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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

The concept of an international criminal court itself is an affront to national sovereignty, and isn’t very widely supported. Among those who go along with it, they tend to stop once it creates an issue for them.

The ICC primarily prosecutes the war crimes of war losers. They’ve convicted some Nazis, some Serbs, and a few African war lords here and there. But it’s silly to presume they have authority over any nation that exists with even a modicum of national security.

You won’t see George Bush, or any other US official before The Hague for the same reason you won’t see Xi Jinping, or Putin, or Netanyahu, or Tony Blair, or Ali Khamenei, or Rodrigo Duterte… there.

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> The concept of an international criminal court itself is an affront to national sovereignty, and isn’t very widely supported.

It is supported (i.e. signed and ratified) by all industrialized countries except the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_parties_to_the_Rome_Sta...

This is just demonstrably untrue. Most Asian countries are either non-signatories, or have withdrawn. China, Russia, Israel, KSA, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Qatar, Turkey… are all post-industrial nations.

Also, of the fully ratified signatories, it’s only supported when politically convenient. No member of NATO is going to allow for their citizens to be prosecuted by some extraterritorial court that thinks it has jurisdiction over half the world. Every NATO country has been accused of war crimes, and they’ve probably all committed them. None of them have been prosecuted, allies won’t call on other allies to be prosecuted, even Angela Merkel defends Israel’s on this topic, and Israel barely even pretends that they don’t commit war crimes.

It’s also why there’s so much popular anti-ICC sentiment in Africa, because a lot of people there think it only exists to prosecute Africans (which isn’t a very easy accusation to rebut).

None of those countries you listed[1] is regarded as a industrialized/developed/first world country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial%20nation

[1] Except Israel, which essentially never differs from the US in UN voting behaviour.

First World and Industrialization are very different concepts. First world just means allied with the US during the Cold War. Israel meets every definition of a highly developed country, which makes your first claim false. The wikipedia article you listed also includes Singapore (another non-signatory), which makes this claim false.

According to the IMF, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao are all “advanced economies”. All of them are certainly industrialized, and certainly not signatories. All “Newly Industrialized Countries” would also meet the criteria of being “industrialized” as well, and they include (among others) China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Phillipines and Turkey. All industrialized, and all non-signatories.

Really the only countries in the world that could be considered non-industrialized are the ones classified as Least Developed.

> It’s also why there’s so much popular anti-ICC sentiment in Africa, because a lot of people there think it only exists to prosecute Africans (which isn’t a very easy accusation to rebut)

It is, there have been plenty of Serbs that have been convicted.

Consistent with my comment that the ICC only prosecutes Nazis, Serbs, and random Africans.

It looks like it's not ratified by plenty of industrialized countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ICC_member_states.svg

Let's count them: Monaco, Israel, Singapore, United States of America, also Hong Kong, Macau, Vatican City if you want to count those. Everyone else in red or orange on that map is not considered an industrialized/developed country.

4-7 is plenty now? Especially considering the size and situation of the others?

And Russia, China, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Pakistan, and more. Maybe your characterization was correct in 1950, but I have serious doubts if your criteria for "industrialized" fails to include the largest industrial producers by a large margin (China).

You consider countries in which the majority of households lack running water, electricity is available 20 hours a day if you're lucky, or where more than 20-50% of the population work in agriculture (typical for industrialized countries is 1-3%) to be developed?

Clearly they have no major infrastructure left to build and their industrialization is done. Nothing to develop left at all.

> But it’s silly to presume they have authority over any nation that exists with even a modicum of national security.

That's because most nations do have an established practice of putting their own war criminals on trial. It's good for building trust, which is quite beneficial in the longer run. The U.S. have slipped somewhat, but then they make up for that by literally paying for much of the civilized world's security, so they're still quite good on net.

They do have an established practice of ignoring war criminals and going after the people who denounce their war crimes. See Assange.

> quite good on net

That’s a terrible way to justify immoral or illegal actions.

Of course. I'm not saying they couldn't do better.

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