{"id":4229,"date":"2010-07-08T21:59:51","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T01:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4229"},"modified":"2010-07-08T22:58:19","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T02:58:19","slug":"the-crime-of-aggression-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/08\/the-crime-of-aggression-2\/","title":{"rendered":"the crime of aggression…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


League of Nations<\/sup><\/p>\n

At the Treaty of Versailles<\/a><\/strong> the League of Nations<\/strong><\/a> came into being – a dream of American President Woodrow Wilson; however, yet he could not convince the US to join.<\/div>\n
\n
Despite Wilson’s efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the United States did not join the League. Opposition in the U.S. Senate, particularly from Republican politicians Henry Cabot Lodge and William E. Borah, together with Wilson’s refusal to compromise, ensured that the United States would not ratify the Covenant. <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It lasted from 1919 until 1946, then disbanded. It was an idea before its time. As we now know, there was way too much turmoil up ahead for such an scheme – Fascism, Communism, the end of Colonialism, etc. World War I marked the end of the Monarchies in Europe and Asia, and what was to follow was anything but decided by 1919.<\/div>\n

In contrast, the UN, founded after World War II gradually spread to encompass the entire world, surviving the rise and fall of World Communism. It must’ve been time:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
The … United Nations<\/strong><\/a> (UN<\/strong>) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law<\/font><\/strong>, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. It contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The problem is what to do when facilitating cooperation in international law<\/font><\/strong> fails. What is International Law<\/strong><\/a>? Such things as: Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a><\/strong>, Geneva Conventions<\/a><\/strong>, ILO<\/a><\/strong>, World Health Organization<\/a><\/strong>, World Intellectual Property Organization<\/a><\/strong>, International Telecommunication Union<\/a><\/strong>, UNESCO<\/a><\/strong>, World Trade Organization<\/a><\/strong>, and International Monetary Fund<\/a><\/strong>. All but the first two are by agreement and internally regulated. What’s missing is a Court with the authority to rule on cases involving the first two – criminal cases. Thus the International Criminal Court<\/font><\/a><\/strong>. Here’s the map again:<\/div>\n

Ratified<\/font><\/strong>, Signed but not Ratified<\/font><\/strong>, Not signed<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
In the Rome Statute that founded the Court in 1998, they reached agreement on defining genocide<\/font><\/strong>, crimes against humanity<\/font><\/strong>, and war crimes<\/font><\/strong> [the easy<\/em> stuff], but did not define the crime of aggression<\/font><\/strong>. They met in Kampala, Uganda last month to deliberate the definition of this crime. There’s not much coverage of the Review Conference of the Rome Statute<\/strong><\/a> in the papers. One predictably negative article from Fox News<\/strong><\/a> and this in the Christian Science Monitor<\/strong>: <\/div>\n
\n
US opposes ICC bid to make ‘aggression’ a crime under international law<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n
The Obama administration has resisted efforts by the International Criminal Court to include ‘aggression’ as a crime, mainly because it could impact US military operations abroad<\/sup><\/em><\/div>\n
Christian Science Monitor<\/strong>
By Howard LaFranchi
June 15, 2010<\/div>\n

The United States under the Obama administration has developed an increasingly close working relationship with the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But that growing engagement with a controversial institution of international law was unable to prevent the ICC from expanding the scope of its work to include the murky crime of “aggression,” a move the US had vehemently opposed. At the 111-nation ICC’s first review conference that wrapped up last week in Kampala, Uganda, delegates decided to expand the international court’s purview to include the crime of aggression – a crime that only the US has successfully tried, in the post-World War II tribunals in Nuremburg and Tokyo.<\/sup><\/p>\n

State Department officials say the US, which is not a signatory to the ICC, was able to mitigate the drawbacks of such an expansion of the court’s reach, primarily by putting off any prosecution of the newest international crime until at least 2017. But some critics say the US failure to stop the enshrining of “aggression” as an international crime demonstrates the limits of President Obama’s multilateralist vision – and sets the US on a collision course with the ICC when the issue comes up again later in the decade.<\/sup><\/p>\n

“The fact remains that the Obama administration’s vaunted ‘engagement’ strategy was only able to check the ICC’s move towards defining ‘aggression,’ not stop it entirely,” says Brett Schaefer, an expert in international institutions at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “And it sets the US up for another battle in 2017 when the ICC’s advocates will make another push to activate the ICC’s jurisdiction over ‘aggression.’”<\/sup><\/p>\n

The US confirmed its new footing with the world’s first permanent court for trying war crimes and crimes against humanity, US officials say, although they acknowledge that the US did not get everything it wanted in Kampala. The Rome Statute establishing the ICC was finalized in 1998, but the court did not begin to function until 2002, when the minimum 60 countries ratified it.<\/sup><\/p>\n

US participation in the Kampala conference “reset US relations with the court from hostility to positive engagement,” says State Department legal adviser Harold Koh. He says the US focus at the review conference was on efforts to “strengthen justice on the ground” in countries so that eventually their judicial systems will be strong enough to take on the kinds of human-rights work the ICC addresses…<\/sup><\/p>\n

One of the main US concerns in seeing “aggression” added to the ICC’s jurisdiction was the impact it could potentially have on US military operations abroad. But Koh says the US successfully negotiated the “aggression” statute’s wording so that US forces won’t be susceptible to it. “No US national can be prosecuted for ‘aggression’ while the US is not a signatory” to the ICC, he says.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While we don’t necessarily like to think of ourselves as war mongers, but we are prone to fight [UN sanctioned in blue<\/font><\/strong>]: <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Dates<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\nWar<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\nDates
<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\n		War<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1675 – 1676<\/td>\nKing Philip’s War<\/td>\n1861-1865<\/td>\nU.S. Civil War<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1689-1697<\/td>\nKing William’s War<\/td>\n1898<\/td>\nSpanish-American War<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1702-1713<\/td>\n(War of Spanish Succession)<\/td>\n1914-1918<\/td>\nWorld War I<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1744-1748<\/td>\n(War of Austrian Succession)<\/td>\n1939-1945<\/td>\nWorld War II<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1756-1763<\/td>\nFrench and Indian War<\/td>\n1950-1953<\/td>\nKorean War<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1759-1761<\/td>\nCherokee War<\/td>\n1960-1975<\/td>\nVietnam War<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1775-1783<\/td>\nAmerican Revolution<\/td>\n1961<\/td>\nBay of Pigs<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1798-1800<\/td>\nFranco-American Naval War<\/td>\n1983<\/td>\nGrenada<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1801-1805<\/td>\nBarbary Wars<\/td>\n1989<\/td>\nInvasion of Panama<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1812-1815<\/td>\nWar of 1812<\/td>\n1990-1991<\/td>\nPersian Gulf War<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1813-1814<\/td>\nCreek War<\/td>\n1995-1996<\/td>\nBosnia and Herzegovina<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1836<\/td>\nWar of Texas Independence<\/td>\n2001<\/td>\nInvasion of Afghanistan<\/font><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1846-1848<\/td>\nMexican-American War<\/td>\n2003<\/td>\nInvasion of Iraq<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Our wars between the end of World War II and the fall of Communism were part of our foreign policy of "containment" [the only success was Grenada]. Since that time, the wars have been about "rogue states" – two under the UN auspices [Persian Gulf War<\/strong> & the Invasion of Afghanistan<\/strong>], and one a humanitarian war with NATO [Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/strong>]. But if Aggression is the topic, the US is close to the top of the list.<\/p>\n

I personally find it sad that the US is a major opponent of the new world court having jurisdiction over the Crime of Aggression<\/font><\/strong>. While I can somewhat understand our wish to maintain our options, the last time we played an option was a major league disaster. We can do without another Iraq until the end of time. The Bush Administration basically wanted to dis the UN and take on the job of world cop. I see no reason to protect our right to do that again.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure that the Obama Administration isn’t that crazy, but it seems to me that the route to the proper end game is to be sensible in our objections rather than just being obstructionist. I hope by 2017, the US is in a better place to join the world in its attempts to have a lasting peace. It took a cataclysmic War to move from the embryonal League of Nations to the United Nations. Hopefully the path of the ICC will not have to be so convoluted and painful…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

League of Nations At the Treaty of Versailles the League of Nations came into being – a dream of American President Woodrow Wilson; however, yet he could not convince the US to join. Despite Wilson’s efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}