You appear to be confused. Anyone can decide anything, the question is whether it is in their power to enforce their decisions.

Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!

> Anyone can decide anything, the question is whether it is on their power to enforce their decisions.

You seem to have arrived at a suitable definition of "authority"

"authority" is an overloaded term in English, but "having authority" isn't. The latter implies a set of rules.

Seems to be a rather silly, pedantic point if it even passes. GP was clearly talking about sovereignty etc. which is exactly the caveat that you granted - that ICC may have no enforcement power over non-treaty countries. For the record I have no axe to grind with the ICC, but you and GP literally agree on the main difficulty facing the institution.

This is exactly the kind of discussion where the difference is important. Your reading of the point they were trying to make is impressively charitable. I shall try to learn from it.

If the point is that anyone can tell anyone else anything, that's vacuously true but a court typically wields the power of a state and its code of laws. For treaty countries ICC is perfectly unproblematic but for nontreaty countries there's a strong difficulty in calling it a court as it bears no legal legitimacy.

National courts routinely issue arrest warrants and rulings for persons of other nationalities, who could currently be located anywhere in the world. The ICC is not special in that regard.

Right and you can imagine how much authority the average Russian lends to an American arrest warrant.

> Right and you can imagine how much authority the average Russian lends to an American arrest warrant.

I have to applaud coming up with a sentence like that. The same sort of beauty one might find in an Escher piece.

Let me address the point underlying that contortion by asking a question: In the alternate semantic universe we're constructing, if that Russian later passes through a US-friendly country and is arrested, did the US court turn out to retroactively have had the authority to issue the warrant, and we pretend it always had it, or is it supposed to work some other way?

I don't really think there's a need to be so hostile. I don't really know how I feel about subjecting international citizens to US law to be honest with you. Certainly in some cases it's appropriate. But in others it seems strange to me.

And undoubtedly I agree that if Putin or Netanyahu pass through Europe they should be arrested. But I'm not sure if that's a legal decision or a political one.

> I don't really think there's a need to be so hostile.

There was no hostile intent or ill feelings. Some things were meant to be humorous, but in good spirits. If anything came across otherwise, that's a communication failure on my part. I'm sorry.

The entire point is to make it into (more of) a legal decision rather than a political one. That's the famed Rule of Law - a Schelling point that multiple parties with diverging interest can work towards to cooperate. It's not arrest Putin/Netanyahu/etc because "they're bad and we don't like them", but rather because they have done specific actions A, B, and C that we've written down to be considered crimes.

Well I think you hit upon an excellent point and one that I'm rather close to, which is legalization. Adopting a uniform procedure to deal with various cases and accord defendants some recourse is admirable. That doesn't make it law, but legalizing those types of proceedings is still valuable. I think Nuremberg rested on shaky grounds as a court, but it was still preferable to either summary execution or disclaiming any punishment on the accused.

Likewise I think where I'm uncertain with Putin is that while he's undoubtedly a nefarious guy and we have written down rules and norms he has broken, those norms do not apply to the Russian world. We claim they apply, but we could only make them apply through force of arms which runs opposite to the rule of law. That is rather the rule of "might makes right."

> we could only make them apply through force of arms which runs opposite to the rule of law

I'd say that these things are not opposites. Rather the rule of law is a way of tempering the power of force of arms. Look at your Nuremberg example - having won the war and enacted occupation by force of arms, the Allies were in a position where they could have simply imposed summary execution. Legalization was a stepping back from this dynamic - likely due to the amount of unilateral killing that had just gone on.

> those norms do not apply to the Russian world

The crux of the matter here is that parties on the receiving end of aggression (Ukraine, Palestine) have assented to adopting those norms. The legalistic theory is that by aggressing onto those parties, the aggressors become subject to the jurisdiction of whom they're aggressing against. I personally don't particularly like this model of international jurisdiction, but it is on solid longstanding ground. And so while I'll argue against this sort of thing at an individual level (especially where the nexus is say electronic communications), I don't feel much sympathy for leaders who end up suffering this dynamic because they decided to attack other countries.

In reality of course yes, to apply those laws requires force of arms - for there even to be something to temper in the first place. So Ukraine/Palestine assenting to those treaties is essentially asking would-be allies to defend them in some well-scoped circumstances, modulo the underlying diplomatic concerns.

The International Criminal Court was created by a treaty between sovereign nations. These nations chose to for it to have authority over them.

> These nations chose to for it to have authority over them.

Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?

So far the last several Presidents of the USA have decided they don't want that.

If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.

If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.

Where the "what" is human rights. Pretty much horrific things I'd rather not describe.

Then they got mad that the rest of the world didn't approve of actually doing the horrific things.

And then no one wanted to buy bonds from the country endorsing the horrific acts.

> If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.

Our founders smartly chose against direct democracy. The more I look around, the more right I see they were.

Well, you find it right because you like the fact that your vote is worth n times more than the vote of those you oppose. Were the situation reversed, you'd find that a pretty bad arrangement.

Do you know the traditional method of cutting a cake in two perfectly balanced parts? Person A gets to cut it in two however they want. Person B chooses which slice goes to whom. Is it any wonder Person A dislikes it, and would pretty much prefer to both cut it and select which slice goes to whom?

The US created its predecessor with the Nuremberg Trials. (Which I'm pretty sure Nazi Germany never signed up for, fwiw)

Rules for thee, not for me.

Rules apply to those on whom they are enforced by those who can enforce. News at 11.

I see we went from feigned concern over consent to just open hypocrisy. Telling, and a very appropriate representation of American policy. I wonder why your global power is waning?

Nothing to do with America. This is how the world works.

Again, you started by talking about consent.

This pivot to brute force exposes the hypocrisy not in the world, but specifically in America, as represented by the American citizen I am talking to.

It's also not "how the world works", it's how the world works while America has the power to make it work that way.

Thankfully, it is a self-defeating approach.

Those with power setting the rules is the way the world worked long before America. It never changed nor could it, as anyone with power would eventually tire of being told how to live

I think you are desperately trying to universalize the particular as a way to reconcile the two conflicting ideological frames you're trying to uphold, and I think your country exhibits the same ideological crisis.

As a simple counterexample to this universalism, think of the European Union. Germany and France could impose their will on smaller neighbors (and did, in less enlightened times!), but they don't, because y'know, they actually believe in rule of law, consent and consensus.

Or as an example closer to home - the Canada / US relationship before recent American aggression.

Things don't have to work by unilateral aggression. It is a specific ideological choice, it is not a law of nature. Now I understand it might feel different while enveloped in said ideology (it literally determines what we perceive to be possible after all!), the same way a Muslim fanatic would attribute everything to Allah's plan, but I'm not really interested in self-justifications.

> Germany and France could impose their will on smaller neighbors

and do...

For example Hungary is being fined daily for attempting self-determination https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clww729180po

It is hilarious that you think they WANT to be fined.

My dude, Hungary being fined by the club it signed up for makes your point only if your point was that the library dominates you with their late return fees. Not only did Hungary consent to these rules, it could've at any point withdrawn consent through Article 50.

Additionally, this is from 2024, Hungary has since democratically elected a government on the express platform of getting rid of the dictator that got fined.

What is hilarious is that out of my whole detailed argument you reached for this, as if the presence of a penalty settled anything about the relationship between power, institutions and agreed upon rules.

You've mistaken the mere existence of enforcement for domination, just like you keep mistaking ideological preference for natural law.

They didn't. But they're big mad that ICC put out warrants for Netanyahu etc.

EDIT: forgot the peace prize, trump likely mad over that again.

Well a lot of international diplomacy depends on trade and associated meetings. If someone is sanctioned by the ICC then they can't move money or visit any member countries.

That is authority if you like it or not.

There is indeed a long list of criticisms of the ICC.

The U.S., along with China, India, Russia, and many other nations, are not members and do not grant any weight to ICC rulings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...

So you are saying that USA is entitled to act with criminal intent and it has no one to answer to? If that is the case, why should it be a trusted entity at all as a nation which claims human rights and democratic rights and abiding by laws?

What you will see with a general read of the criticisms in the wiki are indications of bias and several nations in Africa and South America annulling the ICC influence.

The U.S. had peripheral involvement in these actions.

I am upvoting you, as I don't find your line of questioning abrasive enough to warrant down votes.

Well there is always bias but that is not just about bias but having an entity above nation state that can provide a ruling on wrong doings. For example, the most powerful nation on earth occupying some country to extract its resources without any entity than can do anything about it, is criminal wrong doing. Yes there is going to be bias but not if they are providing the evidence.

I am not talking about the current ethnic conflict between Israel and Palestinians because that is a century worth of conflict has gone far beyond what courts can rule on. I am talking about USA absolving itself from being accountable in presence of evidence.

The treaties a country signs up to is a good start on defining what constitutes crimes.

Germany in the 30/40s, no notes?

It has as much if not more authority to judge crimes commited in the member countries that gave it that authority than Trump has to sanction them in the first place.

Quite simply because you are allowed to set up international organizations by treaty.

How can a nation decide what is and isn't a crime? It's all made up, a "farce" to use your diction. We just choose to go along and build these institutions because living in lawlessness is worse.

Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.