So Donald Trump’s ‘America first’ means it’s open season on war crimes?
Yonden Lhatoo is dismayed, but not the least bit surprised, by US national security adviser John Bolton’s reprehensible attempt to bully and intimidate the International Criminal Court
So the United States has just declared open war on the International Criminal Court (ICC). Another day, another nail in the coffin of America’s purported role as the champion of global justice and great righter of wrongs.
US President Donald Trump unleashed his nasty raptor of a national security adviser to hiss through its moustache at the world the message that, in the new twilight zone of “America first”, Americans are untouchable, war criminals or not.
“We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC,” he declared. “We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”
On the anniversary of September 11, when you would expect America’s new security guru to talk about rallying the globe against terror threats, Darth Bolton was out to intimidate ICC judges, prosecutors and other guardians of international justice, warning they would be slapped with sanctions and travel bans.
“We will prosecute them in the US criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans,” he said, taking it a step beyond his long-held contempt for the court established under a UN treaty in 1992 and ratified by 123 countries.