Bush's ICC two-step. (The Right Perspective).

By "un-signing" the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty on May 6th, President Bush heartened his conservative constituency and enraged his leftist critics. But he did nothing of substance to address the fundamental threat that the ICC represents -- namely, the ongoing effort to equip the United Nations with the means of enforcing its vision of global law.

Neither President Bush nor Secretary of State Colin Powell made the official "un-signing" announcement. Instead, that task was delegated to a minor Foggy Bottom apparatchik - Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman, who made the announcement in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. On the same day, Under Secretary of State John Bolton delivered a terse letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announcing that the U.S. would "not become a party" to the ICC treaty, and would recognize "no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000."

While the position stated in the Bolton letter is unambiguous, it failed to address the fact that the ICC institution claims "universal jurisdiction" to prosecute war crimes and other crimes against humanity. Included within the scope of the ICC's presumed powers would be citizens of nations whose governments have neither signed nor ratified the treaty. Furthermore, despite the Bush administration's rejection of the ICC treaty in its present form, it has not rejected participation in UN tribunals on a case-by-case basis.

In his speech to the CSIS, Grossman reviewed the U.S. role in creating international tribunals "in Nuremberg, the Far East, and the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda...." He insisted that "a properly created [international] court could be a useful tool in promoting human rights and holding the perpetrators of the worst violations accountable before the world -- and perhaps one day such a court will come into being." (Emphasis added.) Thus the Bush administration, while objecting to the ICC for the moment, explicitly endorsed the ICC in principle.

The chief objection voiced by Grossman on behalf of the Bush administration is that the ICC, as presently constituted, "undermines the role of the United Nations Security Council in maintaining international peace and security."

While Grossman reverently invoked the UN Charter and its framers, he didn't mention the U.S. Constitution even once. Grossman did mention, in passing, John Adams' warning that "power must never be trusted without a check," and pointed Out that the ICC treaty "places enormous unchecked power in the hands of the ICC prosecutor and judges." But Grossman insisted that the UN Charter intended for the Security Council to provide the necessary "checks and balances." Because the ICC prosecutor is independent of Security Council oversight, complained Grossman, "the role of the Security Council was usurped," and the ICC represents a departure "from the system that the framers of the UN Charter envisioned."

This section of Grossman's speech usefully displays the Bush administration's perverse priorities. The UN Charter's framers were a squalid collection of Communists and subversives, led by the arch-traitor Alger Hiss. The Charter itself is entirely worthy of its despicable pedigree: It was designed as a framework for a socialist world government that would extinguish national independence and individual liberty.

The most serious objection to the ICC treaty is the only one necessary. It represents an effort to destroy our Constitution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson specifically protested in the Declaration that King George sought "to subject us to Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws ... [and to transport] us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses...."

Grossman's speech warned that the ICC puts "U.S. officials, and our men and women in uniform, at risk of politicized prosecutions...." But he did not acknowledge that the UN's court would also threaten the rights of common citizens. This is understandable, in a way, given the role of the Bush administration's ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper, in creating a key precedent for putting Americans on trial before UN courts. Prosper is a former prosecutor at the UN's tribunal for Rwanda. While with the UN, Prosper helped arrange the extradition of an elderly Rwandan pastor named Eliziphan Ntakirutimana, a legal resident alien living in Texas.

Rather than cutting off U.S. participation in UN-sponsored international tribunals, Grossman promised greater involvement by the Bush administration. He endorsed future initiatives in which the UN would collaborate with national governments to create "hybrid" judicial institutions to try those accused of violating international law. Grossman even promised that the Bush administration would work to create "a pool of experienced judges and prosecutors to serve in such international courts."

The ICC decision displayed the Bush administration's penchant for "a la carte" internationalism: While the administration insists on confining its policy choices to the UN's menu of options, it is trying to avoid, for now, some of the most unsavory selections.