The ICC: International Justice or Global Government?
David Ehrlich /
Remember President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen last year? Not the failed Chicago Olympics bid, but the Climate Change Conference where he attempted to place America under a cooperative international climate treaty. Now, the President has turned his attention to other avenues of global entente, and the frustrated momentum of the climate treaty has been replaced with a move towards closer cooperation with the International Criminal Court. Committing the U.S. to international accords that threaten to undermine our nation’s sovereignty appears to be a temptation the current administration cannot resist. The ICC is just another example of this infatuation with global governance.
In November 2009, Stephen Rapp, the American Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues announced that the “[U.S.] government has now made the decision that Americans will return to engagement at the ICC.” At first glance this may appear as a great opportunity for America to shed its big-bully persona and embrace an agreeable multi-lateral approach. However, as Marion Smith of the Heritage Foundation argues in a recent Backgrounder, An Inconvenient Founding: America’s Principles Applied to the ICC, American involvement in the ICC would represent nothing short of ceding America’s sovereignty to an unaccountable international legal body.