Why are those countries which talk a lot about taking other countries or their leaders to the International Criminal Court ( ICC) not members of this sadly discredited body?

I mean, neither Russia, USA nor Ukraine are members of the ICC. Why is it that the ICC is only called upon to clean up when and where the ‘ big boys’ in the Western club have messed up? The issuing of arrest warrants by the ICC for Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova- Belova, have further complicated the Russia- Ukraine conflict.

In fact, its actions are an escalation. The Court has chosen to be a forcemultiplier on the side of Ukraine. The Kremlin has called the issuing of the ICC warrant “outrageous but legally void”, as Russia is not a signatory to the treaty that created the ICC. The US response to the ICC prosecution of Russian ‘ war crimes’ reveals the contortions of long- held and selective reasoning on international legal obligations.

The ICC remains a very divisive topic. It is one of the most prominent failures of the UN since the international organisation was created in the wake of the Second World War. One of the reasons for this is simply because it has allowed itself to be used by the West as a tool to punish those who refuse to toe the Western line.

The ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants fulfils a goal of US foreign policy, but Washington nonetheless finds itself in an unnecessarily compromised position, hoisted by its own proverbial petard.

In and of itself, the US’ self- imposed exile from the ICC would not be important, if not for the fact that the US has promoted international law in particular, international law as it relates to international criminal justice, as if it were synonymous with American values, while at the same time emphasising the superiority of American values over international standards.

The US was initially supportive of the creation of a permanent international criminal court. However, as the 1998 negotiations in Rome progressed, the US ended up being only one of seven countries to vote against adopting the Rome Statute as the founding document for the ICC. The US, however, remains compromised.

Their primary issue as it relates to the ICC is their strong and vocal opposition to the Court’s jurisdiction over nationals of states that are not party to the Rome Statute. The US argues that as a non- signatory, the ICC has no jurisdiction over US nationals, even if they commit crimes on the territory of Court members.

The problem for the US is that Russia is also a non- signatory, and the jurisdiction that the Court would have over Russian nationals comes from crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine. Thus, the US will recognise the Court’s jurisdiction over nationals of non- signatories they do not like, but not over US nationals.

The obvious solution to this apparent hypocrisy would be for the US to re- sign and ratify the Rome Statute. As much as anything else, recent events have demonstrated that the Court can serve as a useful foreign policy tool for the US. But there are two reasons why this is unlikely to happen any time soon.

First, through expressions of US exceptionalism, Washington does not want US service personnel prosecuted by international courts. Second, the US is spooked by the spectre of a hypothetical “rogue prosecutor” abusing the complimentarily principle, and initiating investigations against US nationals.

Russia’s top investigative body has since opened a criminal case against the ICC prosecutor and judges who issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges.