"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
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ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Europe isn't a superpower but it's a giant entity with 450 million people and 15% of the world's gdp. It has the means to oppose the US and retaliate against its sanctions, if it doesn't it's because of the cowardice of its politicians and the weakness of its institutions.
More importantly, the bilateral relationship between the US and Europe represents 30% of global trade, and 40% of the global GDP. Both economies complement each other naturally (at least right now), and neither partners don't want it to end, so even with the relationship becoming more fragile as the US tries to close itself off from the world, I think both will still try to remain collaborative with each other, regardless of this posturing that is going on.
It will take a lot to shift that trade dynamic, but the current US administration seems quite energetic about rapidly tearing down Chesterton's Fences that it doesn't understand nor want to spend the time to understand, so I'd not bet on this remaining so even for the next 3 years.
And yes, I do understand how utterly bonkers it is to suggest something this big changing over just 3 years.
That trade dynamic isn’t going to shift unless the EU becomes a lot more insular.
The War in Ukraine is dampening trade with Russia. The EU is struggling in their trade relations with the PRC even more than with America right now, and fears them more than they fear us. A trade deal (“Mercosur”) with South America is in the process of potentially blowing up, and if it’s not passed in its current state, Brazil is looking to walk for the remainder of their President’s term in office.
That's what all the serious European economists are pushing for especially Draghi and his report but the EPP and the countries which massively benefit from the status quo, starting with Germany and the Netherlands, are blocking any move in the direction of propping up the internal market.
Merz is actually doing a masterclass in beggar thy neighbors policies right now by breaking the debt brake mostly to pay for subsidies in Germany rather than investments. It's pretty surreal to see them somehow stuck to sell side policies when they have no one to actually sell to and refuse the mean to create an actual market in Europe.
You don't really need rivals outside when your core members act this way.
... and if you look at history you will find this situation, no viable export partners, is the norm and not the exception.
Although I would add that what makes good export partners is not GDP directly, but changes in GDP and that mostly comes from changes in the debt levels of these countries. So, ironically the Russian threat, and the EU debt increase in response to it, can probably be expected to raise the GDP of EU countries by 2-3% or so. So EU-US trade should actually increase, tariffs or no tariffs. Besides, tariffs are a tax on the poor, and it's not the poor importing stuff (just ask the poor in the EU how it's been going). US basic needs manufacturers, like farms, are the ones that are going to lose big, and keep losing big, due to tariffs. Oh, and the poor, of course. I'm sure Trump will make some of his typical eloquent remarks about the poor needing to lose weight and spend less on children.
By contrast, the US will need to do it's very best to not reduce public debt or really increase interest rates they're paying in the next year and a half. Not because of Trump's intentions but because of how he scheduled the massive debt increase last time he was in office. The way he was probably actually fucked by Biden, you know what he was screaming about for years, is that he put a $10 trillion dollar refinancing requirement for the US in for 2025-2026-2027 that he expected to fuck up his successor. Then Biden "stole" most of the good part of Trumps debt increase: the decrease in debt repayments for the US government 2016-2020 ... and delivered the refinancing disaster right back ... to Trump.
That was Trump's financial plan: massive debt increase in 2017, scheduled to come due (require refinancing) ... 8 years later. "Apres-nous le deluge" I believe this principle is called. So Trump's plan was 2017-2021: lots of debt repayment paid by massively increasing US debt, including refinancing debt due in 2021-2025. then 2021-2025, spend the extra income, knowing the bill isn't due until 2025-2029. Then, Biden got to spend the 2021-2025 money ... and send the bill to Trump. Like is often said when it comes to Trump's supposed brilliance: "ooops...".
Probably Trump expected to be out of the office at the start of 2025 and just leave his successor with a massive and difficult refinancing ... and Biden and democrats dropped that hot iron right back into Trump's lap.
So Trump introduced a massive new tax, which of course won't cover the sums he needs. He will raise taxes further.
The EU certainly has limited options, I agree about that.
The problem I see is the risks are not under the EU's control. We may face becoming much more insular regardless of what any of us ourselves actually want.
Trump is behaving in a manner not consistent with EU nations retaining indepdendence and sovreignty. And also betting the future of USA on economic development plans (and military plans) that do not seem realistic.
The insular part was a very small, maybe too subtle of, joke.
That’s also not a viable option for the EU, or more specifically: the constituent nations of the EU. They’re as dependent on trade as we are, maybe even more so, and so we are stuck in this relationship where we constantly piss each other off in various ways, and believe me when I say it goes both ways.
Technically the biggest blow to the US-Europe trade relationship came from the Biden administration. The IRA was naked attempt at pulling European companies from Europe and push them to invest in the US instead.
Trump policies look extreme because tariffs are often seen as crude and outdated but it's very much a continuation of economic hostility rather than a novelty.
Fortunately for the UK, the photos of Boris Johnson holding a pint during covid lockdowns he'd ordered, mean that Boris Johnson is no longer a threat to the UK.
I think your main point is valid, but it would be more compelling if you'd taken a few seconds to read it before submitting, to catch this double-negative.
Not really. We have the most money, the most guns, and world economies depend on us. Europe won't even fight Russia when they literally invaded a country in their backyard, and Russia is much weaker than the US.
Fighting Russia or the US is basically the same; you're just going to get nuked. Ukraine doesn't get nuked because Russia isn't in a real risk of losing it's own territory and doesn't want to annex irradiated lands.
But also Europe (besides Ukraine) doesn't have much to gain from fighting Russia. They're happy to assist in air raids in North Africa / Middle East for energy reasons (see Libya) but it's fighting for practical purposes.
The table can also be turned against the US. Despite the endless complaints about Mexico sending drugs & drug dealers into the US it's not like we are doing effective (or drastic).
Your most money won't buy you much resources in a decade. most of the natural resources exporting countries feel a bit cheated with 20 year contracts and two "quantitative easing" in the same period
The only resource suppliers to EU other than the United States is Norway (natural gas pipeline, crude oil 14%) and Australia (coal 36%). The US supplies a a huge minority in those as well as a majority in LNG. (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/e...)
If the EU ally’s with Australia, pics up an enemy of an enemy - China, they can withstand a US embargo.
We can’t extract our way out of this. We’ll have nothing left. We need space minerals and more rocks that aren’t home. We’re fighting over less and less sand in the sandbox.
We were never debating if Europe could survive an American embargo.
You said “most money won't buy you much resources in a decade.” This was about America surviving a European freeze-out. The simple truth is, there are more resources in America and within its military’s undisputed reach than there are in Europe.
Your UNEP report doesn’t show why America alone couldn’t extract its way out of an embargo. (While it puts its military to use.)
You must have me mistaken with someone else. I didn't say that. I said that it wouldn't matter as resource exhaustion is faster than it was previously and we will run out of resources, money or not. So if one side decides to horde or exploit the other hemisphere, it's like kids fighting over the last bit of sand in the sandbox.
> it wouldn't matter as resource exhaustion is faster than it was previously and we will run out of resources, money or not
Oh. Sure. Fair. But not relevant in our lifetimes, at least not from the position of the United States. If push came to shove, we'd take those last bits of sand. That's one of the problems with might makes right: it lets those in power put off hard choices.
I hope that the USA will maintain strong relations with the EU. But the EU is structurally incapable of taking any coordinated action more significant than mandating USB-C chargers for cell phones.
Another potential goal of the war may have been to demonstrate that the USSR couldn't hope to win a conventional war against the US (the 1973 Easter offensive fielded 700-1200 tanks of various kinds, and the US destroyed 400-700 of them with trivial losses to US forces). The Soviets were using 15-20% of their economy to produce, among other military items, 4000 tanks a year, so a demonstration that the US could destroy so much without significant losses or any particular economic strain could have been shocking. If that was a real goal, though, it probably couldn't be openly discussed at the time, which would have contributed to the "why are we even there?" mood of the American people.
The US was barely treading water militarily, at enormous cost in both lives and cash. It was not progressing towards its military and political goals. That's why the US public pulled the plug.
The US could have continued to tread water for another 5 years, or another 10 years, or another 15 years, and would have lost even more men and spent even more money, and it would still have faced the same problem: there was no way to win the war. Every day that the war continued just meant more deaths and more money wasted.
In the event that someone is directly attacking Americans in America, I think you'll find that Americans are more united than it appears.
Americans culturally have seen ourselves as the "Good Guys" for the last century or so, and Good Guys imply Bad Guys. If there aren't any credible Bad Guys external to the US, Americans start thinking the Bad Guys are the rich, or the coastal elites, or flyover country, or liberals, or whatever. That's just 'cause there's no one else to be against, though; it'll pass.
Hence Trump's continual (and false) claims that the cities he's targeting are lawless and dangerous places.
The above applies to federal US military forces. The laws specifically exclude the US Coast Guard. Non-military federal forces (FBI, ICE, etc) are also excluded.
It also, in the more complicated quirk, excludes state military forces (i.e. "National Guard" units). These forces can be activated under a variety of different legal frameworks (see https://www.nationalguard.mil/Portals/31/Resources/Fact%20Sh... ), some of which allow their use for domestic police functions (Title 32 and SAD), because they're still under the command of the state governor (who can use military forces to perform domestic policing functions inside their state or a neighboring state).
There's also a special exclusion for Washington, DC, as technically the president is sort of its governor for many purposes.
Given that background, what actually happened...
- Trump activated National Guard units under Title 10 (aka federal active duty service), because this doesn't require the consent of a state's governor
- Trump then deployed these units to several cities, some with the support of Republican governors and some without the support of Democratic governors
- The administration's legal team realized performing policing functions with the above forces was on extremely shaky ground
- Therefore, they mostly claimed (loudly) that they were deploying "the military", but in actuality used them for extremely limited, non-policing purposes (picking up trash, talking to tourists, guarding federal buildings, guarding other federal agents performing law enforcement functions)
That's not what I said. I said that it doesn't matter.
Military might has plenty to do with bluffing. That's what politics is all about.
But when the music stops and the ball drops, US and EU aren't going to war with each other any time soon. So measuring military might doesn't really matter.
And you can't be that naive to believe is gonna make any difference. The US that had to get out of Korea, Vietnam, all the way to Afghanistan, will take on Europe? Lol...
It’s not what the US might do, it’s what they might not do.
If Putin decides Poland is propping up Ukraine he might expand the war into Poland because right now it isn’t clear that the US would honor their NATO commitments.
Ukraine was not a NATO country, never mind a EU country. I’m all for speaking truth to the weakness of the eu and its indecisive pussyfooting on the military front but let’s not start getting high on our own supply: Russia absolutely does not have the military nor industrial power to invade Poland and take on the actual EU in a hot war. NATO or no NATO it wouldn’t even be close.
Or it could just end with mutual total nuclear annihilation of course.
Edit: now if they were to attack the eu over a decades long interference campaign with its member state democracies, funding anti eu parties, stoking separatist sentiments, and covertly subverting the fundamental pillars of its liberal democracies, on the other hand…
If we're accepting as a given that somehow Putin launches nukes into Europe to invade Poland, and the EU doesn't retaliate in kind, then the USA definitely wouldn't--NATO or no NATO--so I'm not sure how it's relevant to the original comment.
Russia is has tried and failed for a couple of years now to push particularly far into Ukraine, and you think Europe would have a problem stopping a Russian attack on Poland?
Poland alone has a population comparable to Ukraine, and a significantly larger economy.
That doesn't matter. One or two atomic boms from France and say goodbye to a good GDP from the US coasts. Everyone losses, but the US it's set back to 1940.
There's no difference between suicide and an invasion from the US with total control of the neocons against a social-democratic state.
That being a puppet state a la Vichy, I mean; not something being bribed upon with corruption and money.
What the US needs is to invest right now in fusion technology and learn the damn Math right. Hint: hypercubes and physics.
They don't need a war to feed the industry, they need the balls to evolve themselves as the Chinese did. First from pure Maoism to Deng Xiaoping, and next from coal to clean energy. It's a decades bound plan, but if Beijing becames clean it would be one of the greatest things for China (and the world) ever.
This would mean acknowledging that some sectors are best stated supported, such as healthcare; while others are best company supported/evolved, such as telecos and R+D, but with proper
regulations, so net neutrality stays as is and patents get open over few decades so everyone can play the game.
And, no, you don't need to put social credit, social surveillance or any other bullshit such as Chat Control.
Labor shortages abound in the US military. It is slowly approaching paper tiger status, unless we're talking about delivering long range ordinance. The US can engage in a small handful of conflicts at the same time; it cannot take on the world. The Coast Guard didn't have enough staff to commandeer an oil tanker near Venezuela recently [1] [2]. The US Navy has mothballed seventeen supply ships due to labor shortages [3]. Total global US military headcount is ~2.6M as of this comment, ~1.14M on US soil [4] [5] [6] [7]. There are also military sourcing single points of failure, like L3 [8] and the US Air Force.
China can already detect and track stealth aircraft using a combination of ground based passive radar and StarLink signal, as well as satellite reconnaissance. Europe could have this capability whenever they're ready to spend and, in the case of a satellite, lift to orbit. Use hypersonic vehicles for anti air defense and carrier busting [9].
No, but China and Australia do if they were to, you know, alliance themselves against the tyranny of the US. Much like we did against the tyranny of the Nazi regime.
France has nukes, so those aren't a plausible threat. Any kind of land invasion is doomed to fail - the US didn't even manage to beat a bunch of goat herders in one of the poorest countries of the world. A naval blockade is the most likely to succeed - except for the whole "land bridge to Asia/Africa" part. And if the blockade does succeed and the continent starts to starve, there's the whole "France has nukes" part again...
Besides, do you really think China/India won't get involved? And do you really think the US public is going to accept their friends and family dying because some power-hungry politician got the braindead idea to send them against Europe? The reception will be worse than Vietnam!
We have accepted that for a long time, and there are no plans to change it.
Why do you think there is zero movement to disentangle from any important US dependencies? Such as software. There is nothing whatsoever happening to be any less dependent on the US, part from defense, and that only after repeated urging and finally some real force-pressure to get the EU moving (even after Trump's first term little to nothing actually happened).
European countries are perfectly fine with where they are, if any less dependency on the US is to happen, it will only be after huge pressure from the US.
That is deliberate, they just don't see value in e.g. trying to recreate the Microsoft and other software ecosystems. After all, it already exists, so why compete at that point? It does not make economic sense. Also, it is not Europe's strength: Every country would, in practice, (have to) develop their own version, while in the US a company can easily scale across the entire nation. For Software, it makes no (economic) sense for Europe to compete in an area where this kind of scale is important.
And that strength argument, only some minor politicians, and some journalists, keep bringing up headlines such as "Can Germany save Europe?", or celebrating "Germany back on the world stage" when there is some minor meeting hosted by Germany (seen recently). The vast majority of people could not care less about being "number one" and "leading (anything, politically)".
Not trying to reinvent the wheel, or many wheels actually, out of some "pride" moment seems pretty foolish to me. If the US is good producing this or that, we get it from there, so what? Everybody, including the US, made even more far-reaching similar decisions with industry moved to China. Compared to that, European reliance on the US is not much, and pretty much unavoidable, unless one gives up lots of wealth.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
You were there? No? You watched the taped proceedings then?
I don't think you appreciate the way justice becomes irrelevant in fascist and tyrannical countries.
The 'show' of fair justice, dispensed with care and deliberation, is something you seem to take for granted.
In most countries you get put up against a wall, and shot, for saying the wrong things about the right people.
I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny. And the position that tyranny should be the norm is something an evil or cowardly person espouses.
Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
In "The White Man's Burden", Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonisation of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago purchased in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898).[1] As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire;[1] nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is ideologically related to the continental expansion philosophy of manifest destiny of the early 19th century.[2][3][4][5] With a central motif of the poem being the superiority of white men, it has long been criticised as a racist poem
>You were there? No? You watched the taped proceedings then?
That's not how history works.
There's no end of historical accounts, transcripts of the proceedings, etc to learn about it. Neither being there, nor taped proceedings are needed.
And neither being in the court or watching taped proceedings will give you what that show meant in the larger historical context, and in the context of the geopolitics of the time. The books, actual knowledge of the before and after, and more, might.
>I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny.
That's exactly what the goverments who run those trials had for themselves, before, during, and after.
>Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
Only because it was mostly done to brown people in Africa, or to Asia, or Latin America, so you don't care.
Yes, imagine the ICC existed in 1945 and ... let's say ... Bolivia ... petitioned for the arrest of Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower over the Dresden bombing and whatever else.
Better, imagine the ICC ordered the arrest in 1943 of Franklin D. Roosevelt over ... let's say ... the forced relocation of Unangax̂ (Aleut) villagers in the Alaska Aleutian Islands.
The result wouldn't have been better for the ICC than the Gaza warrants.
I kind of feel like if one of the superpowers always been against international law although trying to enforce it on others, and not really wanting to participate in ICC in any shape of form, already made the whole idea dead in the water.
Lots of people realize the importance of this, but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
> but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
To be nitpicky here, the goal of the ICC isn't to prevent aggressive acts or war in general. They are only punishing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - which is a small subset of potential violent acts a state may commit. The ICC does not have juridsiction over crimes of aggression.
[Yes technically there is an optional thing that countries can sign to give the ICC juridsiction over crimes of aggression, but so few countries have signed it that it may as well not exist]
>While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
Idealists create worse outcomes than realists and pragmatists.
Violence going down 10% can be worse than it going down 0%, if the difference comes from reducing counter-violence done by the oppressed - and reducing based on the agenda and whims of the big time abusers responsible for a big chunk of the other 90%.
You may be mixing up the ICJ, which “settles legal disputes submitted to it by states” and is 80 years old [1] and the ICC, which was created in 2002 [2].
I don't think they are. The ICC is much more a succesor to Nuremburg than the ICJ is.
The ICC applies international criminal law, just like nuremburg trials did (a notable difference though is the ICCs lack of juridsiction over crimes of aggression which was a core part of the Nuremburg trials). The ICJ is not a criminal court and does not apply international criminal law. It cannot find individuals guilty. A rough analogy would be that the ICJ is more similar to a civil court.
There was already a world court before Nuremberg: the Permanent Court of International Justice, established after WWI, as part of the League of Nations. It didn't stop WW2 and the holocaust. After WWII, they form the exact same thing with new names: the International Court of Justice, as part of the United Nations.
You know why the League of Nations didn't work (supposedly)? Because the US wasn't involved. So with the United Nations, the US is involved. What do you think happens when the US decides to not abide by the United Nations' decisions? Nothing.
The US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times. It voted against Palestinian rights, and its Iraq war and ongoing foreign drone strikes go against the UN charter. Basically, whatever the US wants, goes. If they don't want you to have rights, you won't have them. If they want you to control some piece of land and anyone who lives on it, it's yours. If they don't like your government, they'll take it away and install their own, or call it terrorist and sanction it.
The whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it. There is no justice, there's just the powerful and the powerless.
> US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times
So have China and Russia. The rules-based international order has been explicitly rejected by the world’s great powers.
> whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it
There was a legitimate attempt. It had flaws. But so does any system of justice. It was ultimately done in by a combination of Russian and Chinese revanchism, American neoconservatism and global nihilism.
International Law predates Nuremberg by at least 300 years (see the School of Salamanca). I am not trying to nitpick, honestly, it is that the rights of other nations and peoples were recognized well before the US even was an idea.
The sovereign legal authority of any government derives from its monopoly on violence. If, at the end of the day, men with guns will not come to your home and force your compliance, then the "law" is nothing but paper.
The ICC could never be anything but what it is -- powerless against those with bigger guns. This is the fundamental nature of law and power. Barring the subjugation of all states to a supranational sovereign capable of universal enforcement, there is, ultimately, no such thing as international law.
It should be renamed to currently accepted “international traditions and customs” (ITAC)
Queue’s/line’s in shop are not formally enforced by some authority to my knowledge, but most participants adhere to such order. (I would call it tradition)
> But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
That seems a little silly on the face of it when you realize most people complicit during the war in what we would now call war crimes weren't even charged to begin with. Many on the losing side found lucrative jobs with the side that won, and the side that won wasn't even considered for charges.
> In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged?
That also seems a little farcical any way you twist it
> If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Actually, I think we're moving towards a world that is more earnestly determined by market forces. Or, these were always the same concepts; we just can't force the world to take our "deals" anymore.
Nobody needs to go to war with America on behalf of the ICC. We merely need member nations to declare they won't enforce any American sanctions against ICC judges or other personnel. The US might cry and stamp their feet, maybe even threaten to invade France, but this is all impotent rage if the EU decides to wake up and call America's stupid bluffs.
If French banks with US presence start banking sanctioned individuals the US would start confiscating their American assets. It’s just not worth it for them. The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
Why does it need to be all French banks? The French government could establish a special class of bank for domestic business, that isn't subject to international pressure except pressure applied to the French government itself. They should be able to find a way that a judge in Europe, living in Europe, paying European taxes to European governments, paying rent to a European landlord, doesn't have to give a shit about what America thinks.
This is a tractable problem, except for the lack of political willpower to create a solution.
Sure, France could in theory create such a domestic bank. But it wouldn't be allowed to connect to any US based financial institutions or transfer funds through networks controlled by those institutions. This would be so limiting as to make it hardly worth the effort. Ultimately I expect that France will just try to wait out the current US administration.
Which is why the way to deal with this is by sanctioning US companies in retaliation. Europe can't shield its own companies from the US, but it can inflict equal pain on US companies.
Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies. Your point being?
> The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
The USD is rapidly losing this status, though. The current president's policies has turned the US into an extremely unreliable trade partner, so more and more trades are being done in EUR.
> Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies.
At this point, they should do so. With America weakened and behaving erratically, this is a good time for Europe to assert itself and put America in our place.
If it's a French bank the country of France can tell said bank they must service said customer regardless of the loss of their US assets.
Every country that works at an international level assumes said risks.
I for one am tired of internal national companies playing pick and choose on the best options and ignoring everything else. If the world wants to go multipolar again it's time for corporations to get kicked in the sack.
They might, but if they did they would presumably be prepared to retaliate against US seizures with their own. The only reason the US is able to credibly threaten to seize EU bank assets is because the EU governments are implicitly on board with the entire arrangement. As soon as it's no longer viewed as mutually beneficial it will crumble overnight.
I don't think that's accurate. Which sanctions, specifically, would become ineffective if Emmanuel Macron stood up and said "Our government won't enforce this sanction against ICC judges or other personnel"?
Would it? The source article doesn't say that he's unable to find a French bank account. The practical "debanking" problems it describes - some non-American banks won't do business with a person under American sanctions, all payment card systems popular in Europe are American - aren't subject to the French government's enforcement or lack thereof.
>all payment card systems popular in Europe are American - aren't subject to the French government's enforcement or lack thereof.
I disagree. Tomorrow France can tell Visa/MC/Banks they must service ICC judges or lose the ability to bank in their country and suddenly said providers will be concerned about the predicament they are in.
The EU better pull its head out of its ass about following everything the US does at this point. It's obvious over here in the states things have gone off the rails, and they'll go down with us if they want to remain so tightly coupled.
> Tomorrow France can tell Visa/MC/Banks they must service ICC judges or lose the ability to bank in their country and suddenly said providers will be concerned about the predicament they are in.
Absolutely. You get the Visa executives lobbying the American government to stop this madness and it will stop.
I'm not sure how you can look at the current political situation in the US and conclude that business executives get veto power over government decisions. Trump just this month summoned the CEOs of every major pharma company in the US for a ritual humiliation, and commanded them to give him steep discounts for a new self-branded website he's setting up.
Considering the relations between the US and the Netherlands it is inconceivable that the Dutch government would allow US military personel to be detained that way on its soil, and if that did happen I think a call from the White House would "clear any misunderstandings"...
Nothing has changed. The Netherlands are staying on the straight and narrow even if they might blow hot air under the guise of "EU solidarity", and that gets them cushty NATO jobs, too ;)
Trump's threatening the sovreignty of two NATO members while also being skeptical of the value of keeping the US itself in NATO and suggesting the US won't defend any NATO member that gets attacked.
He has already done things that a reasonable outsider would expect to be mere bluffs. And also TACO'ed backwards, turning things he's done into, effectively, theatrics.
Maybe so but that does not change a thing to the bilateral relation between US and Netherlands... which is as tight as can be, shall we say, we've seen it as recently as October with Nexperia.
Invade The Hague, and the next you see it's the whole US bases' set kicked out from Europe and potential Russian/Chinese missiles in Cuba pointing to Silicon Valley.
And OFC Wall Street heading down faster than in 1929. Fucking up your main client would yield a disaster so huge to the US economy than no war would save them. If any, they would be fucked, because the EU might even temporally ally with Russia. Then the shit would hit the fan in Alaska.
Your army it's the best in the world? Say hello to a coallition between Europe-China-Russia. No one would dare to throw any single atomic bomb because the outcome would be MAD for everyone.
The US would attempt then to invade Mexico/Canada. But that would yield to its own people siding up with Canada and Mexico against an obvious corrupt US war-machine-corporate state, up to the point to getting former Mexican territory back to Mexico.
Texas and California might have declared indepent countries themselves to avoid any war. The smart move, you know.
I've seen far right regimes in Europe -Spain- siding up with the Communist Cuba because of the common backgrounds over politics.
And the Cuban regime itself under Castro mourning over Franco's death. As crazy as it sounds.
Under an US-invaded European Union Spain would team up with Cuba and Venezuela the first day no matter which party would be ruling, left or even neocon-close right. The Spaniard state's survival would be the top priority.
No state, no economy, no Ibex 35. And shit would hit the fan from Latin America too.
Oh, and expect hell with guerrillas spawning here and there from Latin America backed up from Europeans and maybe the Moccromafia and the former Italian Mafia themselves. Spain, France and Italy have contacts over all the Mediterranean and you knows what Mediterranean means. I wouldn't be there if I were an American trying to invade Europe... because once you kick the wasp nest of the Islamic regimes being generously supported from Mafias, you would have both the Jihad and the Narcoguerrillas at home with European army support.
Try to stop that. Because something the Southern Europeans know well it's learning to have friends even in Hell "just in case".
Spain has the Hispano-spehere, they know how to put a whole political spectra on its side with ease, and the French have the Francophonie.
And for sure they have contacts in the Arabic world as I said.
If they don't have a badass archive of ETA contacts with Islamic camps beforehand, and they own the triumph card of Marbella too. You would be nuts trying to invade some sickos there; they know who to call in case of emergencies. The Spanish state already did that against terrorists themselves.
You severely underestimate the level of animosity between half the EU and Russia. They would revolt if the other half tried to openly ally with Russia.
The example you gave isn't too surprising if one believes authoritarians attract authoritarians.
That what happen because, ahem, rudely said, eveyone it's grabbed from the balls from everyone's else. Economically, I mean. We are tangled and dependant of each other.
The US has the most advanced software and CPU's, the EU has sofisticated and pretty complex industrial hardware not even seen in the US. China, well, it's China, the factory of the world.
Sure. But if someone is fantasizing about Europe kicking American troops out with Russian help, they’re fantasizing about nuclear war on European soil. (Admittedly, a short one given Russia’s a paper tiger in conventional terms.)
A deer was walking through the forest when she suddenly noticed a hungry-looking bear stalking her. Quickening her pace, she ran headlong into her old friend the wolf devouring a rabbit. "How dare you!" Ms. Deer bellowed, "That poor rabbit! I'll have you put in prison for that!" The wolf growled. She continued, "You'd better be careful, Mr. Wolf; there's a bear chasing me. If you try to bite me I'll just team up with him and then you'll be fucked!"
This is cute, like a little boy charging you with a cardboard sword. Better take him seriously or you're gonna get "attacked" by his model airplane collection next!
pats head That's nice, Billy, it sure is fun to play pretend. Now you run along and play with your marbles.
One of the things that made America a superpower is "soft power". Continuing to piss off their allies will eventually blow back if the US ever needs something from the UN.
Or worse they may need that French aircraft carrier if war breaks out with China.
Im sorry the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be. Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right? The fact that people have just swallowed the might make right narrative just shows what kind of a dire situation we are in when it comes to international politics and how far standards have fallen since 2001.
> the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be
Just because you try to do something doesn't mean you succeed. The way the world ought to be is not the same as the way the world is.
> Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right?
Which involved buying them weapons in order to make them mighty.
And lets be real, there are plenty of other conflicts in the world that nobody gives a shit about (just look at africa). The real reason Ukraine is getting support is that its geographically right next to europe and having them not be controlled by Russia is strategically valuable to western interests. Having Russia wear itself out in Ukraine is also strategically valuable.
Where ICC could win against someone in the US is if the opposition comes to power in the US and does nothing to protect that person. "Oh gosh, bounty hunters grabbed them and smuggled them out of the country? What a shame."
Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
They don’t have to go to war. The ICC can just try these people in absentia and then once they’re found guilty put bounties out on them like Osama Bin Laden.
It's a show of power that, for the US, is lessening that power.
Most of the US's power is from being a land of opportunity and of high ideals, with military power being secondary backup. As the US lessens opportunity and openly betrays its ideals, that power disappears. The Greenland and Canada threats alone probably require $500B-$1T/year in additional military spending to try to gain through force wha was previously given freely to the US. Add in the huge cost to the US from the tariff idiocy and cutting things like USAID and we could never spend enough militarily to make up for it.
Look at Putin's weakness in Ukraine. He tried to take by force what was not his, and ended up costing himself far more in lost trust than he could ever have gained with the war, and he has gained so little in the war. Putin had a better chance by continuing to try to divide Ukrainian society internally and have the majority of society side with Russia. Much like what is happening in the US right now.... but attack with bombs and the charade disappears. The US is going to discover the same loss of power through its attempts and threat of force.
The USA's might is highly dependent on the world order it fostered after WW2, and especially after the Cold War.
Erode that, and the USA as we've known the past 70 years starts to crumble. If in a couple decades the rest of the world works to decouple from the dollar as the main reserve currency; decouple from the dependency to sell to the USA; and decouple the dependency on American tech you still have a rich country but definitely not the superpower with the might as it exists today.
It's not possible for the USA to be funded with the astronomical deficits it runs to keep its war machine, it's not possible for the US, culturally and politically, to majorly increase taxes to cover this deficit. Slowly there would be cuts to its defence spending, diminishing its might.
Not sure why Americans decided this was a good path, didn't expect to see the era of Pax Americana to be so abruptly shaken during my lifetime but here we are.
So while the US might look like a really juicy market, I start to wonder how much juice is in the lemon?
Why the dependency to sell to the US if 90% of the US population doesn't have the free cash to buy things?
Yes, I know I'm stupid, and look at all the cheap stuff americans buy; I've seen the miles of warehouses from companies like 5 Below. My concern is how long this lasts?
I am not American so perhaps I am curious but I don't think that any Americans got a real say in it?
I was discussing this with my cousin today and about how here in my country, we have multi party system. Sure, there is still two major parties but there are definitely small parties as well and we were discussing that even India should move towards more decentralization akin to switzerland.
I really hope we have a more decentralized option and where people from all around the world feel that their vote, in fact, does matter.
The US seems mostly healthy except for corruption skyrocketing. I don't even need to see the stats. If the president is this bad, and Americans overall think that's fine, then a lot of lower offices will soon be filled with corrupt officials. Attitudes shape incentives, and incentives shape behavior. Otherwise, both in terms of labor laws and capital markets, the US looks very healthy. But corruption in itself might create huge problems in the long term.
Most of our people in the US do not think it's ok what trump is doing. We have a binary political system where both parties work to deceive the public that there is any real choice. Both parties in involved in the attrocies at varying degrees. Democrats are the carrot and republicans are the stick with business interests in the middle controlling both sides with money. I'm not sure what the solution is but more of same voting dems/rep ain't working.
In many ways electing Trump was a reaction to the corruption, but of course instead of getting less of it voters got more of it. That’s why it’s so hard to turn the ship around, profits from corruption are reinvested into more corruption.
> profits from corruption are reinvested into more corruption.
Beautifully explained.
And I want to ask is there anything we can do bottom line about it?
I think like stricter rules against corruption should be in check, but that requires the govt. to do something and I feel like govt.'s themselves are being corrupt
It's this cyclical loop and I don't know if there is rather anything that we can do to break out of it.
We have the rights to vote, but those end up being squandered in most/all countries with corrupt politicians, those right to vote aren't really used mostly to bring real change, maybe a different name perhaps
At the end of the deal, its more so an faith in overall humanity that we can figure out what's right for all of us but we just fight over petty differences sometimes.
Do you guys have faith in overall humanity in aggregate? At times I feel like some instances restore my faith whereas others reduce it so its all just feelings for me perhaps.
An internal reform would look like the catholic reformation. There was hope that having an external adversary like China would spur the US into self reform to save itself but it appears that our leaders have now figured out that despite recent attempts at puffery we would not win such a war and have instead chosen a managed decline. It also means we’re in the looting phase of collapse. It can last a long time as there is a lot of wealth to loot. I personally gave up hope and left the US 10 years ago. I wish those who remain all the best with it.
I am not really familiar with the catholic reformation sorry.
Regarding your comment, its very interesting, where have you shifted now if I may ask or more details about it?
I am not really American but I still hear that its startup culture is well although with all of the other downsides we have mentioned, it does become moot.
A lot of people feel like the system is unfair but they want to be on the other side of unfairness rather than making the system fair from what I've observed. And this observation kind of fits globally sometimes imo
Somewhere cheaper, I expect the downturn to present as things generally becoming too expensive to afford so I got a jump on reducing expenses.
If you want to be in startup culture SV is still the place to be. I didn’t like it because of all the trend following, if you want to succeed there it’s best to jump on a trend. I’m more of an applied researcher and had my own ideas I wanted to explore.
As inequality continues to get worse those who initially benefited from it will generally find themselves on the other side of the transition and losing out.
AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more
productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.
Hm Interesting, I already live in India and its already really cheap and still has a really good startup ecosystem. When I wrote that comment, I didn't mean that I wanted to go to startup, I am a little annoyed by some of the things happening there too
So I guess India's the best option considering all factors I guess.
but one of the problems especially in India is the saturation of the market for software engineers and the competition to get into college is so cut throat that I can't even start to tell smh
I think perhaps remote jobs from india might make more sense but I clearly am not the only one with this idea so might be hard to differentiate I suppose
> AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.
That's great but I think I have nuanced discussion on AI, I think that we are gonna have much bigger financial issues all around the world because of the AI bubble itself
I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics. Between humans might does not make you right.
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
> I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics
The expression should not be understood to mean that might makes things morally just. In the weak form it means the strong can do what they want because what are the weak going to do about it? The stronger form of the expression is the idea that strong players set up the rules (legal code, etc) and as such they rig the rules in their favour.
As a European, if it wasn't for Russia's might, why wouldn't we defend Ukraine's borders?
It is easy to express opinions about how things should be, but only with power can you make them so. There's of course the fractal complexity of who gets to decide how to spend the power budget of a nation, but that is besides the point. We may decry the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, China and the United States, but what good are our cries if we have no power to improve the lives of those affected? Am I saying this to whine about how powerless are we? No, I believe this should be the motivation, the call for greater economic development so that we can attain the power we feel like we need to make a positive change in the world. If not, we will be subjects of those who wield more power - and this isn't even advice exclusively for Europeans. You either build power in groups that are inclusive, or you steal power and form exclusive groups. The quality of life that most of the free world has been enjoying stemmed from the former, and it is the latter groups that will put us back into the dark ages.
Is this cynical? If so, I can confidently say I am a cynic.
Might does not make right. Might just means you’re holding the biggest stick, not that you have the faintest clue how to use it responsibly. Power sustained purely by bullshit, as it is these days in USA, eventually drowns in it. I'm not looking forward to it happening, but when it does, I'm sure to at least get some satisfaction out of watching the scum drowning.
Yes and no, there is a bit more to it. When dealing with democracies hypocrisy tends to actually harm the people practising it to some extent. If a polity insists on living in a fantasy rather than reality the political process will start optimising for outcomes in that fantasy world rather than reality. It is quite funny watching US politics where the voter base are unprincipled and opportunistic in how they vote then get hoist on their own petard when they get leadership that reflects their voting patterns. It is also interesting to think how effective a country could be if the voter base tended to be honest and forthright.
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
For individuals, there's often a strong incentive to display certain beliefs, and the easiest way to do that consistently is to internalise them. The cost of voting for a bad party to you personally is zero. In other words, the government is a commons, and anyone can abuse it without consequence, but when we all do it...
> If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
I think its also about the moral ambiguity itself and perhaps even the meaning of life in my opinion.
Because like, I really think that world has its flaws but at the end of the day, this is perhaps still the most rarest moments in the whole universe when we think about it
So I'd much rather do work which benefits other humans that I enjoy (although I sometimes think of it from, I would probably want to do something after retirement, maybe I get retire early or not suppose, but if I can already make the thing I want to do as retirement as job [computer related] and they pay really nicely, why not just do them right now)
It's a shame to me that tech right now feels so inhumane. I don't want really a billion trillion dollars. I just want "enough" and I want to perhaps help people once I get that "enough" not this hyper growth-focused almost will sell you snake-oil kind of tech
Perhaps most people don't have that definition of "enough" or they have materialistic desires or fame desires which one wants to get through money but I don't have many of such desires but I don't really know why people want to be so materialistic.
Like take Elon Musk, richest man in the world, Man, his ego is really fragile. Donald Trump feels like having a really fragile ego to me as well.
I really don't understand what's the point of having all these billions of dollars? Yes nobody is offering me a billion dollars but I'd rather just take "enough" and then give others to some projects I want to help smh
Also logically, it doesn't make sense to lie to me that much. To me trust seems the most valuable resource and the easiest way of generating and securing trust for a long time is being honest. And this helps me grow into a better person (who has his flaws) but still honesty mostly helps I guess idk.
I think we all just want our lives to have meaning in one way or another but it would be so much better if the sources of generation of meaning were human and not inhumane stuff as I was saying
>When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power.
It was a superpower, until Trump got back in office. He's been taking an axe to US soft power, and our institutions in general. We're on the edge of losing Global reserve currency status. That's what's driving the re-monetization of Silver and Gold.
> Might is right is the norm everywhere at every level not only international politics. The corrolary is that democracy and human rights are a joke.
You are quite wrong, of course, as any reasonably informed observer will know. Whether you're just ignorant or ill-intentioned: It's so easy to fire off these poisonous comments whose effect is to undermine and deligitimize the norms and institutions that keep things reasonably okay, as imperfect as they are. I hope you will never have to yourself experience the difference that you so easily dismiss.
The author of the comment I replied to seems to find it perfectly okay for "might is right" to be the norm. I pointed out that if we believe that this way of thinking is okay at the international politics level then the corollary is that democracy and human right must be a farce. Don't be mistaken, what we see happening at the level of world affairs will trickle down to everyday life. At the world stage, this wicked way of thinking leads to genocides being normalized. At the societal level it leads to societies with no morals. Might is right at every level.
This reads a little different than your original comment, so thanks for adding to it. It's still not quite clear to me whether you're saying "might is right at every level", or "if this line of thinking were to be accepted, then might would be right at every level".
In any case, I don't think either is true, formally or for practical purposes. It also does not follow that accepting "might is right" on the international level makes a farce of the ideas of democracy or human rights, whether one regards it as a desirable state of international affairs or as an undesirable fait accomplit, as we both seem to agree. I will not bore us with logical formalities and stay on the practical side of things:
Because, if you allow any group of actors, or the predominant state of things in any place, on any level, to spoil the whole concept simply by them not adhering to it, then indeed you have needlessly given up everything without even trying. Nothing better can exist when you let bad actors doing bad things define the floor and the ceiling of what can be.
Islands of decency exist. They are flawed, and yet they are the best and only real thing we have in this regard. They are under threat, as you say. Undercutting them by pretending that they have no worth or indeed value at all only plays into the hands of their enemies.
Practically speaking, doesn't using force while preaching democracy just ruin the concept for everyone? If we accept that 'might makes right' in international affairs, we create a world where power—not rights—governs every interaction and where democracy and human rights while they may have tangible reality in some "islands" become propaganda used to gain higher moral ground.
Mostly yes. But No to your first question. Look almost anywhere, anytime, and you'll find force and violence to be the default. That something else exists anywhere at all is an accomplishment; that it doesn't reach everywhere does not make it worthless.
You will also find that force and violence has been done in the name of every good idea that ever came about. If you let good ideas get "ruined" whenever someone uses them as a shield for bad ends, you will have none left. Nothing at all. Just because you gave the bad more power than the good. That is not practical at all, to say it mildly.
I used to believe this, but looking at the history of "israel", the genocides constantly committed in the middle east, etc. It's obvious that your logic would just be legitimizing the current might.
Would your logic apply to all the people of Gaza, would them resisting qualify as "undermine and deligitimize the norms and institutions that keep things reasonably okay"
Of course not, and nothing I wrote leads to that conclusion.
Rejecting the notion that "everywhere at every level not only international politics... democracy and human rights are a joke" does not mean that things are non-horrible everywhere, at every level.
Having a way for the public to regularly and non-violently change leadership and lawmakers, having checks and balances between the holders of power, and certain norms we strive towards is the only thing that gives us a chance at preventing authoritarian, absolutist and arbitrary rule - within the constraints where these things have effect.
That they do not work everywhere and do not work perfectly is a sign that we continue to need them. Concluding the opposite, that they're entirely useless, is not only dangerously foolish and fatalistic, but also logically fallacious.
It's an argument often used by those who wish to undermine these norms and institutions. I don't automatically think that this is you, but it might be interesting to examine your line of reasoning and what makes you read things in my previous response that are not there.
> ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions
This would be lovely. It’s not going to happen, and it would be stupid for Europe to pursue alone.
The ICC was born out of the optimism of the 1990s. When China was accepted into the WTO because trade was equated with democracy. When the world powers at least pretended to heed an international rules-based order.
That order is dead. The EU is—nobly—trying to resurrect it. But the great powers, together with most regional powers, have explicitly rejected it in favor of spheres-of-influence realpolitik.
Upholding the Rome Statute would mean picking simultaneous fights with America and Russia, and probably Israel, Iran, India and China, too. It’s simply not a tenable situation in a world where the rules are being re-written in multiple theatres.
The US is not a signatory of the Rome statute. The ICC has no jurisdiction over the US, and any scenario where it claims it does would be an abuse of power.
2. The ICC recognizes the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to be Palestinian territories
3. The ICC Article 12(2)(a): “The Court may exercise its jurisdiction if the crime in question is committed on the territory of a State Party to this Statute.”
4. Therefore, ICC argues it does have jurisdiction
So, according to the ICC, you don't need to be apart of the Rome Statute for the ICC to have jurisdiction
at least thats the argument for ICC's jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. IDK if the ICC ever tried that with the USA
I think the argument is subtley different (sorry if this is nitpicky)
1. Palestine is a state, whose territorial extent includes the gaza strip (the most controversial proposition)
2. Under international law, a soveriegn state has the right to prosecute any crime that takes place on their territory. In many ways this is kind of the definition of soveriegnty - the ability to control and make decisions in your territory (in the caee of war, subject to the restrictions imposed by the geneva convention)
3. Soverign states can delegate this power to anyone they chose
4. Palestine delegated this power to the ICC, subject to the provisions of the Rome statue.
> So, according to the ICC, you don't need to be apart of the Rome Statute for the ICC to have jurisdiction
The idea that courts have juridsiction over foreign nationals who commit crimes in their territory is very standard and is generally true for all courts.
E.g. if you are a tourist visiting another country and murder someone, you still get arrested by local authorities. There is no get out of jail free card because you are a foreigner. What is relavent is where the crime took place not who comitted it.
In the case of the ICC, the ICC is acting on behalf of Palestine. So its juridsiction would be the same as whatever Palestine's would be minus any additional restrictions imposed by the rome statue.
The fact that the Palestinian Authority has made no attempt at arresting the Hamas members also charged by the ICC, shows they do not have sovereignty in Gaza - they don’t have the ability to control and make decisions there.
I actually generally agree with this. How can the PA have sovereignty over an area they basically have never controlled? It seems pretty unprecedented to have a "state" that does not have control of its territory at time of recognition.
That said, it should be noted that the Hamas members publicly charged are all dead now and you can't arrest a dead person (the icc can also make warrants in secret so its possible there are secret warrants). But even if they weren't, it is clear they don't have the ability to enforce justice (or anything else) in Gaza, nor did they have that ability in the past.
IIRC, the prosecutor on the ICC responded to the sanctions by suggesting that they could charge individuals interfering with the court with obstruction. Which, as far as US sanctions are concerned, they definitely don't have the jurisdiction to do. I don't think anything legal came of it, but that is exactly the sort of threat that, from a prosecutor, sounds like abuse.
Why do you say they don't have jurisdiction in that case?
Article 70:
“It shall be a crime for any person to commit any of the following acts:
(a) giving false testimony;
(b) presenting false or forged evidence;
(c) corruptly influencing a witness, expert, or court official;
(d) interfering with or intimidating a witness, expert, or court official;
(e) committing any other act which perverts the course of justice in relation to proceedings before the Court.”
Article 70's jurisdiction is not tied to member states. It applies to anyone, anywhere that may affect the court's functioning.
edit: maybe you're saying the ICC cannot have jurisdiction over people/nations that never agreed to be apart of their jurisdiction, regardless of what the Rome Statue says?
Yes, just because the Rome statute claims jurisdiction doesn't make it true, if the jurisdiction in question didn't agree.
In the US, this has all the legal power of Joe Sixpack declaring legal power, or a Russian court. If the ICC tried, the US would tell them to pound sand (or more likely, increase sanctions).
Since the US is not a signatory, as far as they are concerned, the ICC is just a random organization claiming to hold powers it doesn't have.
If a foreign national threatened or tried to improperly influence a US judge, you better belueve the US courts would claim juridsiction.
Generally speaking courts usually claim juridsiction over actions that take affect in their territory even if comitted outside of it (e.g. someone running a scam call center specificly targeting americans would likely get in trouble with us courts even if they never step foot there. Someone hiring an assain to kill an american will still get charged even if they never step foot in america). The ICC is not unique in this regard. The limiting factors here are politics and power not traditional views of how juridsiction works.
There is a difference between juridsiction and actual ability to execute judgements/orders.
That's really not legally correct. Unless the case is specifically tied to terrorism, US federal courts don't claim jurisdiction over murders of private US citizens abroad.
In the giants legal overreach death match of USA vs ICC, I am betting on the USA as a force that can actually enforce out-of-jurisdiction law against the other
The only way we would ever answer to the ICC is if anyone could force us, by military threat. That's the only way people are put in front of that court.
Correction: it was created to advance own geopolitical goals and harrass unfriendly regimes using human rights abuse as an excuse. So in that sense nothing has fundamentally changed.
Which geopolitical goals was it created for? Certainly not the ones it's being used for right now.
This sort of fallacy, of widening a category such that the initial meaning is lost, and then advancing an argument on that false category, is something I'm seeing a lot more these days in political topics. But I'm not sure I have a name for the fallacy.
It's like people that argue that the US civil wars was "actually" about states' rights and economic differences rather than slavery. It wasn't a war about the concepts of states rights in general, it was about the right of states to do one thing: legalize slavery. It wasn't about the idea of economic differences in general, it was about one specific economic difference: chattel slavery and whether those slaves get paid and have economic freedom.
Not really. The poster you're agreeing with specifically stated that "nothing has fundamentally changed" and that the US has been "using human rights as an excuse". I don't know if you're completely unaware but Trump is definitely not using human rights as an excuse when sanctioning the ICC judges or whoever fits his fancy. In fact, he's not even using international law as an excuse as the term "human rights" actually means something under the UN. That is the change. And it's just as likely he'd do it if it was in his interest but not American interest. That also would be a rather fundamental change.
Not only judges in the ICC, the USA also used sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice that is responsible for Bolsonaro's attempted coup case.
It's even more egregious it used the Magnitsky Act for that...
The whole banned via banking thing is scary. A local business in my area was flagged as some sort of illicit operation. There was almost no way to know it even happened outside being unable to take payment ... that was it.
No notice, no reason why, no recourse for them. They had google for their life for weeks talking to people online who it happened to and make dozens upon dozens of phone calls and explain the whole saga every time. Tons of false leads and promises for folks to call them back who never did.
They eventually found that it was some old bank they were in good standing with who after weeks of not responding, still couldn't explain why, but they said they apparently flagged them. It was undone after about 12 weeks and ultimately only because someone at this random bank took the initiative to lift the flag, but they didn't have to.
The process is completely opaque and you effectively have no rights to know or resolve anything.
> "On top of that, all payment systems are American: American Express, Visa, Mastercard. Overnight, you find yourself without a bank card, and these companies have an almost complete monopoly, at least in Europe."
On one hand, this shows how important it is for paper cash to have first-class citizen status when it comes to legal tender.
On the other hand, how does the largest single currency zone in the world not have its own debit card settlement system? The Germany-only Girocard appears to have been mostly phased out, and doesn't work outside Germany unless it's co-branded with MC/Visa. Same with France's Card Bancaire. Besides that, 39% of online purchases in Germany are made through PayPal or MC/Visa.
There’s a digital euro launching next year AFAIK which is designed to replace Mastercard and Visa. It’s been in the works for ages and is coming online at a pretty critical time it seems.
It comes with a full digital wallet infrastructure part of it too. So some of the fundamental tech scene is definitely changing in Europe.
It's still going. NGI ("Next Generation Internet") is a Horizon Europe program, part of the EU's mission to strengthen European economy. It doesn't mean that any of the projects that receive subgrants from that pot are officially adopted for anything. It is the NGI grantees who decide which subgrantees receive funding, not the EU (in this case, NLnet Foundation). Hundreds of open source projects have received financial support from this pot.
> Besides that, 39% of online purchases in Germany are made through PayPal or MC/Visa.
This is currently being solved with Wero, which is intended to be an EU-wide online payment platform which can replace PayPal/MC/Visa, and a bunch of national payment systems.
HN moderation will protect outlandish hyperbolic comments like this, won't it?
If it needed to be said, Francesca Albanese is not conducting warfare. She's doing her job as a UN Special Reporter on Israel's occupation of Palestine. You are shooting the messenger.
I vouched for your comment because I don't believe it breaks any rules. If others disagree with you, they should reply. If they believe it's low quality, they should downvote. Flagging should be reserved for posts that actually break the rules.
She is wonderful and her work on investigating the complicity of countries in the Gaza genocide and Palestinian rights / Israeli agression is incredibly thorough and extremely important. More power to her!
She is the worst possible representative the palestinians could have. She makes such wild statements that it actually makes it easy for Israel to dismiss her as pro hamas.
Israel was created after WW2, and it has never been at peace. It's kind of proof that it's not going to work. They're not fighting for survival they're fighting for expansion. Nethanyaou even claims this point: his mission is the greater Israel project, to take land from egypt and surrounding countries, and settlements in Gaza are used to block the formation of a Palestinian state.
If Jews are allowed an ethnostate, then any country in the world should also be allowed an ethnostate.
If Jews are allowed to have nukes in the middle east, then any country in the middle east should be allowed to have nukes.
Remember that IDF were told to stand down during the music festival. They're also allowed to shoot Israeli civilians if it helps their objectives. And somehow they new about the Australian mass shooting in Sydney months before it happened, without telling Australian authorities.
Israel is not doing a good job in terms of world peace and I would say that if they can't find peace then the state of Israel should be dissolved for the good of the planet
Well the greater israel part and expansionist aims at least are quite clear and no conspiracy.
And he's asking some valid questions, why was israel allowed to be created and why are we supporting it's continued genocidal expansion.
Unfortunately he's wrong referring to the zionists as jews, they never really followed a religion, and the palestinians are the most real "jews" if we're talking in terms of genetics
The US is now literally sanctioning UN experts and ICC people if they push too hard on accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes, e.g. Francesca Albanese over her Gaza reports and support for ICC cases. In Germany (and elsewhere) it often doesn’t need formal sanctions: people get disinvited, smeared, or quietly pushed out of jobs if they’re too vocal on Palestine – think Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Masha Gessen, Ilan Pappé, Ghassan Hage and others running into cancellations, funding cuts, and public delegitimisation instead of explicit legal punishment.
Wow, unbelievable, downvote everything that states the obvious. This platform practically silences any criticism of Israel. Just like any other platform.
Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
There's no such flaw in most cases brought to the ICC
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
The objective of the ICC is to provide a framework to enable prosecuting and punishing the people ordering particularly egregious acts in a way that is more consistent with liberal rule of law principles than post-hoc tribunals like after WW2 and that is more accessible to fragile / new countries due to having the legal infrastructure set up and at least partially legitimized by it being an international body
The fact that Putin (for example) might at some point get extradited / captured, prosecuted and jailed for whatever crimes he gets found guilty of is a moral good in and of itself
If this being done at the ICC rather than in an Ukrainian or Russian (in an hypothetical regime after Putin's) helps others accept the verdict as more based on fact than politics then that's why the ICC exists as an entity
If this makes someone down the line think twice about ordering war crimes then that's an added benefit but it's not the point
Putin & the Israeli warrants are a bit for show since it is very unlikely to result in an arrest (although it does serve to isolate both, which i suppose is a punishment)
However don't let that take away from the other work the ICC has done. They have thrown people in jail.
For the palestine situation, hamas leadership has generally fared poorly (no tears from me, they started this war after all). However you can't issue a warrant for a dead person.
It should be noted that the ICC has not as of yet alleged that anyone has comitted genocide in palestine. All the (public) accusations thus far have been for lesser crimes. There is a big difference between what randos on social media are alleging and what the ICC prosecutor is alleging.
Furthermore, everyone has the right to be pressumed innocent until proven guilty. That includes people accused of heinous international crimes like genocide or crimes against humanity.
(To date, the only person the ICC has ever accused of genocide is Omar al-Bashir from Sudan)
If for example Putin was overthrown and had to flee Russia, and happens to fly over an ICC signatory, he could rightfully be arrested and brought to justice. What is the alternative? CIA assassinations and kangaroo courts?
He could be arrested and brought to justice regardless, the ICC provides literally zero value-add here. Sovereign countries will do what they want regardless of the ICC's rambling, and they never needed the ICC to justify their actions to begin with.
The national policing forces don't report to the courts. Instead, there are promises between the two. The argument that international courts cannot work because they don't have their own enforcement is weak. But you are right it would be equivalent to war, or "special military operations" such as Bin Ladin, if a ruling party is convicted.
If the country itself has a justice system that can prosecute the individual, the ICC has no jurisdiction.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
Israel was given notice of an investigation being opened as was required when the investigation was first opened many years ago.
So far, Israel has not provided any sort of proof that they have initiated a serious independent criminal investigation into the alleged misconduct. If they did, i suspect the warrant would go away.
The prosecution hasn't even started yet. The prosecution doesn't start until the alleged perpretators are either captured or turn themselves in (neither of which is likely to happen). Neither an investigation nor a warrant is the same thing as a trial. No evidence has been publicly presented yet, nobody has been found guilty.
Almost no other justice systems require notice that a mere investigation has been opened. So to answer your question, basically all of them.
I would say notifications of investigations are almost never given after the crime is committed, is vaccously true because literally nobody other than the ICC does the notice thing.
In almost every other system, investigations are kept secret. The complementary thing is pretty exclusive to the ICC.
I would also say that this is a matter of politics not justice, since such investigation notices are not addressed to the accused and in general it is expected that the accused is not told that they are the subject of an investigation. As such even if the notice was handled incorrectly, it wouldn't impinge on any of the accused rights and hence not be an issue of "justice"
No, but at this point the alleged crimes were allegedly comitted (or started to be comitted. The ICC prosecutor would presumably argue that some of the alleged crimes are ongoing or at least were up until the ceasefire) years ago. At best, that argument might have worked when the warrants were first announced, but its been years now. There has been more then enough time to start an investigation. If they were serious about it, they can still start one tomorrow.
The charges made are for crimes allegedly committed after the “investigation” was started.
This indicates that the prosecutor was on a witch-hunt.
Perhaps the Israeli courts, who are independent of the Netanyahu government, have not initiated proceedings because they don’t believe there’s a valid case to be made.
OP states that "one the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC". That's incorrect. One of the defendants went farther than any sentence the ICC would have decided.
As you say, this is an act of war (killing ennemies), not an act of justice (trial and prosecution) .
The Palestinian government Hamas broadcasting themselves kidnapping a 6 year old girl to the world is standard rules of war (let alone those much worse things they did that day, the kidnapping was just the first to show up on my feeds that day)?
> So was most of what was done on October 7th by Hamas...
Yeah, I don't think mass executing partygoers at a music festival has anything to do with "the standard rules of war."
Israel's response was obviously disproportionate but certainly fell within the standard conventions of warfare (e.g. executing enemy commanders being housed/protected by the populace is fairly standard.)
Using "partygoers" without mentionning such party happened on lands stolen with violence is a bit dishonest.
Hamas is an indirect creation of Israel, they wouldn't exist if not for decade of violence and humiliation from Israel. In the same vein, the Likoud exist because of the PFLP and maintain its power thanks to the presence of Hamas. Both the extreme right in Israel and the Islamist movements in Palestine feed themselves and survive thanks to hatred and have no reason nor any wish to make this conflict stop. Netanyahu and his minions were probably laughing at the sights of the victims of october 7 knowing this would only help them.enforce their politics.
I think this comment shows how far removed is the modern person living in a sheltered, matcha-sipping western environment from actual human historical reality. Do you seriously suggest that during an active war one side would bring the other to trial rather than just destroy them?
Those were after Germany's defeat, and those put on trial were no longer active combatants.
I'm pretty sure no military in history has ever delayed taking out an active threat in order to conduct legal proceedings. They don't need to, because enemy combatants don't have to be guilty of any crimes to be valid targets under IHL.
I agree. Having lived with a civil war and with non-western roots I find the Western attitude to things like this to be hopelessly naive. It is the product of a golden age following the collapse of communism and the subsequent unrealistic "end of history" optimism.
So in the case of Sri Lanka, was the LLRC set up and subsequently criticised as a mechanism to lend legitimacy to the way in which government forces conducted operations against LTTE? If so, would its mere existence not indicate some level of societal buy-in to the idea that actions should take part according to some judicial form of 'justice'?
Huh? You have that backwards. Since the dawn of human civilization, when two societies went to war the winner usually annihilated the loser: steal anything of value, smash the artifacts, execute the men, and take the women and children as slaves. Thousands of cultures were utterly erased this way. It's only recently that warfare has become a bit more "civilized".
I was quite clearly responding to the GP’s assertion that some sort of ‘justice’ was carried out by one party on the other, which obviously isn’t remotely the case. You can save your cliched one liners.
These answers are assuming that the individuals killed were also those responsible. With Israel's stranglehold on media access to Gaza (perhaps better: open hostility), we will likely never know who was killed and what were the charges against them.
Responsible for what? In war, enemies combatants aren't slain as punishment for crimes, but simply because they're enemy combatants. Likewise prisoners of war aren't (typically) detained on suspicion of crimes, they're detained simply for being enemy combatants.
So many commenters here assume US global hegemony that, in reality, expired after the 1980s. Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively.
Yeah, for instance: even if Trump's bullying works for now, he made sure that most governments in Latin America, including right wing ones, will prioritize uncoupling the country from the US economy. Even if they won't say this quiet part out loud.
It seems odd to me that the US supposedly isn't a major power, yet still finances both NATO and the UN primarily and if it lowers it's support it's "leading the destruction of those things".
Likewise if it backs off it's foreign support, hundreds of millions will die.
Are we singularly carrying the worlds on our backs - which sounds hegemonic - are is the US free to stop spending our money on everyone elses problems?
Perhaps the UK or Germany can fund everything for a few decades and be the next major world power for a bit.
The premise is off. These aren’t "everyone else’s problems", NATO, the UN, trade stability, and foreign aid exist because they serve US interests too: security, markets, alliances, and predictability. The US isn’t benevolently carrying the world; it’s investing in systems that reduce the cost of conflict and instability later.
The question isn’t whether the US is allowed to stop spending, but what it wants the world to look like if it does.
It's just the case that some people at the top don't seem to understand that.
The US accounts for a share of the UN budget roughly equal to the US share of global GDP. The US accounts for a fairly small fraction of the NATO budget. Very little of the US defense budget is spent via NATO. The US being "ripped off" has no basis in fact. Letting Russia impale itself on Ukraine is a pretty good bargain compared to meeting our NATO obligations should Russia invade Europe. We've been getting a good deal, which makes throwing that away pretty insane.
This "It seems odd to me that the US supposedly isn't a major power, yet still finances..." does not mean what you seem to think it means. Soft power and alliances are vastly cheaper than hard power. We are in the find out phase of having lost soft power.
despite how common this opinion is, it fails to recognize that the US itself wanted to structure things that way. this was a politically viable way to continue to funnel huge amounts of money into weapons development and research. its not unlikely that European dependence on the US was a bonus.
were the host countries in Europe pushing for US base deployments or was it really the US and its insane desire to land explosives anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or less and sustain two simulateous land conflicts.
none of this is that simple. were the Europeans happy to take the security and invest more in their civil societies? absolutely, but they eroded their own sovereignty by doing so and the US was more than happy to act like the big brother in control of the whole situation.
the US wanted worldwide military dominance and the dependence of its allies. it really quite weird to say its all their fault.
Yet America and Europe's foreign policies are largely dictated by rich people like the Adelsons who are attached to a foreign land. By accepting that policy and the mere existence of AIPAC, we have effectively voted for it
A 27-country bloc will struggle to accelerate on anything when one veto is all it takes to hit the brakes. Only 12 nations needed to agree when when the EU voted to institute a common currency in 1992.
A French university doesn't need to consult Hungary when reducing their dependency on US tech. Finland doesn't need to consult Czechia when deciding to invest more into domestic defense industry. And so on. The huge majority of dependencies can be eliminated without needing such consensus. It's a gradual process anyway. China didn't wane themselves off the US overnight. They still haven't entirely. See NVIDIA/ASML. Step by step, bit by bit.
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
It is understandable that you would have this impression, given that the US leader has total legal immunity, directly controls the judiciary, Congress, tariffs and formerly independent financial agencies, openly threatens journalists and news media companies, appoints untalented lackies and openly enriches himself and his family and associates, openly uses federal legal entities to pursue opponents, deploys the military within the country against its own citizens, and has made federal arrest without warrant a common daily event.
It you live in a country where your government does not exhibit such characteristics, it's easy to mistake the above as an indication of something suspiciously unlike democracy.
From TFA: "In concrete terms, the rule of law is equality for all individuals, globally, before justice."
The rule of law has now become — for those who enjoy American expressions — a type of fan fiction.
They literally are gangsters; look at what they're doing in Venezuela, literally stealing and selling oil tankers, extrajudicial killings and all the rest of it.
Only 33% of the population opposed it the second time (when it was already clear what their Dear Leader is like), so it's very difficult to escape the conclusion that they're gangsters and fine with that. Even here on HN they're blithely saying "might makes right"...
"Might makes right" is an observation, not a profession of moral philosophy... In other words, the mighty will generally get their way, no matter how wrong that way is.
As far as the tankers go, they're not transporting Toys for Tots, they're transporting Oil for Oligarchs, so I'm not sure how much sympathy I'm going to be able to muster on that one, even though the lawlessness leaves a bitter taste.
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent. The kids have no respect for them whatsoever, but they're sick with them for time being and aware that belt hurts when it's deployed.
No I think it’s properly ruined at this point. There is no possible way any of their formal allies will ever be able to trust them again without a LOT of people going to jail and such fundamental changes to how power works in the country that I don’t think they are even remotely capable of pulling off.
I am deeply skeptical of this statement. Soft power is great but actual power comes from the ability to project your military and economy.
As such, the US's soft power will remain until the EU is willing to compromise on its welfare state to build an actual functioning defense industry and an economy that prioritizes innovation over taxes/regulation.
But I am skeptical the EU/UK will ever reach such a compromise (see: mass riots in France over raising the retirement age, despite it being objectively and clearly necessary; the UK's reluctance to release the triple lock pension despite it impoverishing the country, etc.)
I take it you don’t follow the European defence industry news but the wheels are very much turning already. They are planning an independent future and are hyper aware that it is now official US nation strategy priority to try and destroy the European Union as a political body and make it into a vassal state
Also, when you're rich you get a certain amount of "soft power" for free. People look up to rich people and rich countries. Just pick your favorite rich guy who has demonstrated himself to be an execrable human being for decades, and still has a big pool of admirers.
What's the process for initiation into the "west" these days? Colonizing someone else's territory and sweeping it under the rug as brazenly as possible? It certainly isn't freedom of expression or respect for the rule of law.
We've banned this account for using HN exclusively for political/ideological/nationalistic battle, as well as for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.
I think the important thing here is that governments shouldn't have the right to make life hard for ordinary people with punishments like taking away access to banks and finance system etc.
As for the US slapping European politicians etc, it's high time the people on high horses in Europe feel the shit they push on ordinary people.
There should be no way the government can 'debank' someone in the first place. Monetary relations with other people have always been untouched by the state until very recently, even for revolutionaries. A private transaction is not anyone's business apart from the counterparties.
Assuming that someone should not be allowed to freely earn, spend, invest and participate in the economy without a proved felony is a dystopian concept.
Either have a proper fair public trial and put criminals in prison for serious violations or don't discriminate against anyone's stuff at all if you don't have any proofs. Otherwise it's massively used to give advantages to citizens of several nations to do business and earn while discriminating against others because of 'high risks' without any public court hearing, based on nationality, citizenship or organizational relations.
Unfortunately this seems to be exactly the slope the West is going down after dismissing all the crazy talk of conspiracy theorists who warned of this very thing.
I haven’t seen anything about it here, but another example that is worse because it’s an attack on a private person, is the EU recently sanctioning the former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, living in Belgium which he now cannot leave, for seemingly, essentially reminding the people of Europe and EU politicians’ of the things they said.
The US did this to a slate of Hong Kong administrators in 2020 for implementing China's repressive national security law. It didn't seem to act as a deterrent, as the US did it again to a different group of officials earlier this year.
This is so sad. The rule of law does not apply to the world’s hegemon or its closest allies.
Nearly four decades ago, the then senator Joe Biden told Congress that Israel was “the best $3bn investment we make”, claiming that “were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region”. The US regards Israel as an indispensable strategic asset, which is why it is the biggest ever recipient of US foreign aid, including military assistance. Washington will keep supplying the weapons that enable Israeli war crimes – and then threaten anyone who tries to hold the perpetrators to account.
Guillou and his colleagues issued their warrants after a lengthy, cautious legal process. The case against the Israeli politicians focused on the use of starvation, which Israeli leaders routinely confessed to.
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.
When Israel was starving Gaza it was allowing in 3 times as much calories per person as the United Nations is supplying 400,000 Sudan refugees per person. Is the UN commiting crimes? The UN said is had food to increase what Israel was letting in, so the UN said it had resources to provide more than 3 times what it is providing Sudan refugees to 5 times the population (2 million verses 400,000).
>It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN
How is this anything but DARVO? Israel receives criticism in the UN for reasons that are easily verified and quite understandable - namely its deliriously racist, brutally violent, textbook illegal, and long-lived occupation of Palestine and attempts to annex its territory.
Blaming Muslim countries writ large for the UN complaining about Israel's blatant and continuous violation of the UN Charter and various other international laws is shockingly racist.
Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
This includes countries that have ethnically cleansed their Jews, and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.
> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel
OTOH, why would anybody not be biased against an agressive, xenophobic theocracy bent on illegally occupying and annexing its neighbour, all the while whining that "they want to destroy us and deny the existence of the Israeli state", and then with the other side of their mouth "all Palestinians must die and their homeland belongs to us"? The mind boggles.
> many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been
Here we go.
> and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
Israel following up on their promise and actually applying the treaties they signed never got them any condemnation. Them doing the exact opposite obviously does.
> This includes countries that have ethnically cleansed their Jews, and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.
Someone being oppressed does not justify them then oppressing others. I can’t believe this still needs to be said.
> Someone being oppressed does not justify them then oppressing others.
That’s not the point. A country that has a history of hatred against a group, to the point of ethnic cleansing, and has not changed on the matter, has no legitimacy in critisizing or making judgments on that group.
I think this would be obvious in any other context.
Many countries were also "biased" against Apartheid South Africa, the bias was disapproval of apartheid, much like the one enacted on the West Bank and Gaza.
The bias predates the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
The litmus test is if they were just opposed to the policies of the South African government, or did those countries also hate South Africa and South Africans?
Did they have a history of persecution of South Africans in their own country?
Were they funding armed groups to attack South Africa?
Did they believe that South Africa has no right to exist anyway?
> Countries tend to dislike and boycott apartheid states
> Ah but what about many many decades ago in history the minority ruling the apartheid state were treated badly! In other places! Did you think of that?
"Did the accused party commit the offense they are accused of?"
...everything else is whataboutism, red herring, ad hominem, and DARVO.
If the worlds worst person says 2+2=4, you still can't evaluate that claim by testing how many people like or hate the person. Only by whether the content of their words is true or false.
See, that's exactly the bias. The adjectives you used are all entirely subjective and politically charged. None of these represent an objective quality.
Is Israel an apartheid state? of course not; 25% of its population are Arabs who enjoy equal rights by the law (in comparison, 0% of Saudi Arabians are Jewish).
Is Israel a "rogue nuclear state"? It is a nuclear state, but so are France and Britain. What makes it anymore rogue than them?
Does Israel have "an history of terrorism"? You'll need to expand this one as I'm not sure what is the terrorism you mean.
Is Israel "carrying out a genocide"? Well the number of people in Gaza increased during the war. Don't believe me, hear out Hamas leaders [0].
Israel is in a tough neighborhood. Never before has any country faced such a campaign of ongoing hostility and delegitimization from its neighbors and far away countries alike. Israel is doing very well though.
Only Israel can be accused of murdering more kids (400,000) than there were actually living pre-war (330,000) [0], with the accusations made by no other than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.
> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
"regardless of what Israel does" they haven't tried ending the occupation yet; do you really think they would be condemned for doing so?
This is misinformation. Although Israel did pull its settlers from most of Gaza in 2005, it retained air, sea, and land border control. That is still a military occupation. The reality is, Israel never ended the occupation in Gaza.
No, the misinformation is yours. Israel pulled out Jews from all of Gaza, going back to the pre-1967 line. Gaza shared a land border with Egypt (Rafah crossing) which Israel did not - and could not - control.
While Israel retained air and sea passage control, the blockade as we know it only came after Hamas was elected as the Gaza government and not before.
(this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become)
Gaza has been considered occupied by the UN, the ICJ, the ICC, the EU, and pretty much any body which studies international law, since 1967. Israel is the only entity who claims they have not been occupying Gaza during this period.
> this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become
Even in 2005, after Israel's removal of their settlers and before Hamas came to power in 2007, Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling, based on Israel continuing to exert control over Gaza.
> Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling
That's not what the court said. Its language was
> In light of the above, the Court is of the view that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation. Israel’s obligations have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control over the Gaza Strip.
As it often does, the court used intentionally ambiguous language to try to get a majority of judges on board. But the most natural reading seems to be a novel idea that occupation is non-binary, and Gaza lies somewhere on a spectrum of being occupied or not.
Race is an invention, people assign themselves and others to races based upon nothing but their own beliefs.
It's just a way of "othering" some group of people, which certainly seems to fit the facts, regardless of whether you personally think some set of characteristics should be called a race.
The problem is many people — not here on HN but in general — were happy or at least unperturbed when this happened to right wing figures like Donald Trump, the trucker protestors in Canada and the 1/6 capitol riot people in the US.
It was incredibly obvious this would be inflicted in the other direction to anyone who followed what happened to Wikileaks supporters or people around Ed Snowden.
To everyone saying this is about US hegemony, note not only Canada but also UK (see Nigel Farage) has inflicted this on their own citizens - so they certainly helped lay the groundwork for what amount to extremely petty sanctions (and they too have participated in sanctions efforts).
Your media consumption may be particularly biased if you didn't hear of this! I recommend following outlets from "both sides" even if you find the "other side" offensive. I hate to shill for Ground News, but it's great for this.
You are spreading typical misinformation/propaganda. Temporarily freezing accounts until the law is played out is not the same as debanking someone globally and permanently.
As far as I'm concerned, it's on the same order of badness. "Temporarily freezing" until when? The whim of some government official? No practical difference from using debanking as a political weapon.
Niether Trump nor the "truckers" in Canada were debanked. Freezing your funds in a given country can happen for a variety of reasons and is not remotely the same as debanking someone.
They were temporarily debanked under highly debatable circumstances. Regardless of your political leaning, if you care about basic human freedoms, the level of power the government has over the access individuals have to their finances (in addition to the degree to which every social institution is deeply entangled with that financial system) should be a cause for concern.
The Truckers were on Canadian soil and subject to Canadian law, there was no reason to freeze their accounts like this. They should have been pursued in criminal courts, during which their access to legal counsel should not have been obstructed.
This tactic broadcasts Trump's guilt, and the guilt of others by association. It's hard to imagine how this will play out. It's very worrisome that the USA is collapsing into a fascist state. I feel bad for young people who inherit the consequences of these terrible decisions.
Generally when you say these kinds of things, it's polite to not let your audience guess at what and who you mean. Could you please give us some links?
I'm smelling a troll here if you can't distinguish between a UN official acting in an official capacity being sanctioned, vs. private individuals who proselytize and engage in propaganda for a populist regime which, albeit unofficially, is "The Enemy" for the whole of Europe at the moment.
Also the decisions are not outside any legal process. To quote the agenda for the decision[1]:
> On 18 July 2025, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (‘the High Representative’) published a statement on behalf of the Union, in which she strongly condemned the persistent malicious activities posed by Russia, which form part of broader, coordinated and long-standing hybrid campaigns aimed at threatening and undermining the security, resilience and democratic foundations of the Union, its Member States and its partners. The High Representative stressed that Russia’s malicious activities had escalated further since the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine and were highly likely to persist in the foreseeable future.
Do you really in all honesty want to day that the accusations of some "High Representative" can replace the complete judicial process?
Zero process, zero proofs, just "allegations". Pretty low bar. Most undemocratic states would at least try some staged process. EU doesn't even try to fake it, at least in this case.
The only lesson they will learn is that they need to control sanctions themselves and likely to use them more. Nothing good about this unless you want to see a weaker US and lilely a more federal EU.
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
The long term consequence is that the US is proving that the rest of the world how dangerous it is to rely on US financial institutions. I very much doubt destroying the trustworthiness of its financial institutions in order to protect war criominals is beneficial for the US in the long run.
After WW2, the US did a lot of bad things but it did not change its status in the world. Nothing will change now or in the foreseeable future. And the “problem” is pretty simple: there is no one able to take its place.
After WW2, the US had a lot of political capital and the governments with economic clout were largely either highly positive to the US or already quite hostile, and the US at the same time had a tremendous financial advantage.
A lot of the US' bad things post WW2 were seen favorably by the governments that were already US-friendly, and who either way saw the US as a critical ally.
That has drastically changed in general. The situation is not remotely comparable.
Europe in particular is more confident, isn't bordered by a power that Europe believes it can't handle alone if it has to (a threat, yes, but not an existential one like the USSR). There isn't remotely the same sense of needing the US at all costs.
The ICC decisions simply wouldn't have been allowed to happen in a way that caused a rift with the US shortly after WW2. It'd have been inconceivable. That the ICC decisions have not just been allowed to happen but haven't caused uproar from most European governments is itself evidence of how much weaker the US position is seen by European eyes in particular.
But in terms of finance in particular, it's also just not the case that there is no one able to take its place.
Of the top 20 largest banks in the world by assets, only 5 are American, the top 4 largest are Chinese, and China has 7 total, UK 2, France 2, Japan 3, Spain 1.
Extend that list to the top 50, and it only adds one more US bank.
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction. A state need not be a member of the ICC to be subject to its (or any other entity’s) jurisdiction in investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating such crimes.
The US does not recognize such an argument. If that is the argument being made, then no wonder the US issued sanctions; it would perceive such a precedent as a threat to its sovereignty.
Not quite: The US helped invent that argument, and has used it extensively to pursue its foreign policy goals since World War II.
What the US has argued historically is that American people and institutions are not subject to it because the US has a functioning civilian and military justice system, and so prosecution for such crimes can be handled within it, even by foreign nations and NGOs.
Obviously that’s a load of bullshit, especially (but not only) these days, but “sovereignty for me but not for thee” has long been the rule and with its weakening international position the US may come to find that to be less achievable in the future.
When has the US used the argument that a judicial system has universal jurisdiction? In the US, foreign policy is the domain of the executive, to the point where court cases involving foreign sovereigns are usually dismissed.
Compared to how much of a mess most of the world's powers are on matters on sovereignty, the US is actually one of the more conservative ones here (e.g., see OFCOM in the UK).
Let me restate: The US position is that the US justice system “works” and thus *US persons and institutions* must be pursued *within the US system* even by foreign entities.
In other words, the US position is not that if (say) North Korea commits a crime against humanity they must be pursued in US courts; the US is fine with the ICC in that case. The US position is that if the US commits a crime against humanity that must be pursued in US courts, not the ICC.
It’s an obvious (and bullshit) double standard, but it’s also not a denial of the legitimacy of universal jurisdiction. It’s just the US, as usual, trying to have its cake and eat it too.
Why is that a double standard? The US position is that recognized nations have sovereignty, and are the supreme law within their jurisdiction. If there is no recognized legitimate sovereign power, then the US is fine with an international body substituting.
That this standard is complicated, and different from those that argue that international law should be the supreme law, doesn't make it a double standard. It's also not what is meant by universal jurisdiction, as it does not depend on overriding sovereignty.
Edit: Seeing your other comment, it's also worth noting this was a large reason why the US didn't sign the Rome statute, since as you note, the US isn't inherently opposed to the idea of international courts, only the supremacy of their jurisdiction.
They don't want the precedent established. Same reason why uninvolved parties in US courts submit "amicus briefs" - the precedent from a case may affect them down the line.
The US doesn’t believe universal jurisdiction applies to it or its vassal states and proxies, which includes Israel.
On the other hand, the US didn’t try to prevent Slobodan Milošević from being tried at The Hague for war crimes and genocide, as Serbia wasn’t a vassal state or proxy.
4 State immunity evolved in close connection to the development of the concept of sovereignty
and the territorial State. It can be traced back to the principle of par in parem non habet
imperium which was mentioned as early as 1354 by Bartolus de Saxoferrato in his Tractatus de
regimine civitatis. It stipulates that a sovereign should not have jurisdiction over another
sovereign.
[...]
22 State immunity entails that a State itself or its property is not subjected to the
proceedings of the court of another State. It does foreclose any proceedings or judgment on the
merits, but does not hinder the service of process and a court decision about the admissibility.
Likewise, it protects the property of a State against any measure taken in relation to the
proceedings.
>Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC
Many others have already pointed out the fact here - that Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction.
Instead what I want to focus on is WHY YOU DID NOT KNOW THIS, despite the fact that the ICC literally ruled on this matter quite a while ago, specifically. The court itself approached this question, evaluated the evidence, and made a ruling. You missed all that?
"Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction" is the court's claim; that doesn't make it a legal reality. It relies on the theory that PA is the government of Gaza, despite never having controlled it.
ICC also failed to charge Palestinian authority officials for the money they give war criminals who are in prison because of their actions. Palestinian authority joined the ICC in 2015, 10 years ago plenty of time to act.
I don’t think the ICC was plotting to undermine US or Israel sovereignty. The dispute is about jurisdiction. The ICC has a pretty expansive theory that says it can go after nationals of non-member states if the alleged conduct happened on the territory of a member state. That theory has been around for years and mostly lived in briefs and conferences. What changed in 2025 is that the ICC started acting on it and advancing real cases that implicated non-members. At that point it stopped being academic and started looking like a real-world precedent with consequences for allies and potentially US personnel. That’s the slippery slope. The administration had already tried protests and non-recognition and concluded it was not changing behavior. The August sanctions were framed as a last-resort escalation to draw a hard line against what they saw as ongoing overreach, not as a response to some new hostile intent.
Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.
Even if we had some legal theory under which ICC could assert universal jurisdiction for certain crimes, the ICC doesn't do so. It has to abide by its own jurisdiction rules, which have no such mechanism.
The ICC's jurisdictional claim is here is rather based on the idea that PA is the de facto government of Gaza, even though they never controlled it.
There is no such state as 'Palestine'. The PA is widely recognized and has acceded to the Rome Statute, but it has never held sovereignty in Gaza, making ICC's recognition of 'Palestine'--specifically including not only the West Bank but also Gaza and East Jerusalem--as a State Party under Article 12(2)(a) of the Rome Statute dubious at best.
But really, it's not dubious at all: It's utterly absurd.
ICC claims that since PA claims to represent 'Palestine', and UNGA Resolution 67/19 "Reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967", and that since they consider Gaza "Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" (despite the fact that Gaza has certainly not been occupied by Israel for decades and a completely separate entity exercises sovereignty there), therefore 'Palestine' is a State Party properly represented by the PA and covered by its accession to the Rome Statute, and thus the ICC totally have jurisdiction over Gaza.[0]
Bonkers.
Anyway Israel never acceded to the Rome Statute and the doctrine of state immunity applies. Even if PA were sovereign in Gaza and had properly delegated that sovereignty to the ICC, ICC's claim that Article 12(2)(a) grants them jurisdiction over Israel and Israeli leaders for their actions in Gaza is still a brazen claim to jurisdiction not well supported by customary international law.
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Hawala is such a simple, effective, and relatively anonymous system that bypasses banking that the government had to convince the populace that anyone who uses it is a terrorist. It also helps they use the arab name even though it is of Indian origin.
Cryptocurrencies work fine. If the debanked were to use them, they would find 90% of their restrictions lifted immediately and without permission from anyone.
No, society will not collapse; it will stabilize. There are many forms of taxation, e.g. property, tarrifs, etc. that are unaffected.
Those who call Bitcoin utter shit always have an agenda and insecurities rooted in a feared loss of status.
The problem there is that the EU has started copying the USA, and has just recently sanctioned multiple journalists for telling stories that don't align with their narrative on Russia/Ukraine.
Regardless, should we really sanction our own citizens simply for reporting, in good faith, something that goes against the state-sponsored narrative (true or otherwise)?
This is legit the kind of stuff we used to use as examples as why "Russia is bad".
There is no equivalency bettween what Russia actually does here these days ... or between what was going on in Russia as Putin cemented his power, ressurected Stalins mythology about Stalin as a great leader and how communist Russia operated.
These false equivalencies amd attempts to hint that Ukraine war is anything else then a territorial expansion are not just "regardless".
For me, the really i.portsnt point is to not imply whatever conspira y theory about Ukraine deserving it could be implied.
And likewise, the importsnt part for me was to negate the false equivalency.
I am ok with sanctioning Russia as such, as much as possible. Sadly they have powerful allies in US now ... but for now, Russia and US are the greatest threats to freedom in Europe.
We're not discussing conspiracy theories, or sanctioning of Russia for that matter - this is about EU journalists being sanctioned for reporting in good faith.
FWIW it's kind of refreshing to see a judicial official on the receiving end of this treatment. I know he's not one of the judges who permitted the debanking of protesters in Canada, but 1:1 of like-kind is probably all we can ask for.
Those who so flippantly censor and ostracise dissidents deserve a periodic taste of their own concoctions.
No, you missed the point. They have been indicated to "as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". Physical destruction can occur without being a war crime and those war crimes can occur without any destruction. So it didn't add any useful information infact it was actively misleading because some people might think they were indicated for destruction.
Because someone is wrong on the internet, isn't that enough? I already explained it and I'm unsure what I can add aside from some examples (Siege of Jerusalem (starvation without destruction), Battle of Raqqa (destructive urban warfare, no allegations of starvation or war crimes), Siege of Mariupol (destructive urban warfare, many alleged war crimes))
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
Can you be more specific? Which individuals and why (not)?
Note that eg if you're from (picking two random countries) Nepal and commit a crime in Italy, then Italy still has jurisdiction. Italian police can arrest you. [1]
Also, there's certain crimes that any country is allowed to arrest you for, for instance piracy on the high seas.
I'm talking about the sanctioned individuals on the ICC, judges and the prosecutor. The issue is not a matter of certain individuals going to a different country and allegedly committing a crime there. No one is talking about sea piracy.
I won't ignore the administration track record of using sanctions to further their own agenda though, not sure why you can do that to explain the ICC case when it's factual they use it against some people that don't toe their line, as a meddling weapon to strong-arm them.
The only way the theory of international law holds any water is if countries are held to it regardless of the treaties they've signed. Any country that hasn't signed with the ICC is clearly a country run by criminals.
https://archive.is/DFHM6
"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
> Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of such a defence relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
Europe isn't a superpower but it's a giant entity with 450 million people and 15% of the world's gdp. It has the means to oppose the US and retaliate against its sanctions, if it doesn't it's because of the cowardice of its politicians and the weakness of its institutions.
More importantly, the bilateral relationship between the US and Europe represents 30% of global trade, and 40% of the global GDP. Both economies complement each other naturally (at least right now), and neither partners don't want it to end, so even with the relationship becoming more fragile as the US tries to close itself off from the world, I think both will still try to remain collaborative with each other, regardless of this posturing that is going on.
It will take a lot to shift that trade dynamic, but the current US administration seems quite energetic about rapidly tearing down Chesterton's Fences that it doesn't understand nor want to spend the time to understand, so I'd not bet on this remaining so even for the next 3 years.
And yes, I do understand how utterly bonkers it is to suggest something this big changing over just 3 years.
That trade dynamic isn’t going to shift unless the EU becomes a lot more insular.
The War in Ukraine is dampening trade with Russia. The EU is struggling in their trade relations with the PRC even more than with America right now, and fears them more than they fear us. A trade deal (“Mercosur”) with South America is in the process of potentially blowing up, and if it’s not passed in its current state, Brazil is looking to walk for the remainder of their President’s term in office.
So the EU’s options are limited.
> So the EU’s options are limited.
Part of the issue if that as you move up the value chain your list of potential trading partners shrinks, as lower-income partners aren't viable.
Look at GDP per capita (I picked nominal, for export consumption purposes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Europe's options for high-value exports at scale are... who?
Europe's options for high-value exports at scale are...
each other. Intracontinental trade has always been a large part of Europe's wealth.
That's what all the serious European economists are pushing for especially Draghi and his report but the EPP and the countries which massively benefit from the status quo, starting with Germany and the Netherlands, are blocking any move in the direction of propping up the internal market.
Merz is actually doing a masterclass in beggar thy neighbors policies right now by breaking the debt brake mostly to pay for subsidies in Germany rather than investments. It's pretty surreal to see them somehow stuck to sell side policies when they have no one to actually sell to and refuse the mean to create an actual market in Europe.
You don't really need rivals outside when your core members act this way.
... and if you look at history you will find this situation, no viable export partners, is the norm and not the exception.
Although I would add that what makes good export partners is not GDP directly, but changes in GDP and that mostly comes from changes in the debt levels of these countries. So, ironically the Russian threat, and the EU debt increase in response to it, can probably be expected to raise the GDP of EU countries by 2-3% or so. So EU-US trade should actually increase, tariffs or no tariffs. Besides, tariffs are a tax on the poor, and it's not the poor importing stuff (just ask the poor in the EU how it's been going). US basic needs manufacturers, like farms, are the ones that are going to lose big, and keep losing big, due to tariffs. Oh, and the poor, of course. I'm sure Trump will make some of his typical eloquent remarks about the poor needing to lose weight and spend less on children.
By contrast, the US will need to do it's very best to not reduce public debt or really increase interest rates they're paying in the next year and a half. Not because of Trump's intentions but because of how he scheduled the massive debt increase last time he was in office. The way he was probably actually fucked by Biden, you know what he was screaming about for years, is that he put a $10 trillion dollar refinancing requirement for the US in for 2025-2026-2027 that he expected to fuck up his successor. Then Biden "stole" most of the good part of Trumps debt increase: the decrease in debt repayments for the US government 2016-2020 ... and delivered the refinancing disaster right back ... to Trump.
That was Trump's financial plan: massive debt increase in 2017, scheduled to come due (require refinancing) ... 8 years later. "Apres-nous le deluge" I believe this principle is called. So Trump's plan was 2017-2021: lots of debt repayment paid by massively increasing US debt, including refinancing debt due in 2021-2025. then 2021-2025, spend the extra income, knowing the bill isn't due until 2025-2029. Then, Biden got to spend the 2021-2025 money ... and send the bill to Trump. Like is often said when it comes to Trump's supposed brilliance: "ooops...".
Probably Trump expected to be out of the office at the start of 2025 and just leave his successor with a massive and difficult refinancing ... and Biden and democrats dropped that hot iron right back into Trump's lap.
So Trump introduced a massive new tax, which of course won't cover the sums he needs. He will raise taxes further.
The EU certainly has limited options, I agree about that.
The problem I see is the risks are not under the EU's control. We may face becoming much more insular regardless of what any of us ourselves actually want.
Trump is behaving in a manner not consistent with EU nations retaining indepdendence and sovreignty. And also betting the future of USA on economic development plans (and military plans) that do not seem realistic.
The insular part was a very small, maybe too subtle of, joke.
That’s also not a viable option for the EU, or more specifically: the constituent nations of the EU. They’re as dependent on trade as we are, maybe even more so, and so we are stuck in this relationship where we constantly piss each other off in various ways, and believe me when I say it goes both ways.
Technically the biggest blow to the US-Europe trade relationship came from the Biden administration. The IRA was naked attempt at pulling European companies from Europe and push them to invest in the US instead.
Trump policies look extreme because tariffs are often seen as crude and outdated but it's very much a continuation of economic hostility rather than a novelty.
I don't believe this is possible, even at Trump speed. It's much easier to wreck NATO than to reshape the world economy to that extent.
Indeed, but it's not impossible for him to simply wreck the economy faster than it can be correctly reshaped.
Boris Johnson: Hold my pint.
Fortunately for the UK, the photos of Boris Johnson holding a pint during covid lockdowns he'd ordered, mean that Boris Johnson is no longer a threat to the UK.
I didn't believe Brexit would happen either, until it did.
"neither partners don't"
I think your main point is valid, but it would be more compelling if you'd taken a few seconds to read it before submitting, to catch this double-negative.
If the EU goes against the US and happens to recruit allies, we’re cooked.
Not really. We have the most money, the most guns, and world economies depend on us. Europe won't even fight Russia when they literally invaded a country in their backyard, and Russia is much weaker than the US.
Fighting Russia or the US is basically the same; you're just going to get nuked. Ukraine doesn't get nuked because Russia isn't in a real risk of losing it's own territory and doesn't want to annex irradiated lands.
But also Europe (besides Ukraine) doesn't have much to gain from fighting Russia. They're happy to assist in air raids in North Africa / Middle East for energy reasons (see Libya) but it's fighting for practical purposes.
The table can also be turned against the US. Despite the endless complaints about Mexico sending drugs & drug dealers into the US it's not like we are doing effective (or drastic).
Europe has a lot to gain from fighting Russia, because if they conquer Ukraine they're going to invade Poland next.
I doubt Russia would invade the EU anytime soon under current conditions, even if they manage to annex all of Ukraine with no further losses.
Much more likely they invade another non-EU, non-NATO country like Moldova.
Much more likely they'll invade Belarus, then Letonia, Estonia, etc. well before they invade Moldova.
Your most money won't buy you much resources in a decade. most of the natural resources exporting countries feel a bit cheated with 20 year contracts and two "quantitative easing" in the same period
> most money won't buy you much resources in a decade
You’re vastly underestimating how resource rich America, North America and the Western Hemisphere are.
You’re vastly underestimating how quickly we can exhaust those resources.
> You’re vastly underestimating how quickly we can exhaust those resources
…to where we need to mine or drill Europe?
What is your source for any of this?
The only resource suppliers to EU other than the United States is Norway (natural gas pipeline, crude oil 14%) and Australia (coal 36%). The US supplies a a huge minority in those as well as a majority in LNG. (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/e...)
If the EU ally’s with Australia, pics up an enemy of an enemy - China, they can withstand a US embargo.
About our increasing consumption, you can read the report here (https://www.unep.org/resources/Global-Resource-Outlook-2024).
We can’t extract our way out of this. We’ll have nothing left. We need space minerals and more rocks that aren’t home. We’re fighting over less and less sand in the sandbox.
> they can withstand a US embargo
We were never debating if Europe could survive an American embargo.
You said “most money won't buy you much resources in a decade.” This was about America surviving a European freeze-out. The simple truth is, there are more resources in America and within its military’s undisputed reach than there are in Europe.
Your UNEP report doesn’t show why America alone couldn’t extract its way out of an embargo. (While it puts its military to use.)
You must have me mistaken with someone else. I didn't say that. I said that it wouldn't matter as resource exhaustion is faster than it was previously and we will run out of resources, money or not. So if one side decides to horde or exploit the other hemisphere, it's like kids fighting over the last bit of sand in the sandbox.
> it wouldn't matter as resource exhaustion is faster than it was previously and we will run out of resources, money or not
Oh. Sure. Fair. But not relevant in our lifetimes, at least not from the position of the United States. If push came to shove, we'd take those last bits of sand. That's one of the problems with might makes right: it lets those in power put off hard choices.
China has more sand
I hope that the USA will maintain strong relations with the EU. But the EU is structurally incapable of taking any coordinated action more significant than mandating USB-C chargers for cell phones.
Europe (as in all european countries combined) does not have a military powerful enough to oppose the US. And that is all that matters.
Would you say that the United States had a much larger and more expensive military than Vietnam? How did that work out for the United States?
The US was winning the Vietnam war militarily. The US pulled out because it wasn’t winning it domestically.
Another potential goal of the war may have been to demonstrate that the USSR couldn't hope to win a conventional war against the US (the 1973 Easter offensive fielded 700-1200 tanks of various kinds, and the US destroyed 400-700 of them with trivial losses to US forces). The Soviets were using 15-20% of their economy to produce, among other military items, 4000 tanks a year, so a demonstration that the US could destroy so much without significant losses or any particular economic strain could have been shocking. If that was a real goal, though, it probably couldn't be openly discussed at the time, which would have contributed to the "why are we even there?" mood of the American people.
The US was barely treading water militarily, at enormous cost in both lives and cash. It was not progressing towards its military and political goals. That's why the US public pulled the plug.
The US could have continued to tread water for another 5 years, or another 10 years, or another 15 years, and would have lost even more men and spent even more money, and it would still have faced the same problem: there was no way to win the war. Every day that the war continued just meant more deaths and more money wasted.
Well, "not winning domestically" can happen as likely today as it did in the sixties.
If anything, the US society is more divided today.
In the event that someone is directly attacking Americans in America, I think you'll find that Americans are more united than it appears.
Americans culturally have seen ourselves as the "Good Guys" for the last century or so, and Good Guys imply Bad Guys. If there aren't any credible Bad Guys external to the US, Americans start thinking the Bad Guys are the rich, or the coastal elites, or flyover country, or liberals, or whatever. That's just 'cause there's no one else to be against, though; it'll pass.
> In the event that someone is directly attacking Americans in America
Didn't Trump have the army attack democratic cities earlier this year?
No, he did not. Where did you come up with this idea?
It's a complicated bit of American constitutional / federal law. Tl;dr...
The US military cannot be used to perform domestic policing functions (Posse Comitatus Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act ), except in times of insurrection or when state unable or unwilling to suppress violence that threatens citizens' constitutional rights (Enforcement Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_Acts ).
Hence Trump's continual (and false) claims that the cities he's targeting are lawless and dangerous places.
The above applies to federal US military forces. The laws specifically exclude the US Coast Guard. Non-military federal forces (FBI, ICE, etc) are also excluded.
It also, in the more complicated quirk, excludes state military forces (i.e. "National Guard" units). These forces can be activated under a variety of different legal frameworks (see https://www.nationalguard.mil/Portals/31/Resources/Fact%20Sh... ), some of which allow their use for domestic police functions (Title 32 and SAD), because they're still under the command of the state governor (who can use military forces to perform domestic policing functions inside their state or a neighboring state).
There's also a special exclusion for Washington, DC, as technically the president is sort of its governor for many purposes.
Given that background, what actually happened...
- Trump activated National Guard units under Title 10 (aka federal active duty service), because this doesn't require the consent of a state's governor
- Trump then deployed these units to several cities, some with the support of Republican governors and some without the support of Democratic governors
- The administration's legal team realized performing policing functions with the above forces was on extremely shaky ground
- Therefore, they mostly claimed (loudly) that they were deploying "the military", but in actuality used them for extremely limited, non-policing purposes (picking up trash, talking to tourists, guarding federal buildings, guarding other federal agents performing law enforcement functions)
- After state governments sued, the courts generally agreed the deployment was unlawful ( https://www.reuters.com/world/us-supreme-court-rejects-trump... )
This is a fiction.
"Actually we did find weapons of mass destruction"
That would only matter if US invaded Europe or vice versa. That's not going to happen. So the size of military expenditures doesn't really matter.
You can’t be that naive to believe that military might has nothing to do with political might.
That's not what I said. I said that it doesn't matter.
Military might has plenty to do with bluffing. That's what politics is all about.
But when the music stops and the ball drops, US and EU aren't going to war with each other any time soon. So measuring military might doesn't really matter.
And you can't be that naive to believe is gonna make any difference. The US that had to get out of Korea, Vietnam, all the way to Afghanistan, will take on Europe? Lol...
It’s not what the US might do, it’s what they might not do.
If Putin decides Poland is propping up Ukraine he might expand the war into Poland because right now it isn’t clear that the US would honor their NATO commitments.
Ukraine was not a NATO country, never mind a EU country. I’m all for speaking truth to the weakness of the eu and its indecisive pussyfooting on the military front but let’s not start getting high on our own supply: Russia absolutely does not have the military nor industrial power to invade Poland and take on the actual EU in a hot war. NATO or no NATO it wouldn’t even be close.
Or it could just end with mutual total nuclear annihilation of course.
Edit: now if they were to attack the eu over a decades long interference campaign with its member state democracies, funding anti eu parties, stoking separatist sentiments, and covertly subverting the fundamental pillars of its liberal democracies, on the other hand…
I think Putin would use nuclear weapons. I don’t think the EU would retaliate in kind.
If we're accepting as a given that somehow Putin launches nukes into Europe to invade Poland, and the EU doesn't retaliate in kind, then the USA definitely wouldn't--NATO or no NATO--so I'm not sure how it's relevant to the original comment.
Russia is has tried and failed for a couple of years now to push particularly far into Ukraine, and you think Europe would have a problem stopping a Russian attack on Poland?
Poland alone has a population comparable to Ukraine, and a significantly larger economy.
Europe doesn't need the US to defend Poland against Russia.
If EU countries commit to a conflict, Russia has no chance. It makes nuclear escalation a real risk though.
That doesn't matter. One or two atomic boms from France and say goodbye to a good GDP from the US coasts. Everyone losses, but the US it's set back to 1940.
This will only happen if France decides to commit suicide at a national level, which is very unlikely.
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There's no difference between suicide and an invasion from the US with total control of the neocons against a social-democratic state. That being a puppet state a la Vichy, I mean; not something being bribed upon with corruption and money.
What the US needs is to invest right now in fusion technology and learn the damn Math right. Hint: hypercubes and physics.
They have it easy:
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-fourth-dimension-scientists-gl...
https://wt3000.substack.com/p/scientists-just-built-a-fourth...
They don't need a war to feed the industry, they need the balls to evolve themselves as the Chinese did. First from pure Maoism to Deng Xiaoping, and next from coal to clean energy. It's a decades bound plan, but if Beijing becames clean it would be one of the greatest things for China (and the world) ever.
This would mean acknowledging that some sectors are best stated supported, such as healthcare; while others are best company supported/evolved, such as telecos and R+D, but with proper regulations, so net neutrality stays as is and patents get open over few decades so everyone can play the game.
And, no, you don't need to put social credit, social surveillance or any other bullshit such as Chat Control.
... "hypercubes and physics"?
You'll understand the reasons for it later.
Programmers with concepts such as the Hamming distance and nodes in a network are pretty much ready to understand the further reasons of my comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube_internetwork_topolog...
Hint: rotating/translating objects will be cheaper than moving over time.
Labor shortages abound in the US military. It is slowly approaching paper tiger status, unless we're talking about delivering long range ordinance. The US can engage in a small handful of conflicts at the same time; it cannot take on the world. The Coast Guard didn't have enough staff to commandeer an oil tanker near Venezuela recently [1] [2]. The US Navy has mothballed seventeen supply ships due to labor shortages [3]. Total global US military headcount is ~2.6M as of this comment, ~1.14M on US soil [4] [5] [6] [7]. There are also military sourcing single points of failure, like L3 [8] and the US Air Force.
China can already detect and track stealth aircraft using a combination of ground based passive radar and StarLink signal, as well as satellite reconnaissance. Europe could have this capability whenever they're ready to spend and, in the case of a satellite, lift to orbit. Use hypersonic vehicles for anti air defense and carrier busting [9].
[1] https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/12/24/u-s-hunts-sanctioned-t...
[2] https://www.stripes.com/branches/coast_guard/2024-03-06/coas...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46130106
[4] https://www.gao.gov/military-readiness
[5] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...
[6] https://usafacts.org/articles/is-military-enlistment-down/
[7] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/06/6-facts-a...
[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355005
[9] https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/12/18/eu-flag...
No, but China and Australia do if they were to, you know, alliance themselves against the tyranny of the US. Much like we did against the tyranny of the Nazi regime.
Add in other nato countries and we’re cooked.
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Europe would need to increase military spending to 20+% of GDP to plausibly defend themselves.
The EU is a vassal state through and through, they just haven't accepted this yet.
Defend against what?
France has nukes, so those aren't a plausible threat. Any kind of land invasion is doomed to fail - the US didn't even manage to beat a bunch of goat herders in one of the poorest countries of the world. A naval blockade is the most likely to succeed - except for the whole "land bridge to Asia/Africa" part. And if the blockade does succeed and the continent starts to starve, there's the whole "France has nukes" part again...
Besides, do you really think China/India won't get involved? And do you really think the US public is going to accept their friends and family dying because some power-hungry politician got the braindead idea to send them against Europe? The reception will be worse than Vietnam!
EU is not a state, it's a union of states.
> they just haven't accepted this yet.
What on earth are you talking about???
We have accepted that for a long time, and there are no plans to change it.
Why do you think there is zero movement to disentangle from any important US dependencies? Such as software. There is nothing whatsoever happening to be any less dependent on the US, part from defense, and that only after repeated urging and finally some real force-pressure to get the EU moving (even after Trump's first term little to nothing actually happened).
European countries are perfectly fine with where they are, if any less dependency on the US is to happen, it will only be after huge pressure from the US.
That is deliberate, they just don't see value in e.g. trying to recreate the Microsoft and other software ecosystems. After all, it already exists, so why compete at that point? It does not make economic sense. Also, it is not Europe's strength: Every country would, in practice, (have to) develop their own version, while in the US a company can easily scale across the entire nation. For Software, it makes no (economic) sense for Europe to compete in an area where this kind of scale is important.
And that strength argument, only some minor politicians, and some journalists, keep bringing up headlines such as "Can Germany save Europe?", or celebrating "Germany back on the world stage" when there is some minor meeting hosted by Germany (seen recently). The vast majority of people could not care less about being "number one" and "leading (anything, politically)".
Not trying to reinvent the wheel, or many wheels actually, out of some "pride" moment seems pretty foolish to me. If the US is good producing this or that, we get it from there, so what? Everybody, including the US, made even more far-reaching similar decisions with industry moved to China. Compared to that, European reliance on the US is not much, and pretty much unavoidable, unless one gives up lots of wealth.
>Might makes right in international politics.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
>But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
The whole point of Nuremberg was to put on a show against the defeated, and establish the "good guys" who now run international order.
Acts like Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the rest of allied abuses weren't on trial there or elsewhere.
You were there? No? You watched the taped proceedings then?
I don't think you appreciate the way justice becomes irrelevant in fascist and tyrannical countries.
The 'show' of fair justice, dispensed with care and deliberation, is something you seem to take for granted.
In most countries you get put up against a wall, and shot, for saying the wrong things about the right people.
I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny. And the position that tyranny should be the norm is something an evil or cowardly person espouses.
Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
In "The White Man's Burden", Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonisation of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago purchased in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898).[1] As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire;[1] nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is ideologically related to the continental expansion philosophy of manifest destiny of the early 19th century.[2][3][4][5] With a central motif of the poem being the superiority of white men, it has long been criticised as a racist poem
How's that related? (Please don't reply with a link to a seemingly random Wikipedia article).
>You were there? No? You watched the taped proceedings then?
That's not how history works.
There's no end of historical accounts, transcripts of the proceedings, etc to learn about it. Neither being there, nor taped proceedings are needed.
And neither being in the court or watching taped proceedings will give you what that show meant in the larger historical context, and in the context of the geopolitics of the time. The books, actual knowledge of the before and after, and more, might.
>I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny.
That's exactly what the goverments who run those trials had for themselves, before, during, and after.
>Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
Only because it was mostly done to brown people in Africa, or to Asia, or Latin America, so you don't care.
Yes, imagine the ICC existed in 1945 and ... let's say ... Bolivia ... petitioned for the arrest of Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower over the Dresden bombing and whatever else.
Better, imagine the ICC ordered the arrest in 1943 of Franklin D. Roosevelt over ... let's say ... the forced relocation of Unangax̂ (Aleut) villagers in the Alaska Aleutian Islands.
The result wouldn't have been better for the ICC than the Gaza warrants.
I kind of feel like if one of the superpowers always been against international law although trying to enforce it on others, and not really wanting to participate in ICC in any shape of form, already made the whole idea dead in the water.
Lots of people realize the importance of this, but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
> but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
To be nitpicky here, the goal of the ICC isn't to prevent aggressive acts or war in general. They are only punishing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - which is a small subset of potential violent acts a state may commit. The ICC does not have juridsiction over crimes of aggression.
[Yes technically there is an optional thing that countries can sign to give the ICC juridsiction over crimes of aggression, but so few countries have signed it that it may as well not exist]
What you say is true, but idealists should not give up just because a murderer exists.
While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
>While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
Idealists create worse outcomes than realists and pragmatists.
Violence going down 10% can be worse than it going down 0%, if the difference comes from reducing counter-violence done by the oppressed - and reducing based on the agenda and whims of the big time abusers responsible for a big chunk of the other 90%.
> violence going 10% down is better than 0%
This is also what protection payments look like on paper; surely we can reduce violence much more.
I say: let every country have nukes, or let no country have them. This halfway bullshit is worse than either.
> Nuremberg
You may be mixing up the ICJ, which “settles legal disputes submitted to it by states” and is 80 years old [1] and the ICC, which was created in 2002 [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute
I don't think they are. The ICC is much more a succesor to Nuremburg than the ICJ is.
The ICC applies international criminal law, just like nuremburg trials did (a notable difference though is the ICCs lack of juridsiction over crimes of aggression which was a core part of the Nuremburg trials). The ICJ is not a criminal court and does not apply international criminal law. It cannot find individuals guilty. A rough analogy would be that the ICJ is more similar to a civil court.
There was already a world court before Nuremberg: the Permanent Court of International Justice, established after WWI, as part of the League of Nations. It didn't stop WW2 and the holocaust. After WWII, they form the exact same thing with new names: the International Court of Justice, as part of the United Nations.
You know why the League of Nations didn't work (supposedly)? Because the US wasn't involved. So with the United Nations, the US is involved. What do you think happens when the US decides to not abide by the United Nations' decisions? Nothing.
The US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times. It voted against Palestinian rights, and its Iraq war and ongoing foreign drone strikes go against the UN charter. Basically, whatever the US wants, goes. If they don't want you to have rights, you won't have them. If they want you to control some piece of land and anyone who lives on it, it's yours. If they don't like your government, they'll take it away and install their own, or call it terrorist and sanction it.
The whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it. There is no justice, there's just the powerful and the powerless.
> US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times
So have China and Russia. The rules-based international order has been explicitly rejected by the world’s great powers.
> whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it
There was a legitimate attempt. It had flaws. But so does any system of justice. It was ultimately done in by a combination of Russian and Chinese revanchism, American neoconservatism and global nihilism.
International Law predates Nuremberg by at least 300 years (see the School of Salamanca). I am not trying to nitpick, honestly, it is that the rights of other nations and peoples were recognized well before the US even was an idea.
The sovereign legal authority of any government derives from its monopoly on violence. If, at the end of the day, men with guns will not come to your home and force your compliance, then the "law" is nothing but paper.
The ICC could never be anything but what it is -- powerless against those with bigger guns. This is the fundamental nature of law and power. Barring the subjugation of all states to a supranational sovereign capable of universal enforcement, there is, ultimately, no such thing as international law.
It should be renamed to currently accepted “international traditions and customs” (ITAC)
Queue’s/line’s in shop are not formally enforced by some authority to my knowledge, but most participants adhere to such order. (I would call it tradition)
You’re in for a big surprise once you discover what happened after Nuremberg.
>If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
So what, you should just keep your head in the sand instead? Not that I accept that claim anyways (quitter talk).
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> But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this.
That seems a little silly on the face of it when you realize most people complicit during the war in what we would now call war crimes weren't even charged to begin with. Many on the losing side found lucrative jobs with the side that won, and the side that won wasn't even considered for charges.
> In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged?
That also seems a little farcical any way you twist it
> If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Actually, I think we're moving towards a world that is more earnestly determined by market forces. Or, these were always the same concepts; we just can't force the world to take our "deals" anymore.
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Nobody needs to go to war with America on behalf of the ICC. We merely need member nations to declare they won't enforce any American sanctions against ICC judges or other personnel. The US might cry and stamp their feet, maybe even threaten to invade France, but this is all impotent rage if the EU decides to wake up and call America's stupid bluffs.
If French banks with US presence start banking sanctioned individuals the US would start confiscating their American assets. It’s just not worth it for them. The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
Why does it need to be all French banks? The French government could establish a special class of bank for domestic business, that isn't subject to international pressure except pressure applied to the French government itself. They should be able to find a way that a judge in Europe, living in Europe, paying European taxes to European governments, paying rent to a European landlord, doesn't have to give a shit about what America thinks.
This is a tractable problem, except for the lack of political willpower to create a solution.
Sure, France could in theory create such a domestic bank. But it wouldn't be allowed to connect to any US based financial institutions or transfer funds through networks controlled by those institutions. This would be so limiting as to make it hardly worth the effort. Ultimately I expect that France will just try to wait out the current US administration.
Which is why the way to deal with this is by sanctioning US companies in retaliation. Europe can't shield its own companies from the US, but it can inflict equal pain on US companies.
Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies. Your point being?
> The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
The USD is rapidly losing this status, though. The current president's policies has turned the US into an extremely unreliable trade partner, so more and more trades are being done in EUR.
> Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies.
At this point, they should do so. With America weakened and behaving erratically, this is a good time for Europe to assert itself and put America in our place.
If it's a French bank the country of France can tell said bank they must service said customer regardless of the loss of their US assets.
Every country that works at an international level assumes said risks.
I for one am tired of internal national companies playing pick and choose on the best options and ignoring everything else. If the world wants to go multipolar again it's time for corporations to get kicked in the sack.
Sure, they could, but they won’t because the banks business would be fucked and most governments aren’t trying to destroy their domestic businesses.
They might, but if they did they would presumably be prepared to retaliate against US seizures with their own. The only reason the US is able to credibly threaten to seize EU bank assets is because the EU governments are implicitly on board with the entire arrangement. As soon as it's no longer viewed as mutually beneficial it will crumble overnight.
I don't think that's accurate. Which sanctions, specifically, would become ineffective if Emmanuel Macron stood up and said "Our government won't enforce this sanction against ICC judges or other personnel"?
If the sanctioned individuals can still use French that would make the "debanking" sanction much less effective.
Would it? The source article doesn't say that he's unable to find a French bank account. The practical "debanking" problems it describes - some non-American banks won't do business with a person under American sanctions, all payment card systems popular in Europe are American - aren't subject to the French government's enforcement or lack thereof.
>all payment card systems popular in Europe are American - aren't subject to the French government's enforcement or lack thereof.
I disagree. Tomorrow France can tell Visa/MC/Banks they must service ICC judges or lose the ability to bank in their country and suddenly said providers will be concerned about the predicament they are in.
The EU better pull its head out of its ass about following everything the US does at this point. It's obvious over here in the states things have gone off the rails, and they'll go down with us if they want to remain so tightly coupled.
> Tomorrow France can tell Visa/MC/Banks they must service ICC judges or lose the ability to bank in their country and suddenly said providers will be concerned about the predicament they are in.
Absolutely. You get the Visa executives lobbying the American government to stop this madness and it will stop.
I'm not sure how you can look at the current political situation in the US and conclude that business executives get veto power over government decisions. Trump just this month summoned the CEOs of every major pharma company in the US for a ritual humiliation, and commanded them to give him steep discounts for a new self-branded website he's setting up.
Visa > pharma. When big finance yanks his leash, he'll come to heel.
I'm even quite sure that it is illegal in France to discriminate against a customer without a valid legal reason here.
Meet the "Hague Invasion Act":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Considering the relations between the US and the Netherlands it is inconceivable that the Dutch government would allow US military personel to be detained that way on its soil, and if that did happen I think a call from the White House would "clear any misunderstandings"...
Given the current us government, I would not be surprised if it happened instead
Until last year, sure.
Trump's been doing a lot of "inconceivable" things with the US's international relations.
Nothing has changed. The Netherlands are staying on the straight and narrow even if they might blow hot air under the guise of "EU solidarity", and that gets them cushty NATO jobs, too ;)
Trump's threatening the sovreignty of two NATO members while also being skeptical of the value of keeping the US itself in NATO and suggesting the US won't defend any NATO member that gets attacked.
Bluffing and theater are not reality and should not be confused for it.
Shouldn't, yes.
Trump himself makes this difficult.
He has already done things that a reasonable outsider would expect to be mere bluffs. And also TACO'ed backwards, turning things he's done into, effectively, theatrics.
Maybe so but that does not change a thing to the bilateral relation between US and Netherlands... which is as tight as can be, shall we say, we've seen it as recently as October with Nexperia.
Invade The Hague, and the next you see it's the whole US bases' set kicked out from Europe and potential Russian/Chinese missiles in Cuba pointing to Silicon Valley.
And OFC Wall Street heading down faster than in 1929. Fucking up your main client would yield a disaster so huge to the US economy than no war would save them. If any, they would be fucked, because the EU might even temporally ally with Russia. Then the shit would hit the fan in Alaska.
Your army it's the best in the world? Say hello to a coallition between Europe-China-Russia. No one would dare to throw any single atomic bomb because the outcome would be MAD for everyone.
The US would attempt then to invade Mexico/Canada. But that would yield to its own people siding up with Canada and Mexico against an obvious corrupt US war-machine-corporate state, up to the point to getting former Mexican territory back to Mexico.
Texas and California might have declared indepent countries themselves to avoid any war. The smart move, you know.
> But that would yield to its own people siding up with Canada and Mexico
Which would be put down before it even could start.
There is no circumstance under which a unified EU would temporarily ally with Russia against the US.
Maybe in the event of some kind of World War, in which there was a very clear aggressor against both the EU and Russia?
As I said in another comment - you'd see a revolt and joining with the aggressor before one half of the EU would ever ally with Russia.
Under an invasion you can expect anything.
I've seen far right regimes in Europe -Spain- siding up with the Communist Cuba because of the common backgrounds over politics.
And the Cuban regime itself under Castro mourning over Franco's death. As crazy as it sounds.
Under an US-invaded European Union Spain would team up with Cuba and Venezuela the first day no matter which party would be ruling, left or even neocon-close right. The Spaniard state's survival would be the top priority. No state, no economy, no Ibex 35. And shit would hit the fan from Latin America too.
Oh, and expect hell with guerrillas spawning here and there from Latin America backed up from Europeans and maybe the Moccromafia and the former Italian Mafia themselves. Spain, France and Italy have contacts over all the Mediterranean and you knows what Mediterranean means. I wouldn't be there if I were an American trying to invade Europe... because once you kick the wasp nest of the Islamic regimes being generously supported from Mafias, you would have both the Jihad and the Narcoguerrillas at home with European army support. Try to stop that. Because something the Southern Europeans know well it's learning to have friends even in Hell "just in case". Spain has the Hispano-spehere, they know how to put a whole political spectra on its side with ease, and the French have the Francophonie. And for sure they have contacts in the Arabic world as I said.
If they don't have a badass archive of ETA contacts with Islamic camps beforehand, and they own the triumph card of Marbella too. You would be nuts trying to invade some sickos there; they know who to call in case of emergencies. The Spanish state already did that against terrorists themselves.
You severely underestimate the level of animosity between half the EU and Russia. They would revolt if the other half tried to openly ally with Russia.
The example you gave isn't too surprising if one believes authoritarians attract authoritarians.
> Under an invasion you can expect anything
You can. But if Russia is threatening American troops in Europe, irrespective of the local framing, that’s a nuclear proxy war.
That what happen because, ahem, rudely said, eveyone it's grabbed from the balls from everyone's else. Economically, I mean. We are tangled and dependant of each other.
The US has the most advanced software and CPU's, the EU has sofisticated and pretty complex industrial hardware not even seen in the US. China, well, it's China, the factory of the world.
Sure. But if someone is fantasizing about Europe kicking American troops out with Russian help, they’re fantasizing about nuclear war on European soil. (Admittedly, a short one given Russia’s a paper tiger in conventional terms.)
A deer was walking through the forest when she suddenly noticed a hungry-looking bear stalking her. Quickening her pace, she ran headlong into her old friend the wolf devouring a rabbit. "How dare you!" Ms. Deer bellowed, "That poor rabbit! I'll have you put in prison for that!" The wolf growled. She continued, "You'd better be careful, Mr. Wolf; there's a bear chasing me. If you try to bite me I'll just team up with him and then you'll be fucked!"
This is cute, like a little boy charging you with a cardboard sword. Better take him seriously or you're gonna get "attacked" by his model airplane collection next!
pats head That's nice, Billy, it sure is fun to play pretend. Now you run along and play with your marbles.
... but Billy has lost his marbles.
One of the things that made America a superpower is "soft power". Continuing to piss off their allies will eventually blow back if the US ever needs something from the UN.
Or worse they may need that French aircraft carrier if war breaks out with China.
The US is under no illusion that France of all countries will go to bat for the US in a Pacific war. And Macron has made clear that they will not: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/france-president-m...
The Roman Empire was a superpower too, until it made too many stupid mistakes not dissimilar to modern ones.
Im sorry the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be. Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right? The fact that people have just swallowed the might make right narrative just shows what kind of a dire situation we are in when it comes to international politics and how far standards have fallen since 2001.
> the latter part of the 20th century was all about trying to avoid the whole might makes right mindset and in international politics it still should be
Just because you try to do something doesn't mean you succeed. The way the world ought to be is not the same as the way the world is.
> Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right?
Which involved buying them weapons in order to make them mighty.
And lets be real, there are plenty of other conflicts in the world that nobody gives a shit about (just look at africa). The real reason Ukraine is getting support is that its geographically right next to europe and having them not be controlled by Russia is strategically valuable to western interests. Having Russia wear itself out in Ukraine is also strategically valuable.
Where ICC could win against someone in the US is if the opposition comes to power in the US and does nothing to protect that person. "Oh gosh, bounty hunters grabbed them and smuggled them out of the country? What a shame."
Yes but the thing about power is the more you use it the more the other party learns to live without it. US has such a giant leverage over Europe because Europe believed US would never actually use its power against it. Imagine US sanctioning Chinese officials - they would shrug at best because China has its own everything because they always knew US would bully them.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
They don’t have to go to war. The ICC can just try these people in absentia and then once they’re found guilty put bounties out on them like Osama Bin Laden.
USAs superpower is their inability to see their own hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is itself a show of power. That you can openly allow for yourself that which you deny others.
It's a show of power that, for the US, is lessening that power.
Most of the US's power is from being a land of opportunity and of high ideals, with military power being secondary backup. As the US lessens opportunity and openly betrays its ideals, that power disappears. The Greenland and Canada threats alone probably require $500B-$1T/year in additional military spending to try to gain through force wha was previously given freely to the US. Add in the huge cost to the US from the tariff idiocy and cutting things like USAID and we could never spend enough militarily to make up for it.
Look at Putin's weakness in Ukraine. He tried to take by force what was not his, and ended up costing himself far more in lost trust than he could ever have gained with the war, and he has gained so little in the war. Putin had a better chance by continuing to try to divide Ukrainian society internally and have the majority of society side with Russia. Much like what is happening in the US right now.... but attack with bombs and the charade disappears. The US is going to discover the same loss of power through its attempts and threat of force.
Most people are hypocrites.
most people poop but some do cholera poop
Hypocrisy is an argument losers make. Might makes right.
Might makes right, you are correct.
The USA's might is highly dependent on the world order it fostered after WW2, and especially after the Cold War.
Erode that, and the USA as we've known the past 70 years starts to crumble. If in a couple decades the rest of the world works to decouple from the dollar as the main reserve currency; decouple from the dependency to sell to the USA; and decouple the dependency on American tech you still have a rich country but definitely not the superpower with the might as it exists today.
It's not possible for the USA to be funded with the astronomical deficits it runs to keep its war machine, it's not possible for the US, culturally and politically, to majorly increase taxes to cover this deficit. Slowly there would be cuts to its defence spending, diminishing its might.
Not sure why Americans decided this was a good path, didn't expect to see the era of Pax Americana to be so abruptly shaken during my lifetime but here we are.
> the dependency to sell to the USA
What interests me about this comment is the statistic that 50% of US consumer spending comes from people in the top 10% of earnings (first google link, probably not the best source: https://www.warc.com/content/feed/top-10-of-wealthy-american...)
So while the US might look like a really juicy market, I start to wonder how much juice is in the lemon?
Why the dependency to sell to the US if 90% of the US population doesn't have the free cash to buy things?
Yes, I know I'm stupid, and look at all the cheap stuff americans buy; I've seen the miles of warehouses from companies like 5 Below. My concern is how long this lasts?
I am not American so perhaps I am curious but I don't think that any Americans got a real say in it?
I was discussing this with my cousin today and about how here in my country, we have multi party system. Sure, there is still two major parties but there are definitely small parties as well and we were discussing that even India should move towards more decentralization akin to switzerland.
I really hope we have a more decentralized option and where people from all around the world feel that their vote, in fact, does matter.
That’s why it’s extremely important to remain mighty. The US is in serious decline and I don’t see them turning that around anytime soon.
The US seems mostly healthy except for corruption skyrocketing. I don't even need to see the stats. If the president is this bad, and Americans overall think that's fine, then a lot of lower offices will soon be filled with corrupt officials. Attitudes shape incentives, and incentives shape behavior. Otherwise, both in terms of labor laws and capital markets, the US looks very healthy. But corruption in itself might create huge problems in the long term.
skyrocketing corruption is a cancer. You might "seem mostly healthy" at first glance while you are rushing to the grave.
Most of our people in the US do not think it's ok what trump is doing. We have a binary political system where both parties work to deceive the public that there is any real choice. Both parties in involved in the attrocies at varying degrees. Democrats are the carrot and republicans are the stick with business interests in the middle controlling both sides with money. I'm not sure what the solution is but more of same voting dems/rep ain't working.
In many ways electing Trump was a reaction to the corruption, but of course instead of getting less of it voters got more of it. That’s why it’s so hard to turn the ship around, profits from corruption are reinvested into more corruption.
> profits from corruption are reinvested into more corruption.
Beautifully explained.
And I want to ask is there anything we can do bottom line about it?
I think like stricter rules against corruption should be in check, but that requires the govt. to do something and I feel like govt.'s themselves are being corrupt
It's this cyclical loop and I don't know if there is rather anything that we can do to break out of it.
We have the rights to vote, but those end up being squandered in most/all countries with corrupt politicians, those right to vote aren't really used mostly to bring real change, maybe a different name perhaps
At the end of the deal, its more so an faith in overall humanity that we can figure out what's right for all of us but we just fight over petty differences sometimes.
Do you guys have faith in overall humanity in aggregate? At times I feel like some instances restore my faith whereas others reduce it so its all just feelings for me perhaps.
An internal reform would look like the catholic reformation. There was hope that having an external adversary like China would spur the US into self reform to save itself but it appears that our leaders have now figured out that despite recent attempts at puffery we would not win such a war and have instead chosen a managed decline. It also means we’re in the looting phase of collapse. It can last a long time as there is a lot of wealth to loot. I personally gave up hope and left the US 10 years ago. I wish those who remain all the best with it.
I am not really familiar with the catholic reformation sorry.
Regarding your comment, its very interesting, where have you shifted now if I may ask or more details about it?
I am not really American but I still hear that its startup culture is well although with all of the other downsides we have mentioned, it does become moot.
A lot of people feel like the system is unfair but they want to be on the other side of unfairness rather than making the system fair from what I've observed. And this observation kind of fits globally sometimes imo
Somewhere cheaper, I expect the downturn to present as things generally becoming too expensive to afford so I got a jump on reducing expenses.
If you want to be in startup culture SV is still the place to be. I didn’t like it because of all the trend following, if you want to succeed there it’s best to jump on a trend. I’m more of an applied researcher and had my own ideas I wanted to explore.
As inequality continues to get worse those who initially benefited from it will generally find themselves on the other side of the transition and losing out.
AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.
Hm Interesting, I already live in India and its already really cheap and still has a really good startup ecosystem. When I wrote that comment, I didn't mean that I wanted to go to startup, I am a little annoyed by some of the things happening there too
So I guess India's the best option considering all factors I guess.
but one of the problems especially in India is the saturation of the market for software engineers and the competition to get into college is so cut throat that I can't even start to tell smh
I think perhaps remote jobs from india might make more sense but I clearly am not the only one with this idea so might be hard to differentiate I suppose
> AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.
That's great but I think I have nuanced discussion on AI, I think that we are gonna have much bigger financial issues all around the world because of the AI bubble itself
I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics. Between humans might does not make you right.
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
> I surely hope you don't really think "might makes right" and only cynically say that to express your thoughts about international politics
The expression should not be understood to mean that might makes things morally just. In the weak form it means the strong can do what they want because what are the weak going to do about it? The stronger form of the expression is the idea that strong players set up the rules (legal code, etc) and as such they rig the rules in their favour.
As a European, if it wasn't for Russia's might, why wouldn't we defend Ukraine's borders?
It is easy to express opinions about how things should be, but only with power can you make them so. There's of course the fractal complexity of who gets to decide how to spend the power budget of a nation, but that is besides the point. We may decry the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, China and the United States, but what good are our cries if we have no power to improve the lives of those affected? Am I saying this to whine about how powerless are we? No, I believe this should be the motivation, the call for greater economic development so that we can attain the power we feel like we need to make a positive change in the world. If not, we will be subjects of those who wield more power - and this isn't even advice exclusively for Europeans. You either build power in groups that are inclusive, or you steal power and form exclusive groups. The quality of life that most of the free world has been enjoying stemmed from the former, and it is the latter groups that will put us back into the dark ages.
Is this cynical? If so, I can confidently say I am a cynic.
Might does not make right. Might just means you’re holding the biggest stick, not that you have the faintest clue how to use it responsibly. Power sustained purely by bullshit, as it is these days in USA, eventually drowns in it. I'm not looking forward to it happening, but when it does, I'm sure to at least get some satisfaction out of watching the scum drowning.
It’s not a valid argument. But it is a valid observation.
Yes and no, there is a bit more to it. When dealing with democracies hypocrisy tends to actually harm the people practising it to some extent. If a polity insists on living in a fantasy rather than reality the political process will start optimising for outcomes in that fantasy world rather than reality. It is quite funny watching US politics where the voter base are unprincipled and opportunistic in how they vote then get hoist on their own petard when they get leadership that reflects their voting patterns. It is also interesting to think how effective a country could be if the voter base tended to be honest and forthright.
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
For individuals, there's often a strong incentive to display certain beliefs, and the easiest way to do that consistently is to internalise them. The cost of voting for a bad party to you personally is zero. In other words, the government is a commons, and anyone can abuse it without consequence, but when we all do it...
> If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
I think its also about the moral ambiguity itself and perhaps even the meaning of life in my opinion.
Because like, I really think that world has its flaws but at the end of the day, this is perhaps still the most rarest moments in the whole universe when we think about it
So I'd much rather do work which benefits other humans that I enjoy (although I sometimes think of it from, I would probably want to do something after retirement, maybe I get retire early or not suppose, but if I can already make the thing I want to do as retirement as job [computer related] and they pay really nicely, why not just do them right now)
It's a shame to me that tech right now feels so inhumane. I don't want really a billion trillion dollars. I just want "enough" and I want to perhaps help people once I get that "enough" not this hyper growth-focused almost will sell you snake-oil kind of tech
Perhaps most people don't have that definition of "enough" or they have materialistic desires or fame desires which one wants to get through money but I don't have many of such desires but I don't really know why people want to be so materialistic.
Like take Elon Musk, richest man in the world, Man, his ego is really fragile. Donald Trump feels like having a really fragile ego to me as well.
I really don't understand what's the point of having all these billions of dollars? Yes nobody is offering me a billion dollars but I'd rather just take "enough" and then give others to some projects I want to help smh
Also logically, it doesn't make sense to lie to me that much. To me trust seems the most valuable resource and the easiest way of generating and securing trust for a long time is being honest. And this helps me grow into a better person (who has his flaws) but still honesty mostly helps I guess idk.
I think we all just want our lives to have meaning in one way or another but it would be so much better if the sources of generation of meaning were human and not inhumane stuff as I was saying
>When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power.
It was a superpower, until Trump got back in office. He's been taking an axe to US soft power, and our institutions in general. We're on the edge of losing Global reserve currency status. That's what's driving the re-monetization of Silver and Gold.
Might is right is the norm everywhere at every level not only international politics. The corrolary is that democracy and human rights are a joke.
> Might is right is the norm everywhere at every level not only international politics. The corrolary is that democracy and human rights are a joke.
You are quite wrong, of course, as any reasonably informed observer will know. Whether you're just ignorant or ill-intentioned: It's so easy to fire off these poisonous comments whose effect is to undermine and deligitimize the norms and institutions that keep things reasonably okay, as imperfect as they are. I hope you will never have to yourself experience the difference that you so easily dismiss.
The author of the comment I replied to seems to find it perfectly okay for "might is right" to be the norm. I pointed out that if we believe that this way of thinking is okay at the international politics level then the corollary is that democracy and human right must be a farce. Don't be mistaken, what we see happening at the level of world affairs will trickle down to everyday life. At the world stage, this wicked way of thinking leads to genocides being normalized. At the societal level it leads to societies with no morals. Might is right at every level.
This reads a little different than your original comment, so thanks for adding to it. It's still not quite clear to me whether you're saying "might is right at every level", or "if this line of thinking were to be accepted, then might would be right at every level".
In any case, I don't think either is true, formally or for practical purposes. It also does not follow that accepting "might is right" on the international level makes a farce of the ideas of democracy or human rights, whether one regards it as a desirable state of international affairs or as an undesirable fait accomplit, as we both seem to agree. I will not bore us with logical formalities and stay on the practical side of things:
Because, if you allow any group of actors, or the predominant state of things in any place, on any level, to spoil the whole concept simply by them not adhering to it, then indeed you have needlessly given up everything without even trying. Nothing better can exist when you let bad actors doing bad things define the floor and the ceiling of what can be.
Islands of decency exist. They are flawed, and yet they are the best and only real thing we have in this regard. They are under threat, as you say. Undercutting them by pretending that they have no worth or indeed value at all only plays into the hands of their enemies.
Practically speaking, doesn't using force while preaching democracy just ruin the concept for everyone? If we accept that 'might makes right' in international affairs, we create a world where power—not rights—governs every interaction and where democracy and human rights while they may have tangible reality in some "islands" become propaganda used to gain higher moral ground.
Mostly yes. But No to your first question. Look almost anywhere, anytime, and you'll find force and violence to be the default. That something else exists anywhere at all is an accomplishment; that it doesn't reach everywhere does not make it worthless.
You will also find that force and violence has been done in the name of every good idea that ever came about. If you let good ideas get "ruined" whenever someone uses them as a shield for bad ends, you will have none left. Nothing at all. Just because you gave the bad more power than the good. That is not practical at all, to say it mildly.
I used to believe this, but looking at the history of "israel", the genocides constantly committed in the middle east, etc. It's obvious that your logic would just be legitimizing the current might.
Would your logic apply to all the people of Gaza, would them resisting qualify as "undermine and deligitimize the norms and institutions that keep things reasonably okay"
Is genocide reasonably ok?
> Is genocide reasonably ok?
Of course not, and nothing I wrote leads to that conclusion.
Rejecting the notion that "everywhere at every level not only international politics... democracy and human rights are a joke" does not mean that things are non-horrible everywhere, at every level.
Having a way for the public to regularly and non-violently change leadership and lawmakers, having checks and balances between the holders of power, and certain norms we strive towards is the only thing that gives us a chance at preventing authoritarian, absolutist and arbitrary rule - within the constraints where these things have effect.
That they do not work everywhere and do not work perfectly is a sign that we continue to need them. Concluding the opposite, that they're entirely useless, is not only dangerously foolish and fatalistic, but also logically fallacious.
It's an argument often used by those who wish to undermine these norms and institutions. I don't automatically think that this is you, but it might be interesting to examine your line of reasoning and what makes you read things in my previous response that are not there.
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> ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions
This would be lovely. It’s not going to happen, and it would be stupid for Europe to pursue alone.
The ICC was born out of the optimism of the 1990s. When China was accepted into the WTO because trade was equated with democracy. When the world powers at least pretended to heed an international rules-based order.
That order is dead. The EU is—nobly—trying to resurrect it. But the great powers, together with most regional powers, have explicitly rejected it in favor of spheres-of-influence realpolitik.
Upholding the Rome Statute would mean picking simultaneous fights with America and Russia, and probably Israel, Iran, India and China, too. It’s simply not a tenable situation in a world where the rules are being re-written in multiple theatres.
United Gangsters of America it seems ... since the people have no say, just a moron with too much luck, too much power, not enough consequences.
They'll come? and the fact that's a question shows American Justice has been absent for quite some time.
>Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
Nothing sad about a well-deserved reckoning.
The US is not a signatory of the Rome statute. The ICC has no jurisdiction over the US, and any scenario where it claims it does would be an abuse of power.
I'm not saying I agree with the following.
From what I've read from the ICC:
1. Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute.
2. The ICC recognizes the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to be Palestinian territories
3. The ICC Article 12(2)(a): “The Court may exercise its jurisdiction if the crime in question is committed on the territory of a State Party to this Statute.”
4. Therefore, ICC argues it does have jurisdiction
So, according to the ICC, you don't need to be apart of the Rome Statute for the ICC to have jurisdiction
at least thats the argument for ICC's jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. IDK if the ICC ever tried that with the USA
I think the argument is subtley different (sorry if this is nitpicky)
1. Palestine is a state, whose territorial extent includes the gaza strip (the most controversial proposition)
2. Under international law, a soveriegn state has the right to prosecute any crime that takes place on their territory. In many ways this is kind of the definition of soveriegnty - the ability to control and make decisions in your territory (in the caee of war, subject to the restrictions imposed by the geneva convention)
3. Soverign states can delegate this power to anyone they chose
4. Palestine delegated this power to the ICC, subject to the provisions of the Rome statue.
> So, according to the ICC, you don't need to be apart of the Rome Statute for the ICC to have jurisdiction
The idea that courts have juridsiction over foreign nationals who commit crimes in their territory is very standard and is generally true for all courts.
E.g. if you are a tourist visiting another country and murder someone, you still get arrested by local authorities. There is no get out of jail free card because you are a foreigner. What is relavent is where the crime took place not who comitted it.
In the case of the ICC, the ICC is acting on behalf of Palestine. So its juridsiction would be the same as whatever Palestine's would be minus any additional restrictions imposed by the rome statue.
The fact that the Palestinian Authority has made no attempt at arresting the Hamas members also charged by the ICC, shows they do not have sovereignty in Gaza - they don’t have the ability to control and make decisions there.
I actually generally agree with this. How can the PA have sovereignty over an area they basically have never controlled? It seems pretty unprecedented to have a "state" that does not have control of its territory at time of recognition.
That said, it should be noted that the Hamas members publicly charged are all dead now and you can't arrest a dead person (the icc can also make warrants in secret so its possible there are secret warrants). But even if they weren't, it is clear they don't have the ability to enforce justice (or anything else) in Gaza, nor did they have that ability in the past.
IIRC, the prosecutor on the ICC responded to the sanctions by suggesting that they could charge individuals interfering with the court with obstruction. Which, as far as US sanctions are concerned, they definitely don't have the jurisdiction to do. I don't think anything legal came of it, but that is exactly the sort of threat that, from a prosecutor, sounds like abuse.
Why do you say they don't have jurisdiction in that case?
Article 70:
“It shall be a crime for any person to commit any of the following acts:
(a) giving false testimony;
(b) presenting false or forged evidence;
(c) corruptly influencing a witness, expert, or court official;
(d) interfering with or intimidating a witness, expert, or court official;
(e) committing any other act which perverts the course of justice in relation to proceedings before the Court.”
Article 70's jurisdiction is not tied to member states. It applies to anyone, anywhere that may affect the court's functioning.
edit: maybe you're saying the ICC cannot have jurisdiction over people/nations that never agreed to be apart of their jurisdiction, regardless of what the Rome Statue says?
Yes, just because the Rome statute claims jurisdiction doesn't make it true, if the jurisdiction in question didn't agree.
In the US, this has all the legal power of Joe Sixpack declaring legal power, or a Russian court. If the ICC tried, the US would tell them to pound sand (or more likely, increase sanctions).
Since the US is not a signatory, as far as they are concerned, the ICC is just a random organization claiming to hold powers it doesn't have.
If a foreign national threatened or tried to improperly influence a US judge, you better belueve the US courts would claim juridsiction.
Generally speaking courts usually claim juridsiction over actions that take affect in their territory even if comitted outside of it (e.g. someone running a scam call center specificly targeting americans would likely get in trouble with us courts even if they never step foot there. Someone hiring an assain to kill an american will still get charged even if they never step foot in america). The ICC is not unique in this regard. The limiting factors here are politics and power not traditional views of how juridsiction works.
There is a difference between juridsiction and actual ability to execute judgements/orders.
That's really not legally correct. Unless the case is specifically tied to terrorism, US federal courts don't claim jurisdiction over murders of private US citizens abroad.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
> US federal courts don't claim jurisdiction over murders of private US citizens abroad.
I meant if someone who is abroad (and never sets foot in usa) pays an assain to go to usa to murder someone on us soil.
In the giants legal overreach death match of USA vs ICC, I am betting on the USA as a force that can actually enforce out-of-jurisdiction law against the other
The same goes for israel, which provides some helpful context. "Us sanctions ICC for abusing their power"
The only way we would ever answer to the ICC is if anyone could force us, by military threat. That's the only way people are put in front of that court.
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"What is the purpose of the American sanctions mechanism?
Initially, it was created to address human rights violations[...]"
Yet here we are: it's being used to harass judges who address human rights violations.
Correction: it was created to advance own geopolitical goals and harrass unfriendly regimes using human rights abuse as an excuse. So in that sense nothing has fundamentally changed.
Which geopolitical goals was it created for? Certainly not the ones it's being used for right now.
This sort of fallacy, of widening a category such that the initial meaning is lost, and then advancing an argument on that false category, is something I'm seeing a lot more these days in political topics. But I'm not sure I have a name for the fallacy.
It's like people that argue that the US civil wars was "actually" about states' rights and economic differences rather than slavery. It wasn't a war about the concepts of states rights in general, it was about the right of states to do one thing: legalize slavery. It wasn't about the idea of economic differences in general, it was about one specific economic difference: chattel slavery and whether those slaves get paid and have economic freedom.
> Which geopolitical goals was it created for?
American interests. (America, like China and Russia, is not subject to the ICC.)
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What point are you trying to make? The above poster is completely correct sanctions are an economic tool used to bend countries to will.
>The above poster is completely correct.
Not really. The poster you're agreeing with specifically stated that "nothing has fundamentally changed" and that the US has been "using human rights as an excuse". I don't know if you're completely unaware but Trump is definitely not using human rights as an excuse when sanctioning the ICC judges or whoever fits his fancy. In fact, he's not even using international law as an excuse as the term "human rights" actually means something under the UN. That is the change. And it's just as likely he'd do it if it was in his interest but not American interest. That also would be a rather fundamental change.
"Always has been" ;)
Not only judges in the ICC, the USA also used sanctions against a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice that is responsible for Bolsonaro's attempted coup case.
It's even more egregious it used the Magnitsky Act for that...
The whole banned via banking thing is scary. A local business in my area was flagged as some sort of illicit operation. There was almost no way to know it even happened outside being unable to take payment ... that was it.
No notice, no reason why, no recourse for them. They had google for their life for weeks talking to people online who it happened to and make dozens upon dozens of phone calls and explain the whole saga every time. Tons of false leads and promises for folks to call them back who never did.
They eventually found that it was some old bank they were in good standing with who after weeks of not responding, still couldn't explain why, but they said they apparently flagged them. It was undone after about 12 weeks and ultimately only because someone at this random bank took the initiative to lift the flag, but they didn't have to.
The process is completely opaque and you effectively have no rights to know or resolve anything.
> "On top of that, all payment systems are American: American Express, Visa, Mastercard. Overnight, you find yourself without a bank card, and these companies have an almost complete monopoly, at least in Europe."
On one hand, this shows how important it is for paper cash to have first-class citizen status when it comes to legal tender.
On the other hand, how does the largest single currency zone in the world not have its own debit card settlement system? The Germany-only Girocard appears to have been mostly phased out, and doesn't work outside Germany unless it's co-branded with MC/Visa. Same with France's Card Bancaire. Besides that, 39% of online purchases in Germany are made through PayPal or MC/Visa.
[0] https://stripe.com/en-ca/resources/more/payment-methods-germ...
There’s a digital euro launching next year AFAIK which is designed to replace Mastercard and Visa. It’s been in the works for ages and is coming online at a pretty critical time it seems.
It comes with a full digital wallet infrastructure part of it too. So some of the fundamental tech scene is definitely changing in Europe.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
GNU Taler is not coming? :-( Whatever happened to NGI Taler program anyway?
It's still going. NGI ("Next Generation Internet") is a Horizon Europe program, part of the EU's mission to strengthen European economy. It doesn't mean that any of the projects that receive subgrants from that pot are officially adopted for anything. It is the NGI grantees who decide which subgrantees receive funding, not the EU (in this case, NLnet Foundation). Hundreds of open source projects have received financial support from this pot.
> Besides that, 39% of online purchases in Germany are made through PayPal or MC/Visa.
This is currently being solved with Wero, which is intended to be an EU-wide online payment platform which can replace PayPal/MC/Visa, and a bunch of national payment systems.
Antagonizing it's allies is having exactly the effect on US soft power as expected.
Wero is just a layer on top of the already working SEPA.
(And a layer that is potentially worse than Visa / MasterCard, as long as it's only implemented on Google / Apple smartphones.)
The U.S. has also sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
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>Francesca Albanese is conducting warfare
HN moderation will protect outlandish hyperbolic comments like this, won't it?
If it needed to be said, Francesca Albanese is not conducting warfare. She's doing her job as a UN Special Reporter on Israel's occupation of Palestine. You are shooting the messenger.
You're gonna look back on comments like this in about five years and realise that you're an idiot
Man, I need your optimism in 2026...
I doubt it. In fact I bet it will be quite the contrary
I vouched for your comment because I don't believe it breaks any rules. If others disagree with you, they should reply. If they believe it's low quality, they should downvote. Flagging should be reserved for posts that actually break the rules.
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She is wonderful and her work on investigating the complicity of countries in the Gaza genocide and Palestinian rights / Israeli agression is incredibly thorough and extremely important. More power to her!
She is the worst possible representative the palestinians could have. She makes such wild statements that it actually makes it easy for Israel to dismiss her as pro hamas.
Wonderful? She is basically an unofficial Hamas spokesperson at this point.
Who addresses Israeli terrorism?
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There is literally a convicted Israeli terrorist in the war cabinet in charge of the "war"
There literally is not.
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Shooting kids, bombing schools isn't war.
Israel was created after WW2, and it has never been at peace. It's kind of proof that it's not going to work. They're not fighting for survival they're fighting for expansion. Nethanyaou even claims this point: his mission is the greater Israel project, to take land from egypt and surrounding countries, and settlements in Gaza are used to block the formation of a Palestinian state.
If Jews are allowed an ethnostate, then any country in the world should also be allowed an ethnostate.
If Jews are allowed to have nukes in the middle east, then any country in the middle east should be allowed to have nukes.
Remember that IDF were told to stand down during the music festival. They're also allowed to shoot Israeli civilians if it helps their objectives. And somehow they new about the Australian mass shooting in Sydney months before it happened, without telling Australian authorities.
Israel is not doing a good job in terms of world peace and I would say that if they can't find peace then the state of Israel should be dissolved for the good of the planet
With this stream of conspiracy theories you are ironically proving the point made in the comment you are replying to.
Well the greater israel part and expansionist aims at least are quite clear and no conspiracy.
And he's asking some valid questions, why was israel allowed to be created and why are we supporting it's continued genocidal expansion.
Unfortunately he's wrong referring to the zionists as jews, they never really followed a religion, and the palestinians are the most real "jews" if we're talking in terms of genetics
You can’t simultaneously claim that Israel is ethnostate while also denying that they are Jews.
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The US is now literally sanctioning UN experts and ICC people if they push too hard on accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes, e.g. Francesca Albanese over her Gaza reports and support for ICC cases. In Germany (and elsewhere) it often doesn’t need formal sanctions: people get disinvited, smeared, or quietly pushed out of jobs if they’re too vocal on Palestine – think Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Masha Gessen, Ilan Pappé, Ghassan Hage and others running into cancellations, funding cuts, and public delegitimisation instead of explicit legal punishment.
Wow, unbelievable, downvote everything that states the obvious. This platform practically silences any criticism of Israel. Just like any other platform.
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Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
There's no such flaw in most cases brought to the ICC
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
“Justice” without enforcement is meaningless.
They have a warrant out for Putin, has that made any impact on the war in Ukraine?
> has that made any impact on the war in Ukraine
The objective of the ICC is not to stop wars
The objective of the ICC is to provide a framework to enable prosecuting and punishing the people ordering particularly egregious acts in a way that is more consistent with liberal rule of law principles than post-hoc tribunals like after WW2 and that is more accessible to fragile / new countries due to having the legal infrastructure set up and at least partially legitimized by it being an international body
The fact that Putin (for example) might at some point get extradited / captured, prosecuted and jailed for whatever crimes he gets found guilty of is a moral good in and of itself
If this being done at the ICC rather than in an Ukrainian or Russian (in an hypothetical regime after Putin's) helps others accept the verdict as more based on fact than politics then that's why the ICC exists as an entity
If this makes someone down the line think twice about ordering war crimes then that's an added benefit but it's not the point
Putin & the Israeli warrants are a bit for show since it is very unlikely to result in an arrest (although it does serve to isolate both, which i suppose is a punishment)
However don't let that take away from the other work the ICC has done. They have thrown people in jail.
They are actually an attempt at weaponizing the court, conveniently only to one side in these conflicts.
For the palestine situation, hamas leadership has generally fared poorly (no tears from me, they started this war after all). However you can't issue a warrant for a dead person.
There aren't two sides in genocide.
It should be noted that the ICC has not as of yet alleged that anyone has comitted genocide in palestine. All the (public) accusations thus far have been for lesser crimes. There is a big difference between what randos on social media are alleging and what the ICC prosecutor is alleging.
Furthermore, everyone has the right to be pressumed innocent until proven guilty. That includes people accused of heinous international crimes like genocide or crimes against humanity.
(To date, the only person the ICC has ever accused of genocide is Omar al-Bashir from Sudan)
The severity of an accusation does not imply accuracy.
There are two sides in this conflict. Israel denies these allegations.
Some on the other side are openly calling for the genocide of Israel - while claiming that Israel is doing it.
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If for example Putin was overthrown and had to flee Russia, and happens to fly over an ICC signatory, he could rightfully be arrested and brought to justice. What is the alternative? CIA assassinations and kangaroo courts?
He could be arrested and brought to justice regardless, the ICC provides literally zero value-add here. Sovereign countries will do what they want regardless of the ICC's rambling, and they never needed the ICC to justify their actions to begin with.
The national policing forces don't report to the courts. Instead, there are promises between the two. The argument that international courts cannot work because they don't have their own enforcement is weak. But you are right it would be equivalent to war, or "special military operations" such as Bin Ladin, if a ruling party is convicted.
This only applies if the individuals are a) protected by their country of residence and b) never leave it.
Neither of those are certain and even for people that a) applies to, b) can be a big hassle.
Just ask Netanyahu.
If the country itself has a justice system that can prosecute the individual, the ICC has no jurisdiction.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
Whether Israeli courts are able and willing to prosecute Israeli war crimes is... up for debate.
Regardless, the international law is that they are supposed to be given a chance to do so, which they weren’t.
Israel was given notice of an investigation being opened as was required when the investigation was first opened many years ago.
So far, Israel has not provided any sort of proof that they have initiated a serious independent criminal investigation into the alleged misconduct. If they did, i suspect the warrant would go away.
Find me another case of “justice” where the prosecution started before the crimes being prosecuted were allegedly committed.
The prosecution hasn't even started yet. The prosecution doesn't start until the alleged perpretators are either captured or turn themselves in (neither of which is likely to happen). Neither an investigation nor a warrant is the same thing as a trial. No evidence has been publicly presented yet, nobody has been found guilty.
Almost no other justice systems require notice that a mere investigation has been opened. So to answer your question, basically all of them.
All investigations start before the crimes they will eventually find are committed?
I would say notifications of investigations are almost never given after the crime is committed, is vaccously true because literally nobody other than the ICC does the notice thing.
In almost every other system, investigations are kept secret. The complementary thing is pretty exclusive to the ICC.
I would also say that this is a matter of politics not justice, since such investigation notices are not addressed to the accused and in general it is expected that the accused is not told that they are the subject of an investigation. As such even if the notice was handled incorrectly, it wouldn't impinge on any of the accused rights and hence not be an issue of "justice"
You expect the Israeli courts to have started an investigation on crimes that had not yet been committed.
No, but at this point the alleged crimes were allegedly comitted (or started to be comitted. The ICC prosecutor would presumably argue that some of the alleged crimes are ongoing or at least were up until the ceasefire) years ago. At best, that argument might have worked when the warrants were first announced, but its been years now. There has been more then enough time to start an investigation. If they were serious about it, they can still start one tomorrow.
The charges made are for crimes allegedly committed after the “investigation” was started.
This indicates that the prosecutor was on a witch-hunt.
Perhaps the Israeli courts, who are independent of the Netanyahu government, have not initiated proceedings because they don’t believe there’s a valid case to be made.
It's been over a year now, with no prosecution having started on the Isreali side.
Don't you think that counts as a chance that wasn't taken?
How long should they wait, do you think, so that they are given a fair chance?
Israel did not and doesn't appear to be planning to prosecute Netanyahu for crimes against humanity, just for corruption.
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Whatever influence Israel may or may not have over US policy, attribution of that power to a "Jewish diaspora" is straightforwardly antisemitic.
It’s 2025, all the ancient tropes are back in fashion. Openly on most other platforms, thinly veiled on HN.
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> So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
...without trial. And assuming guilty and sentenced to death.
Trial by which court?
This is standard rules of war. Soldiers don’t have to convene a court before shooting at enemy combatants.
> Trial by which court?
Well, the ICC ?
OP states that "one the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC". That's incorrect. One of the defendants went farther than any sentence the ICC would have decided.
As you say, this is an act of war (killing ennemies), not an act of justice (trial and prosecution) .
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The Palestinian government Hamas broadcasting themselves kidnapping a 6 year old girl to the world is standard rules of war (let alone those much worse things they did that day, the kidnapping was just the first to show up on my feeds that day)?
Why try to sanitize their unjustifiable behavior?
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> So was most of what was done on October 7th by Hamas...
Yeah, I don't think mass executing partygoers at a music festival has anything to do with "the standard rules of war."
Israel's response was obviously disproportionate but certainly fell within the standard conventions of warfare (e.g. executing enemy commanders being housed/protected by the populace is fairly standard.)
Using "partygoers" without mentionning such party happened on lands stolen with violence is a bit dishonest.
Hamas is an indirect creation of Israel, they wouldn't exist if not for decade of violence and humiliation from Israel. In the same vein, the Likoud exist because of the PFLP and maintain its power thanks to the presence of Hamas. Both the extreme right in Israel and the Islamist movements in Palestine feed themselves and survive thanks to hatred and have no reason nor any wish to make this conflict stop. Netanyahu and his minions were probably laughing at the sights of the victims of october 7 knowing this would only help them.enforce their politics.
Virtually all lands on planet earth were stolen with violence, most of them many times over.
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I think this comment shows how far removed is the modern person living in a sheltered, matcha-sipping western environment from actual human historical reality. Do you seriously suggest that during an active war one side would bring the other to trial rather than just destroy them?
Have you heard about Nuremberg trials?
Those were after Germany's defeat, and those put on trial were no longer active combatants.
I'm pretty sure no military in history has ever delayed taking out an active threat in order to conduct legal proceedings. They don't need to, because enemy combatants don't have to be guilty of any crimes to be valid targets under IHL.
I am saying that "half of the defendants" DID NOT carry out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
They did something else (an act of war) that should not be conflated with justice.
I agree. Having lived with a civil war and with non-western roots I find the Western attitude to things like this to be hopelessly naive. It is the product of a golden age following the collapse of communism and the subsequent unrealistic "end of history" optimism.
So in the case of Sri Lanka, was the LLRC set up and subsequently criticised as a mechanism to lend legitimacy to the way in which government forces conducted operations against LTTE? If so, would its mere existence not indicate some level of societal buy-in to the idea that actions should take part according to some judicial form of 'justice'?
The idea to enquire into whether actions were justified in the context of war. Very different from a criminal trial before actions are taken.
You're missing the point, "justice sought by the ICC" implies that the ICC just wanted to execute them, which is obviously not true.
The winning side destroying the losing has historically been the exception, not the rule. So why not?
Huh? You have that backwards. Since the dawn of human civilization, when two societies went to war the winner usually annihilated the loser: steal anything of value, smash the artifacts, execute the men, and take the women and children as slaves. Thousands of cultures were utterly erased this way. It's only recently that warfare has become a bit more "civilized".
Indeed, conflating execution without trial with ‘justice’ is utterly bizarre.
There are no trials in combat.
I was quite clearly responding to the GP’s assertion that some sort of ‘justice’ was carried out by one party on the other, which obviously isn’t remotely the case. You can save your cliched one liners.
Is there justice in war?
These answers are assuming that the individuals killed were also those responsible. With Israel's stranglehold on media access to Gaza (perhaps better: open hostility), we will likely never know who was killed and what were the charges against them.
Responsible for what? In war, enemies combatants aren't slain as punishment for crimes, but simply because they're enemy combatants. Likewise prisoners of war aren't (typically) detained on suspicion of crimes, they're detained simply for being enemy combatants.
So many commenters here assume US global hegemony that, in reality, expired after the 1980s. Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively.
> Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively
They’re all vastly mutually beneficial systems of alliances. That said, America flipping out over the ICC is basically as old as the ICC.
And yet, they imposed FATCA and the whole world asked "how high"?
Isn't it similar to how many countries kept using Russian gaz after the invasion in Ukraine, they weren't ready to turn the switch off?
The US seems "winning" right now because its imposing measure that need time to be bypassed, but will be bypassed.
FATCA turned 15 years now, nobody bypassed it, although everyone whined a lot.
Yeah, for instance: even if Trump's bullying works for now, he made sure that most governments in Latin America, including right wing ones, will prioritize uncoupling the country from the US economy. Even if they won't say this quiet part out loud.
It seems odd to me that the US supposedly isn't a major power, yet still finances both NATO and the UN primarily and if it lowers it's support it's "leading the destruction of those things".
Likewise if it backs off it's foreign support, hundreds of millions will die.
Are we singularly carrying the worlds on our backs - which sounds hegemonic - are is the US free to stop spending our money on everyone elses problems?
Perhaps the UK or Germany can fund everything for a few decades and be the next major world power for a bit.
The premise is off. These aren’t "everyone else’s problems", NATO, the UN, trade stability, and foreign aid exist because they serve US interests too: security, markets, alliances, and predictability. The US isn’t benevolently carrying the world; it’s investing in systems that reduce the cost of conflict and instability later.
The question isn’t whether the US is allowed to stop spending, but what it wants the world to look like if it does.
It's just the case that some people at the top don't seem to understand that.
The US accounts for a share of the UN budget roughly equal to the US share of global GDP. The US accounts for a fairly small fraction of the NATO budget. Very little of the US defense budget is spent via NATO. The US being "ripped off" has no basis in fact. Letting Russia impale itself on Ukraine is a pretty good bargain compared to meeting our NATO obligations should Russia invade Europe. We've been getting a good deal, which makes throwing that away pretty insane.
This "It seems odd to me that the US supposedly isn't a major power, yet still finances..." does not mean what you seem to think it means. Soft power and alliances are vastly cheaper than hard power. We are in the find out phase of having lost soft power.
despite how common this opinion is, it fails to recognize that the US itself wanted to structure things that way. this was a politically viable way to continue to funnel huge amounts of money into weapons development and research. its not unlikely that European dependence on the US was a bonus.
were the host countries in Europe pushing for US base deployments or was it really the US and its insane desire to land explosives anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or less and sustain two simulateous land conflicts.
none of this is that simple. were the Europeans happy to take the security and invest more in their civil societies? absolutely, but they eroded their own sovereignty by doing so and the US was more than happy to act like the big brother in control of the whole situation.
the US wanted worldwide military dominance and the dependence of its allies. it really quite weird to say its all their fault.
Trump is fixing the UN glitch: https://www.cfr.org/article/funding-united-nations-what-impa...
Whether NATO still exists as a defense organisation is a good question.
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Fantastic news. The more of this, the sooner Europe wakes up and starts accelerating sovereignty. Please keep it coming!
Sovereignty? Sounds like doing Israel's bidding is the opposite of sovereignty.
Last I checked I never voted for Netanyahu.
Yet America and Europe's foreign policies are largely dictated by rich people like the Adelsons who are attached to a foreign land. By accepting that policy and the mere existence of AIPAC, we have effectively voted for it
A 27-country bloc will struggle to accelerate on anything when one veto is all it takes to hit the brakes. Only 12 nations needed to agree when when the EU voted to institute a common currency in 1992.
A French university doesn't need to consult Hungary when reducing their dependency on US tech. Finland doesn't need to consult Czechia when deciding to invest more into domestic defense industry. And so on. The huge majority of dependencies can be eliminated without needing such consensus. It's a gradual process anyway. China didn't wane themselves off the US overnight. They still haven't entirely. See NVIDIA/ASML. Step by step, bit by bit.
Indeed, I think those sanctions did better than 10 years of talks for the digital euro
Europe supports Israel... Do not fool yourself. You serve the same master we Americans serve.
On surely unrelated news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403276
exactly right
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
> this makes america look like gangsters
It is understandable that you would have this impression, given that the US leader has total legal immunity, directly controls the judiciary, Congress, tariffs and formerly independent financial agencies, openly threatens journalists and news media companies, appoints untalented lackies and openly enriches himself and his family and associates, openly uses federal legal entities to pursue opponents, deploys the military within the country against its own citizens, and has made federal arrest without warrant a common daily event.
It you live in a country where your government does not exhibit such characteristics, it's easy to mistake the above as an indication of something suspiciously unlike democracy.
From TFA: "In concrete terms, the rule of law is equality for all individuals, globally, before justice."
The rule of law has now become — for those who enjoy American expressions — a type of fan fiction.
They literally are gangsters; look at what they're doing in Venezuela, literally stealing and selling oil tankers, extrajudicial killings and all the rest of it.
Only 33% of the population opposed it the second time (when it was already clear what their Dear Leader is like), so it's very difficult to escape the conclusion that they're gangsters and fine with that. Even here on HN they're blithely saying "might makes right"...
"Might makes right" is an observation, not a profession of moral philosophy... In other words, the mighty will generally get their way, no matter how wrong that way is.
As far as the tankers go, they're not transporting Toys for Tots, they're transporting Oil for Oligarchs, so I'm not sure how much sympathy I'm going to be able to muster on that one, even though the lawlessness leaves a bitter taste.
The US has any soft power left?
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent. The kids have no respect for them whatsoever, but they're sick with them for time being and aware that belt hurts when it's deployed.
It still has quite a bit. It took decades to build it up, and Trump has not yet managed to destroy all of it in one year, but maybe four years ...
No I think it’s properly ruined at this point. There is no possible way any of their formal allies will ever be able to trust them again without a LOT of people going to jail and such fundamental changes to how power works in the country that I don’t think they are even remotely capable of pulling off.
I am deeply skeptical of this statement. Soft power is great but actual power comes from the ability to project your military and economy.
As such, the US's soft power will remain until the EU is willing to compromise on its welfare state to build an actual functioning defense industry and an economy that prioritizes innovation over taxes/regulation.
But I am skeptical the EU/UK will ever reach such a compromise (see: mass riots in France over raising the retirement age, despite it being objectively and clearly necessary; the UK's reluctance to release the triple lock pension despite it impoverishing the country, etc.)
I take it you don’t follow the European defence industry news but the wheels are very much turning already. They are planning an independent future and are hyper aware that it is now official US nation strategy priority to try and destroy the European Union as a political body and make it into a vassal state
I do follow EU defense news and I have seen that things are heating up. But I'll believe it when I see it.
This will require a significant shift of public funding allocation away from welfare, and the public will need to approve it. Will they? I doubt it.
Also, when you're rich you get a certain amount of "soft power" for free. People look up to rich people and rich countries. Just pick your favorite rich guy who has demonstrated himself to be an execrable human being for decades, and still has a big pool of admirers.
The ICC was never meant to be used against the West.
What's the process for initiation into the "west" these days? Colonizing someone else's territory and sweeping it under the rug as brazenly as possible? It certainly isn't freedom of expression or respect for the rule of law.
How is Israel "the West"? If its just because of alliances then Saudi Arabia is also "the West"
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We've banned this account for using HN exclusively for political/ideological/nationalistic battle, as well as for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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I think the important thing here is that governments shouldn't have the right to make life hard for ordinary people with punishments like taking away access to banks and finance system etc.
As for the US slapping European politicians etc, it's high time the people on high horses in Europe feel the shit they push on ordinary people.
The US is not a serious country anymore.
There should be no way the government can 'debank' someone in the first place. Monetary relations with other people have always been untouched by the state until very recently, even for revolutionaries. A private transaction is not anyone's business apart from the counterparties.
Assuming that someone should not be allowed to freely earn, spend, invest and participate in the economy without a proved felony is a dystopian concept.
Either have a proper fair public trial and put criminals in prison for serious violations or don't discriminate against anyone's stuff at all if you don't have any proofs. Otherwise it's massively used to give advantages to citizens of several nations to do business and earn while discriminating against others because of 'high risks' without any public court hearing, based on nationality, citizenship or organizational relations.
Unfortunately this seems to be exactly the slope the West is going down after dismissing all the crazy talk of conspiracy theorists who warned of this very thing.
I haven’t seen anything about it here, but another example that is worse because it’s an attack on a private person, is the EU recently sanctioning the former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, living in Belgium which he now cannot leave, for seemingly, essentially reminding the people of Europe and EU politicians’ of the things they said.
I’m sure there’s a nice pad in Moscow for Baud should he finally have the nerve to come clean about his paymasters.
You should consider not being such a manipulative, abusive person. Or do you have some kind of evidence for what you are implying, gossip-girl?
The US did this to a slate of Hong Kong administrators in 2020 for implementing China's repressive national security law. It didn't seem to act as a deterrent, as the US did it again to a different group of officials earlier this year.
https://hongkongfp.com/2025/04/01/us-sanctions-6-officials-i...
One of the sanctioned officials reportedly keeps "piles of cash" at her house.
https://news.bitcoin.com/unbanked-hong-kong-leader-carrie-la...
Related:
'It's surreal': How US sanctions lock ICC judges out of daily life
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46293048
This is so sad. The rule of law does not apply to the world’s hegemon or its closest allies.
Nearly four decades ago, the then senator Joe Biden told Congress that Israel was “the best $3bn investment we make”, claiming that “were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region”. The US regards Israel as an indispensable strategic asset, which is why it is the biggest ever recipient of US foreign aid, including military assistance. Washington will keep supplying the weapons that enable Israeli war crimes – and then threaten anyone who tries to hold the perpetrators to account.
Guillou and his colleagues issued their warrants after a lengthy, cautious legal process. The case against the Israeli politicians focused on the use of starvation, which Israeli leaders routinely confessed to.
This is a bit old
> The 125 member states of the Court will hold their annual Assembly in The Hague, Netherlands, in early December.
I wonder if they made any progress after that.
News from 2 months ago;
Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706056
Another reason for the world to move off the dollar system. And now even European countries/banking system will be more into de-dollarisation
The Israelis control the US government.
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
The Hague Invasion Act covers Americans and allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
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In international institutions Israel is weak. It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN compared to any other country.
It's receiving criticism in the UN because of the horrible crimes it's committing
When Israel was starving Gaza it was allowing in 3 times as much calories per person as the United Nations is supplying 400,000 Sudan refugees per person. Is the UN commiting crimes? The UN said is had food to increase what Israel was letting in, so the UN said it had resources to provide more than 3 times what it is providing Sudan refugees to 5 times the population (2 million verses 400,000).
Israel controls all in and outflows into Gaza. The UN does not control those in Sudan. You know this and present the situation misleadingly
>It's vastly outnumbered by Muslim countries, which is why traditionally Israel has received more criticism in the UN
How is this anything but DARVO? Israel receives criticism in the UN for reasons that are easily verified and quite understandable - namely its deliriously racist, brutally violent, textbook illegal, and long-lived occupation of Palestine and attempts to annex its territory.
Blaming Muslim countries writ large for the UN complaining about Israel's blatant and continuous violation of the UN Charter and various other international laws is shockingly racist.
Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
This includes countries that have ethnically cleansed their Jews, and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.
> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel
OTOH, why would anybody not be biased against an agressive, xenophobic theocracy bent on illegally occupying and annexing its neighbour, all the while whining that "they want to destroy us and deny the existence of the Israeli state", and then with the other side of their mouth "all Palestinians must die and their homeland belongs to us"? The mind boggles.
> many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been
Here we go.
> and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
Israel following up on their promise and actually applying the treaties they signed never got them any condemnation. Them doing the exact opposite obviously does.
> This includes countries that have ethnically cleansed their Jews, and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.
Someone being oppressed does not justify them then oppressing others. I can’t believe this still needs to be said.
> Someone being oppressed does not justify them then oppressing others.
That’s not the point. A country that has a history of hatred against a group, to the point of ethnic cleansing, and has not changed on the matter, has no legitimacy in critisizing or making judgments on that group.
I think this would be obvious in any other context.
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Many countries were also "biased" against Apartheid South Africa, the bias was disapproval of apartheid, much like the one enacted on the West Bank and Gaza.
The bias predates the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
The litmus test is if they were just opposed to the policies of the South African government, or did those countries also hate South Africa and South Africans?
Did they have a history of persecution of South Africans in their own country?
Were they funding armed groups to attack South Africa?
Did they believe that South Africa has no right to exist anyway?
> Countries tend to dislike and boycott apartheid states
> Ah but what about many many decades ago in history the minority ruling the apartheid state were treated badly! In other places! Did you think of that?
Disagree wholeheartedly.
The only relevant litmus test is:
"Did the accused party commit the offense they are accused of?"
...everything else is whataboutism, red herring, ad hominem, and DARVO.
If the worlds worst person says 2+2=4, you still can't evaluate that claim by testing how many people like or hate the person. Only by whether the content of their words is true or false.
We don’t rely on the judgements of racist juries.
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Isn't it difficult not to be biased against an apartheid, rogue nuclear state with a history of terrorism that is currently carrying out a genocide?
See, that's exactly the bias. The adjectives you used are all entirely subjective and politically charged. None of these represent an objective quality.
Is Israel an apartheid state? of course not; 25% of its population are Arabs who enjoy equal rights by the law (in comparison, 0% of Saudi Arabians are Jewish).
Is Israel a "rogue nuclear state"? It is a nuclear state, but so are France and Britain. What makes it anymore rogue than them?
Does Israel have "an history of terrorism"? You'll need to expand this one as I'm not sure what is the terrorism you mean.
Is Israel "carrying out a genocide"? Well the number of people in Gaza increased during the war. Don't believe me, hear out Hamas leaders [0].
Israel is in a tough neighborhood. Never before has any country faced such a campaign of ongoing hostility and delegitimization from its neighbors and far away countries alike. Israel is doing very well though.
[0] https://youtu.be/3qp_oXxzrcM?t=40
> It is a nuclear state, but so are France and Britain. What makes it anymore rogue than them?
The fact that Israel refuses inspections, something that no other country on Earth is permitted to do.
> Well the number of people in Gaza increased during the war.
This is just absurd holocaust denial. Israel has murdered almost 400,000 under the age of five https://x.com/i/status/1968772985227010398
Only Israel can be accused of murdering more kids (400,000) than there were actually living pre-war (330,000) [0], with the accusations made by no other than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese.
[0] https://x.com/arikouts/status/1968935650263978009/photo/1
Utterly shameless drivel.
> Many members of the UN are openly biased against Israel, many are officially against the very existence of Israel and have always been, and they happily vote on any condemnation of Israel regardless of what Israel does.
"regardless of what Israel does" they haven't tried ending the occupation yet; do you really think they would be condemned for doing so?
> and countries that do not allow Jews to enter.
Which countries are these exactly?
In 2005 Israel end the occupation in Gaza by evacuating all Jews from the strip and leaving it in Palestinian Authority control.
Next came Hamas, then the rockets, then the incursions and finally October 7th.
>In 2005 Israel end the occupation in Gaza
This is misinformation. Although Israel did pull its settlers from most of Gaza in 2005, it retained air, sea, and land border control. That is still a military occupation. The reality is, Israel never ended the occupation in Gaza.
No, the misinformation is yours. Israel pulled out Jews from all of Gaza, going back to the pre-1967 line. Gaza shared a land border with Egypt (Rafah crossing) which Israel did not - and could not - control.
While Israel retained air and sea passage control, the blockade as we know it only came after Hamas was elected as the Gaza government and not before.
(this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become)
Gaza has been considered occupied by the UN, the ICJ, the ICC, the EU, and pretty much any body which studies international law, since 1967. Israel is the only entity who claims they have not been occupying Gaza during this period.
> this is the opportunity to note that after the Israeli pullout from Gaza, Gazans could have chosen many different paths but they chose Hamas to lead them into the catastrophe they've become
Even in 2005, after Israel's removal of their settlers and before Hamas came to power in 2007, Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling, based on Israel continuing to exert control over Gaza.
> Israel was still occupying Gaza, according to an ICJ ruling
That's not what the court said. Its language was
> In light of the above, the Court is of the view that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation. Israel’s obligations have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control over the Gaza Strip.
As it often does, the court used intentionally ambiguous language to try to get a majority of judges on board. But the most natural reading seems to be a novel idea that occupation is non-binary, and Gaza lies somewhere on a spectrum of being occupied or not.
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186...
This predates the occupation.
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Muslims are not a race.
Race is an invention, people assign themselves and others to races based upon nothing but their own beliefs.
It's just a way of "othering" some group of people, which certainly seems to fit the facts, regardless of whether you personally think some set of characteristics should be called a race.
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The problem is many people — not here on HN but in general — were happy or at least unperturbed when this happened to right wing figures like Donald Trump, the trucker protestors in Canada and the 1/6 capitol riot people in the US.
It was incredibly obvious this would be inflicted in the other direction to anyone who followed what happened to Wikileaks supporters or people around Ed Snowden.
To everyone saying this is about US hegemony, note not only Canada but also UK (see Nigel Farage) has inflicted this on their own citizens - so they certainly helped lay the groundwork for what amount to extremely petty sanctions (and they too have participated in sanctions efforts).
Trump was never debanked. To my recollection, no protesters in the trucker convoys were either.
Some social media accounts were suspended and fundraisers were stopped.
You are very wrong.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/05/trump-jpmorgan-chase-bank-of...
https://apnews.com/article/trump-bank-lawsuit-florida-28c05c...
Trucker convoys were absolutely de-banked.
Your media consumption may be particularly biased if you didn't hear of this! I recommend following outlets from "both sides" even if you find the "other side" offensive. I hate to shill for Ground News, but it's great for this.
You are spreading typical misinformation/propaganda. Temporarily freezing accounts until the law is played out is not the same as debanking someone globally and permanently.
As far as I'm concerned, it's on the same order of badness. "Temporarily freezing" until when? The whim of some government official? No practical difference from using debanking as a political weapon.
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> were happy or at least unperturbed when this happened to right wing figures like Donald Trump
When was Trump debanked?
> the trucker protestors in Canada
Speaking as someone on the other end of the spectrum from the trucker protestors in Canada, I was mortified by this
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/05/trump-jpmorgan-chase-bank-of...
It’s very easy to google this.
Btw they never denied but per usual said they could not comment on individual accounts. But he did at least sue capital one.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-bank-lawsuit-florida-28c05c...
Niether Trump nor the "truckers" in Canada were debanked. Freezing your funds in a given country can happen for a variety of reasons and is not remotely the same as debanking someone.
They were temporarily debanked under highly debatable circumstances. Regardless of your political leaning, if you care about basic human freedoms, the level of power the government has over the access individuals have to their finances (in addition to the degree to which every social institution is deeply entangled with that financial system) should be a cause for concern.
The Truckers were on Canadian soil and subject to Canadian law, there was no reason to freeze their accounts like this. They should have been pursued in criminal courts, during which their access to legal counsel should not have been obstructed.
Trump outright lost his J.P. Morgan accounts. Why you are you fabricating falsehoods?
This tactic broadcasts Trump's guilt, and the guilt of others by association. It's hard to imagine how this will play out. It's very worrisome that the USA is collapsing into a fascist state. I feel bad for young people who inherit the consequences of these terrible decisions.
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Brunel ran "modeling" agencies. Who else decided that was a good business to get into? The whole thing is not even close to the worst part of it yet.
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Generally when you say these kinds of things, it's polite to not let your audience guess at what and who you mean. Could you please give us some links?
The latest example from a week ago. The article is pro sanctions (as all EU mainstream media).
The problem is these people were sanctioned, their lives ruined, without any legal process of conviction.
If the same happens to someone closer to the EU establishment, like ICC judge, EU, then they cry foul.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/12/18/who-are-the-we...
I'm smelling a troll here if you can't distinguish between a UN official acting in an official capacity being sanctioned, vs. private individuals who proselytize and engage in propaganda for a populist regime which, albeit unofficially, is "The Enemy" for the whole of Europe at the moment.
Also the decisions are not outside any legal process. To quote the agenda for the decision[1]:
> On 18 July 2025, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (‘the High Representative’) published a statement on behalf of the Union, in which she strongly condemned the persistent malicious activities posed by Russia, which form part of broader, coordinated and long-standing hybrid campaigns aimed at threatening and undermining the security, resilience and democratic foundations of the Union, its Member States and its partners. The High Representative stressed that Russia’s malicious activities had escalated further since the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine and were highly likely to persist in the foreseeable future.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L...
Do you really in all honesty want to day that the accusations of some "High Representative" can replace the complete judicial process?
Zero process, zero proofs, just "allegations". Pretty low bar. Most undemocratic states would at least try some staged process. EU doesn't even try to fake it, at least in this case.
The only lesson they will learn is that they need to control sanctions themselves and likely to use them more. Nothing good about this unless you want to see a weaker US and lilely a more federal EU.
Do you have a source?
See answer to the sibling comment.
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
The long term consequence is that the US is proving that the rest of the world how dangerous it is to rely on US financial institutions. I very much doubt destroying the trustworthiness of its financial institutions in order to protect war criominals is beneficial for the US in the long run.
After WW2, the US did a lot of bad things but it did not change its status in the world. Nothing will change now or in the foreseeable future. And the “problem” is pretty simple: there is no one able to take its place.
After WW2, the US had a lot of political capital and the governments with economic clout were largely either highly positive to the US or already quite hostile, and the US at the same time had a tremendous financial advantage.
A lot of the US' bad things post WW2 were seen favorably by the governments that were already US-friendly, and who either way saw the US as a critical ally.
That has drastically changed in general. The situation is not remotely comparable.
Europe in particular is more confident, isn't bordered by a power that Europe believes it can't handle alone if it has to (a threat, yes, but not an existential one like the USSR). There isn't remotely the same sense of needing the US at all costs.
The ICC decisions simply wouldn't have been allowed to happen in a way that caused a rift with the US shortly after WW2. It'd have been inconceivable. That the ICC decisions have not just been allowed to happen but haven't caused uproar from most European governments is itself evidence of how much weaker the US position is seen by European eyes in particular.
But in terms of finance in particular, it's also just not the case that there is no one able to take its place.
Of the top 20 largest banks in the world by assets, only 5 are American, the top 4 largest are Chinese, and China has 7 total, UK 2, France 2, Japan 3, Spain 1.
Extend that list to the top 50, and it only adds one more US bank.
The ICC didn’t ‘pick on Israel’…
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction. A state need not be a member of the ICC to be subject to its (or any other entity’s) jurisdiction in investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating such crimes.
The US does not recognize such an argument. If that is the argument being made, then no wonder the US issued sanctions; it would perceive such a precedent as a threat to its sovereignty.
Not quite: The US helped invent that argument, and has used it extensively to pursue its foreign policy goals since World War II.
What the US has argued historically is that American people and institutions are not subject to it because the US has a functioning civilian and military justice system, and so prosecution for such crimes can be handled within it, even by foreign nations and NGOs.
Obviously that’s a load of bullshit, especially (but not only) these days, but “sovereignty for me but not for thee” has long been the rule and with its weakening international position the US may come to find that to be less achievable in the future.
When has the US used the argument that a judicial system has universal jurisdiction? In the US, foreign policy is the domain of the executive, to the point where court cases involving foreign sovereigns are usually dismissed.
Compared to how much of a mess most of the world's powers are on matters on sovereignty, the US is actually one of the more conservative ones here (e.g., see OFCOM in the UK).
It has not, and that’s not what I said.
Let me restate: The US position is that the US justice system “works” and thus *US persons and institutions* must be pursued *within the US system* even by foreign entities.
In other words, the US position is not that if (say) North Korea commits a crime against humanity they must be pursued in US courts; the US is fine with the ICC in that case. The US position is that if the US commits a crime against humanity that must be pursued in US courts, not the ICC.
It’s an obvious (and bullshit) double standard, but it’s also not a denial of the legitimacy of universal jurisdiction. It’s just the US, as usual, trying to have its cake and eat it too.
Why is that a double standard? The US position is that recognized nations have sovereignty, and are the supreme law within their jurisdiction. If there is no recognized legitimate sovereign power, then the US is fine with an international body substituting.
That this standard is complicated, and different from those that argue that international law should be the supreme law, doesn't make it a double standard. It's also not what is meant by universal jurisdiction, as it does not depend on overriding sovereignty.
Edit: Seeing your other comment, it's also worth noting this was a large reason why the US didn't sign the Rome statute, since as you note, the US isn't inherently opposed to the idea of international courts, only the supremacy of their jurisdiction.
Except Netanyahu and Galland are not US citizens. Therefore why is the US so involved in?
Because the US protects Israel pretty much at all costs. For the same reason no one attacks Israel for fear of reprisals from the US.
They don't want the precedent established. Same reason why uninvolved parties in US courts submit "amicus briefs" - the precedent from a case may affect them down the line.
The US doesn’t believe universal jurisdiction applies to it or its vassal states and proxies, which includes Israel.
On the other hand, the US didn’t try to prevent Slobodan Milošević from being tried at The Hague for war crimes and genocide, as Serbia wasn’t a vassal state or proxy.
Since when does authority to look into a country’s actions require consent of that country?
Anybody can look into any country’s actions unless that country has authority over them and forbids it.
Since 1354.
- https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/97801992316...The crimes took place in Palestine, which recognizes the ICC.
What authority did the world have to trial the Nazis at Nuremberg? Countries are going to get called on crimes against humanity, simple as.
>Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC
Many others have already pointed out the fact here - that Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction.
Instead what I want to focus on is WHY YOU DID NOT KNOW THIS, despite the fact that the ICC literally ruled on this matter quite a while ago, specifically. The court itself approached this question, evaluated the evidence, and made a ruling. You missed all that?
"Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction" is the court's claim; that doesn't make it a legal reality. It relies on the theory that PA is the government of Gaza, despite never having controlled it.
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They prefer war to justice. Got it.
ICC also charged the responsible Hamas officials at the same time.
ICC also failed to charge Palestinian authority officials for the money they give war criminals who are in prison because of their actions. Palestinian authority joined the ICC in 2015, 10 years ago plenty of time to act.
If we’re going to go down that route then ICC could also charge Israel for funding Hamas
The birth of Hamas was quite literally supported by Israel because they wanted to undermine the unity of the Palestinians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
> Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme
So is any atrocity allowable if you have enough civilian human shields?
Are you talking about the IDF or Hamas? Both sides are recorded to have made extensive use of human shields.
> a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC
Those "handful of countries" who do not recognize the ICC have more than 2/3rd of the world population btw.
Israel committed crimes against humanity in Palestine over which ICC does have jurisdiction. Whether US supports the ICC or not is irrelevant.
I had to dig this up because this was from August. Not sure why it is coming up now.
[1] https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/08/imposing-further-sanc...
I don’t think the ICC was plotting to undermine US or Israel sovereignty. The dispute is about jurisdiction. The ICC has a pretty expansive theory that says it can go after nationals of non-member states if the alleged conduct happened on the territory of a member state. That theory has been around for years and mostly lived in briefs and conferences. What changed in 2025 is that the ICC started acting on it and advancing real cases that implicated non-members. At that point it stopped being academic and started looking like a real-world precedent with consequences for allies and potentially US personnel. That’s the slippery slope. The administration had already tried protests and non-recognition and concluded it was not changing behavior. The August sanctions were framed as a last-resort escalation to draw a hard line against what they saw as ongoing overreach, not as a response to some new hostile intent.
Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.
Israelis committed those crimes in Palestine, over which ICC does have jurisdiction.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction.
Even if we had some legal theory under which ICC could assert universal jurisdiction for certain crimes, the ICC doesn't do so. It has to abide by its own jurisdiction rules, which have no such mechanism.
The ICC's jurisdictional claim is here is rather based on the idea that PA is the de facto government of Gaza, even though they never controlled it.
Palestine has. The actions took place there.
There is no such state as 'Palestine'. The PA is widely recognized and has acceded to the Rome Statute, but it has never held sovereignty in Gaza, making ICC's recognition of 'Palestine'--specifically including not only the West Bank but also Gaza and East Jerusalem--as a State Party under Article 12(2)(a) of the Rome Statute dubious at best.
But really, it's not dubious at all: It's utterly absurd.
ICC claims that since PA claims to represent 'Palestine', and UNGA Resolution 67/19 "Reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967", and that since they consider Gaza "Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" (despite the fact that Gaza has certainly not been occupied by Israel for decades and a completely separate entity exercises sovereignty there), therefore 'Palestine' is a State Party properly represented by the PA and covered by its accession to the Rome Statute, and thus the ICC totally have jurisdiction over Gaza.[0]
Bonkers.
Anyway Israel never acceded to the Rome Statute and the doctrine of state immunity applies. Even if PA were sovereign in Gaza and had properly delegated that sovereignty to the ICC, ICC's claim that Article 12(2)(a) grants them jurisdiction over Israel and Israeli leaders for their actions in Gaza is still a brazen claim to jurisdiction not well supported by customary international law.
[0]: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/p...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46432107
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Cash is more anonymous and less trackable than Bitcoin and the society didn't collapse.
You can't get (much) cash without the transaction being traced or criminal in many countries. There's a limit to legal cash transactions.
Arguments about amount are immaterial to me. Cash transactions of say $500k are physically doable in many systems.
And cash transaction don't require burning the Amazon, of course.
Then why should we use bitcoin?
Because it’s faster, easier, safer and cheaper to transfer large volumes of capital than say loading a plane with gold or sending a bag of cash.
As long as you're quick to cash in and cash out of it. Potential gains are fun, but losing 10% a month isn't.
That's not a real problem though, stablecoins exist.
You're not wrong, but the conversation was about Bitcoin, not cryptocurrency in general.
Cash is a bit bulky and can't be sent over fiber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
Hawala is such a simple, effective, and relatively anonymous system that bypasses banking that the government had to convince the populace that anyone who uses it is a terrorist. It also helps they use the arab name even though it is of Indian origin.
Cryptocurrencies work fine. If the debanked were to use them, they would find 90% of their restrictions lifted immediately and without permission from anyone.
No, society will not collapse; it will stabilize. There are many forms of taxation, e.g. property, tarrifs, etc. that are unaffected.
Those who call Bitcoin utter shit always have an agenda and insecurities rooted in a feared loss of status.
Bitcoin is utter shit because of its use of proof of work rather than proof of stake.
Time to protect EU citizens from US human rights abuses. Require EU banks to ignore foreign sanctions and call the US bluff.
Yeah, the EU should just call the bluff. The US is not going to do anything other than shake their fist angrily.
The problem there is that the EU has started copying the USA, and has just recently sanctioned multiple journalists for telling stories that don't align with their narrative on Russia/Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in its quest to enlarge the imperium. Russia is an aggressor seeking to expand even more.
Regardless, should we really sanction our own citizens simply for reporting, in good faith, something that goes against the state-sponsored narrative (true or otherwise)?
This is legit the kind of stuff we used to use as examples as why "Russia is bad".
There is no equivalency bettween what Russia actually does here these days ... or between what was going on in Russia as Putin cemented his power, ressurected Stalins mythology about Stalin as a great leader and how communist Russia operated.
These false equivalencies amd attempts to hint that Ukraine war is anything else then a territorial expansion are not just "regardless".
They are the core issue.
You've side-stepped my question entirely - should we really be sanctioning journalists? Is that really a sign of healthy democracy and free speech?
For me, the really i.portsnt point is to not imply whatever conspira y theory about Ukraine deserving it could be implied.
And likewise, the importsnt part for me was to negate the false equivalency.
I am ok with sanctioning Russia as such, as much as possible. Sadly they have powerful allies in US now ... but for now, Russia and US are the greatest threats to freedom in Europe.
We're not discussing conspiracy theories, or sanctioning of Russia for that matter - this is about EU journalists being sanctioned for reporting in good faith.
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Time to protect citizens from EU human right and political abuses, too.
FWIW it's kind of refreshing to see a judicial official on the receiving end of this treatment. I know he's not one of the judges who permitted the debanking of protesters in Canada, but 1:1 of like-kind is probably all we can ask for.
Those who so flippantly censor and ostracise dissidents deserve a periodic taste of their own concoctions.
Nitpick:
> Both men are indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the destruction of the Gaza Strip.
Role in destruction isn't a war crime they are being indicted for and as such irrelevant in this context.
The destruction of Gaza is obviously the context in which the war crimes and crimes against humanity occur(red).
No, you missed the point. They have been indicated to "as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts". Physical destruction can occur without being a war crime and those war crimes can occur without any destruction. So it didn't add any useful information infact it was actively misleading because some people might think they were indicated for destruction.
I have a hard time understanding what you're upset about. "The destruction of Gaza" is clearly a context that anyone in the world can recognize.
The statement is simply referring to that. Not everything has to be maximally technical.
Because someone is wrong on the internet, isn't that enough? I already explained it and I'm unsure what I can add aside from some examples (Siege of Jerusalem (starvation without destruction), Battle of Raqqa (destructive urban warfare, no allegations of starvation or war crimes), Siege of Mariupol (destructive urban warfare, many alleged war crimes))
Your nitpick added zero value to the discussion.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
Can you be more specific? Which individuals and why (not)?
Note that eg if you're from (picking two random countries) Nepal and commit a crime in Italy, then Italy still has jurisdiction. Italian police can arrest you. [1]
Also, there's certain crimes that any country is allowed to arrest you for, for instance piracy on the high seas.
[1] Also explicitly taken into account in the Rome statue 12(2)(a) https://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm
I'm talking about the sanctioned individuals on the ICC, judges and the prosecutor. The issue is not a matter of certain individuals going to a different country and allegedly committing a crime there. No one is talking about sea piracy.
So explain why the US used the same mechanisms against a Brazilian judge responsible for Bolsonaro's coup attempt case.
Was Brazil's justice trying to impose its legal authority outside of its jurisdictions? Nope. Was it hurting humans rights? Nope.
It's simply to bully, and meddle with entities that go against the interests of the current administration.
I don't buy your justification why this case is not the same, at all.
I'm talking about the ICC. I'm not trying to explain that.
I won't ignore the administration track record of using sanctions to further their own agenda though, not sure why you can do that to explain the ICC case when it's factual they use it against some people that don't toe their line, as a meddling weapon to strong-arm them.
The only way the theory of international law holds any water is if countries are held to it regardless of the treaties they've signed. Any country that hasn't signed with the ICC is clearly a country run by criminals.
That's not how treaties work, and it's not how the ICC is supposed to work based on its explicit provisions.
Summary: far left liberal judge who sanctions others for their political opinions is in return sanctioned.
You may want to look up "sanction" in a dictionary, and then come back and explain how the ICC sanctioned anyone. They have zero executive power.