursue some
>politically motivated vendetta against the United States.
>
>Where Kagan is wrong -- and where, in this instance, I think the
>United States is making a great mistake -- is in refusing to take
>yes for an answer. The United States was fully engaged in the
>Rome Conference that prepared the ICC. It sought all sorts of
>assurances, and it got them. For example:
>
>The ICC is complementary to national courts. It would have had
>nothing to say, for example, about the sorry business a couple of
>years back involving indecent assaults by U.S. troops in Okinawa.
>Not only did this involve what might be called "common crime"
>rather than crimes against humanity but the United States itself
>took appropriate action.
>
>The ICC will not be retrospective.
>
>Investigations can proceed only after a pretrial chamber has
>determined there is a reasonable basis for action.
>
>Under Article 16 of the ICC Statute the U.N. Security Council can
>decide to block prosecutions for fixed periods.
>
>In short, the United States demanded elaborate safeguards, and it
>got them. But in a pattern that has become wearily familiar in
>other contexts such as the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, it then
>revoked its intention to sign. This technique carries serious
>long-term risks. Why should people make concessions to America if
>the United States is going to walk away in any case?
>
>I deeply regret the decision, because I admire the United States
>and know how its decision will be interpreted. The United States
>will be accused of putting itself above the law. It is happy
>enough to sit in judgment on others -- indeed it is already doing
>so as part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
>Yugoslavia -- and it is ironic that it takes particularly tough
>positions in that context. But the United States now seems to be
>saying it must never itself be put in the dock.
>
>One of the complaints leveled against the British Crown in the
>Declaration of Independence was that George III protected his
>troops "from punishment for any Murders which they should commit
>on the Inhabitants of these States."
>
>As Kagan points out in his article, what makes a "rogue" a
>"rogue" is that it refuses to accept international rules. A
>couple of years back Samuel Huntington warned that in the eyes of
>much of the world the United States was "becoming the rogue
>superpower." The epithet has been heard more recently in
>connection with U.S. actions undermining the Nuclear Non-
>Proliferation Treaty. It is a bum rap which ignores America's
>huge contribution to international order -- and it is in nobody's
>interest that the United States should encourage the caricature.
>More immediately, U.S. opposition to the ICC threatens
>international stability, because it poses practical problems for
>the renewal of U.N. peacekeeping mandates around the world. The
>effects are already being felt in Bosnia.
>
>Henry Kissinger comments at the end of his latest book on
>American foreign policy that "America's ultimate challenge is to
>transfer its power into a moral consensus, promoting its values
>not by imposition but by their willing acceptance." That task
>cannot be accomplished if the United States seems to be trying to
>set itself above the law.
>
>The ICC is intended to deal with international tragedies like
>Rwanda. U.S. troops almost always behave in an exemplary way --
>as do European ones. The United States is itself quite capable of
>dealing with the few cases (such as the My Lai massacre) in which
>its soldiers fall below their own high standards. So it should
>have nothing to fear from this court.
>
>Kagan asks Europeans to consider whether "a more liberal
>international order can be built by hobbling the most powerful
>defender of that order." That is neither the purpose of the court
>nor will it be its effect. To see the International Criminal
>Court as an assault on the United States is, frankly, perverse.
>The court's purpose, rather, is one that the United States
>wholeheartedly shares: to ensure that genocide and other such
>crimes against humanity should no longer go unpunished.
>
>
>---------
>SEE ALSO:
>
>Chris Patten's statement on the International Criminal Court and
>the mandate for the UN Mission in Bosnia- Herzegovina, made at a
>press conference with Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr
>Goran Svilanovic in Belgrade, on 3 July 2002:
>
>http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/w27/1.htm
>
>----------
>
>(1)
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Jul8.html
>
>(2) Europe should be more sensitive to American concerns" -
>Washington Post, International Herald Tribune on 1 July 2002:
>http://www.iht.com/articles/63045.html