>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans had been looking for.”
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
The ICC continues to be targeted because it is a threat to American sovereignty and has been for a long time. The US is not a party to the treaty. Neither is Israel. That the ICC is targeting Israel is clear evidence that the ICC can and will target the US at some point.
That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.
It’s not appropriate for an international court that we’re not even a part of to put our Presidents and their subordinates on trial, nor is it something we should meekly concede to.
I don't advocate for the U.S. to concede its sovereignty to an outside court.
But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
The U.S. openly assassinates foreigners in foreign countries without even faking a trial.
It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial. Do you think it is inappropriate for a high school moot court team to put U.S. Presidents on trial? Or for speech and debate teams to argue the morality of the actions of U.S. politicians?
How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
> But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
If I were neutral on America and if a neutral disposition, you might be correct. However, I’m not.
The President of the United States is elected to be a civil and military leader, as the Head of the United States Government, as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and to represent the United States abroad as our Head of State.
All other things being equal, I would prefer the POTUS to also be moral and to generally be a good moral leader in his capacity as the POTUS, but that is not the same as being nice, and “nice” is not what the elected President is elected to be.
So, would I for example, prefer to capture people like Qasem Soleimani and try them in an open court? Absolutely. Is that more practical than having killed him when the opportunity presented itself dealing a blow to an enemy nation, taking out one of the most important men in his nation which is openly hostile to America and our ally? Not really, but I’d rather see someone like that dead than in a position to threaten American assets and personnel in the region. You can even debate whether American assets or personnel should be in the region, but as long as they are, it is absolutely the President’s job to defend them, because it is under his orders that they are present at all and the American military is formed from the people of our country, and nowhere is it written in our Constitution that the President’s decisions should be second-guessed or tried in an International Court. Even our own courts shy away from this as it relates to foreign policy and the policy of the military.
> It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial.
It would be pretty easy to complain if they pursued trying American citizens when we don’t recognize their jurisdiction over American citizens. The ICC, whatever else it is, is still a court with the backing of real sovereign nations. They’re not a high school debate club.
> How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
A combination of morality, the law, diplomacy and hard power. You can even concoct scenarios if you wanted to where the United States may even been in the losing moral position but still win on all other fronts, but for starters, we’re not party to the Rome Statute, we do have our own laws on trying war crimes, and we also maintain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
I'm sure I am not alone to be alarmed and disgusted at the satisfaction in "winning" from a position of moral deficiency. As an American I reject and reprove this attitude.
At what point did I say I would be satisfied with that? I much prefer the moral victories, but one country’s morality is not another’s, but we do not carry out justice under foreign principles.
My point was that even without the moral victory, there are real problems and limits with an International court attempting to second-guess our actions against hostile powers and serve process to our leaders, and that in reality, they’re not winning that fight. Certainly not today they’re not.
It is however appropriate for a group of nations to agree that a person who has committed crimes (according to them) is to be arrested upon entering one of their nations.
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
Historically speaking, Westphalian sovereignty meant that there was no such thing as an "international criminal court", nor "war crimes". An ICC party such as France hypothetically arresting, for example, Netanyahu, for things that he did in Israel, would amount to a substantial erosion of Israel's sovereignty in the Westphalian sense. Under the Westphalian system, Israel's prince would have sole jurisdiction in such cases.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
Maybe, but I think Westphalian sovereignty generally permitted conquerors to dispose of the conquered as they saw fit. It's not a moral system, just a Schelling point.
Sure, but we’re going to interpret the arrest of a sitting or former POTUS, their direct subordinates or military personnel for the purposes of trying them in the ICC as a political act, not an act to maintain law and order in their home countries and its going to be much easier for us to justify invading and evacuating those people.
That is definitely true. I can imagine the ICC would fall shortly after (since I think enough member states will not execute the arrest order and so it’s existence does not do much)
You're imagining this happening in a world where the US has the political status it had ten years ago, not the political status it will have ten years in the future.
No, it’s already happening today. There is an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu. Netanyahu visited Hungary, a party of the Rome Statue, and was not arrested.
In a similar vein, Poland has said Netanyahu would have been welcome to visit the liberation of Auschwitz, without having to worry about out any arrest.
Depending on how Hungary’s actions are resolved, the ICC will lose much of it’s use if member states just ignore the treaty.
Netanyahu isn't "a sitting or former POTUS, their direct subordinates or military personnel", the arrest of which is the event you said "the ICC would fall shortly after". That's what I disagreed with.
We’re only talking about today, bruh. There’s no sense worrying about a tomorrow that may never come, but I’m willing to bet that 10 years from now we still have the strongest military in and around The Hague and even beyond, very very few would ever be willing to threaten war with us to back up the ICC.
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
>"...very few would ever be willing to threaten war with us to back up the ICC"
They would not have to. It will be up to your military to come to allied country and shoot their way through. This might be physically possible but I would imagine that the consequences of it to the standing of the US would be cataclysmic. So unless it is a former president I suspect the US will rather use some severe sanctions and still risk a payback.
It won’t even come to that because the real truth is that no ICC member is ever going to arrest and extradite to the ICC a sitting or former POTUS putting us in a position where the Marine Corps. would have to roll into The Hague with a carrier group or two nearby and multiple submarine ICBMs aimed at every capital in Europe. Also you know, the American military personnel already situated nearby within Europe on American and NATO bases.
Should the Marine Corps. actually be put into a position to roll in and say “hi” to the people of The Hague for less than peaceful purposes on their leisurely stroll to the ICC’s courthouse, who in their right minds is also going to stand in their way and exchange fire?
Not to mention that whoever arrested the President has now effectively declared war on the United States.
Taking president of course means war. I mostly meant someone who is not the president, sitting of former. Then it will be the US thinking of potential consequences.
That’s also not going to happen. Even taking a former President is effectively an Act of War, especially with all the classified intel they were privy to during and still privy to after. Honestly you should consider it the same way all the way down to the rank of General, although I sure would hate to be a rank-and-file soldier caught by the ICC somehow. Even in that case they might not get a full on invasion on their behalf, you should still expect the State Department to intervene.
I’ll admit I overlooked you also included “or former”, but I did address you and say you should consider it practically the same down to the rank of at least General, which includes the Vice President and Cabinet Secretaries.
10 years from now either a non-state entity or the People's Republic of China will have the strongest military, and geography won't matter for military power.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, that’s true just to shortcut this: the PRC is also not party to the Rome Statute. Neither is Russia if you’re wondering. The largest military of a country party to the Rome Statute and the largest financial contributor to the ICC is Japan. Good luck.
The ICC is only truly relevant today as a means of imposing justice on smaller countries without the rule of law or the power to protect themselves from larger nations. Not quite irrelevant, but certainly not a powerhouse in real political terms.
We decided to not be a part of it. Meanwhile, we systematically bully other nations and kill high ranking officials with impunity. We can't have our cake and eat it too.
We defend some of America's interests, and harm some of its other interests. Mostly we defend the interests of the richest people in America and its military industrial complex.
We also elect the leaders that make those decisions and form the parties that nominate leaders to choose from. The winners of those elections get to choose the direction to lead.
Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding. Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
> Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding.
Other Americans. You’re also discounting the impact small-dollar donors have had in American politics as of late and the public primary system.
> Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
1) The Electors of the Electoral College are in turn elected by the people of the United States.
2) This only applies to the President and Vice President of the United States and no other public office.
3) Most States have laws against faithless electors, but the slate of electors appointed by each State’s elected legislature reflects the popular vote within that State.
> The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
Half of what you’re doing is just describing politics, but yes, the elected President makes appointments, and the elected Senate confirms or denies them.
Small-dollar donors had an outsized impact outside of just Sanders and others on the left, and helped, just as two examples on the right: Donald J. Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The massive infusion of cash from small-dollar donors and politicians playing to their base on TV to boost their fundraising is doing far more to undermine both the Democratic and Republican parties than large donors ever have.
Like it or not, the elected President does lead on defending American interests, including which ones to prioritize, and they get to do that because they won the election.
I callout the naivety of believing the the U.S. President personally decides the "American interest" of every action taken. It is a reality today that a nameless, faceless, unelected somebody on the third floor of a building in Arkansas or Arizona can decide on the spur of the moment whether a person in Yemen or Canada should die and press the button to make it happen at the hands of the U.S. government. No elected official needs to be consulted.
Anything that violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice can land a soldier in the Army on that list up to and including killing random civilians abroad with military equipment outside the scope of an operation. You can look up the dockets for the other service branches yourself, but you don’t get impunity for all of your actions just for being part of the military.
You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am talking about your Orange Guy. I am not. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden all murdered people and should be held accountable.
> You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am talking about your Orange Guy.
I’m not. (EDIT: just edited this in, though I thought I’d already written this part earlier when I quoted you. My bad.)
> You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.
We do defend America’s interests, but the President—any sitting President—sets the agenda for how the American State and Military goes about it. Resource allocation is a part of leading. What part of that is difficult to understand?
Only through circular logic. If Trump dropped a nuclear bomb on Ohio tomorrow, he'd say it were in America's interests to do so, and six supreme court justices and most of congress would shrug their shoulders and say it's not their place to second-guess him, he has an electoral mandate of an entire 48%.
I agree that America needs to cut back on to be sabre-rattling but you actually can have your cake and eat it too if nobody is both capable and willing to stop you.
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
US interventionalism over the course of its existence would make that a form of hypocrisy. Also where would the US be without support of nations like France, Spain and the Dutch Republic in its revolutionary war?
You can't have it both ways, we're intrinsically tied together. I think its important part of friendship to call one another to account.
Well let me put it this way, I’m under no illusions that foreign nations will always attempt to exert their influence over American affairs. The only obligations we maintain with other nations are the ones we committed ourselves to, and yes, I know some of that is in question right now, but for what it’s worth I’m actually on the side of maintaining our commitments rather than pissing all over them or playing this silly “will they, won’t they” game. Our relationships with nations across the world, most of which did not exist or at least did not exist in anything like their current form including France, the Kingdom of the Netherlands née the Dutch Republic, and Spain (which we have actually and directly waged war with) have not remained static since the Revolutionary War.
All of that said, our Government, our problem, and while weighing what kind of intervention you might hypothetically support, also weigh how that stands up to the power of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. So, really, we can have it both ways, even if that makes us hypocrites. Also for what it is worth: people can be hypocrites, organized entities led by different factions of people over the course of their history like nations cannot.
Returning to the OP for a second, we're talking about the ICC issuing a warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes he has clearly overseen in Gaza. I appreciate that you've slippery sloped this into a "they're coming for us next" and I cannot prove or disprove such a notion. But putting that aside for a second; how is not acceptable for the ICC to have an opinion on the events that have unfolded in the Gaza strip and accordingly issue a warrant?
Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable? I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.
> I appreciate that you've slippery sloped this into a "they're coming for us next" and I cannot prove or disprove such a notion.
Bruh, are you for real? The very first comment I responded to in this chain of comments was this:
> That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.
Which was in response to this:
> The ICC continues to be targeted because it is a threat to American sovereignty and has been for a long time. The US is not a party to the treaty. Neither is Israel. That the ICC is targeting Israel is clear evidence that the ICC can and will target the US at some point.
I don’t think the ICC is in a position to do jack shit to Americans in real political terms, and what we’re discussing in this sub-thread is whether it would be legitimate for them to even try. If you’re going to follow a thread, take note of the usernames and who is saying what.
> But putting that aside for a second; how is not acceptable for the ICC to have an opinion on the events that have unfolded in the Gaza strip and accordingly issue a warrant?
The answer to this comes down to the following three questions:
1) Should the ICC have jurisdiction over the war time activities of non-party States.
2) Is Israel actively committing a genocide.
3) Is it the ICC’s prerogative to attempt to prosecute the leaders of a nation at war over the conduct of how they prosecute that war.
On all of these, my answer is the same: no. That is why it is unacceptable for the ICC to infringe on the sovereignty of Israel and issue an arrest warrant for their Prime Minister.
This is also separate from my view on whether I think some IDF service members and officers may have committed war crimes. I think it’s clear that at least in some cases, they have, but unfortunately there really isn’t a lot of recourse to serve battlefield justice outside the Israel’s laws around military justice.
> Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable?
First, Israel is an American ally surrounded by current and historically hostile powers. It is long-standing American policy to support and defend Israel. That’s our prerogative, and we do so how we see fit in accordance with our own laws.
Second, where the hell is the EU coming into this? The ICC is an international court, but they’re not an EU court. The ICC’s largest financial contributor is actually Japan, and the EU as an institution is not party to the Rome Statute even though all of its current members are, with the caveat that Hungary has already passed a law to start its withdrawal from the Rome Statute so in about a year this will no longer be true. The EU also does not have one foreign policy with respect to its relations with Israel and their willingness to uphold the Rome Statute and the arrest warrant out for Netanyahu, only its members do.
> I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.
Every nation sits on a sliding-scale of agency where on one end you’ve got America and the PRC and on the other end you’ve got, I dunno, Kiribati? The EU counts some of the richest and most powerful countries in the world with their own very active foreign policy interests well outside the continent and who are very much on the America/PRC end of the spectrum. I don’t want to hear any complaints that maybe facing down America might be a bit much for them, I mean hell, we don’t want to get into a shooting war with Europe either, Europe could do some real damage and it doesn’t profit us. America is the cornerstone of NATO which is a defensive alliance intended to protect both of us (and Canada) from outside aggression and so while I think it’s fair to say America has not expected total submission in every and all foreign policy matters, our dumbass of a VP and his butt-buddies aside, a little deference in some foreign policy matters is expected.
If individual European countries want to build up their militaries and challenge this arrangement, or if they want to do so within the framework of the EU (and there has been much activity recently to figure out if they should and how), they’re going to have to pay for it, which probably also means sacrificing at least some of their social welfare policies at the altar. A blue water navy and a crap-ton of military logistical capacity helps.
The purpose of the ICC is that the crimes of: Genocide, Crimes against humanity, War crimes and the crime of aggression should be prosecuted among its signatories. You are correct that its jurisdiction does not contain Israel or the US, given they withdrew. However signatories are expected to respect the warrants should individuals travel to states that are signatories. Therefore it is not exceeding the bounds of its jurisdiction in issuing these warrants, otherwise one could simply withdraw, do a little war crime and rejoin, thereby creating a loophole. The whole point of the court is that it is international and looks at these crimes happening throughout the world, so its signatories play their part in encouraging them to not happen and prosecuting them when they do, when they can (i.e. when someone guilty of them travels to these nations). In that respect is it like interpol, where a nation can arrest someone who has committed a crime in a different country, if they flee to a country signed up to interpol, despite them not theoretically not having the juristdiction to do so (given the crime wasn't committed where the arrest was made).
You don't even have to talk about genocide given that Israel (as you also state) has clearly committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its war against Hamas. Its entirely in keeping with the ICC aims that an arrest warrant has been issued for both Yahya Siwar (now deceased) and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Given Donald Trump's bizarre demand that the Europe re-arm itself (which imho is terribly short-sighted and might make US foreign policy more tricky in the future), I imagine in the future we will see more instances where Europe tries to gain a ROI on its military spending and becomes more assertive in the future. Right now, it can be politically difficult for European countries to respect the warrants (as seen most recently with Netanyahu's trip to Poland) but in the future that could change.
Let me get this correction out at the top: I conceded that some IDF service members are probably guilty of some war crimes. I said absolutely nothing about crimes against humanity, which in reviewing the list of what the ICC considers a crime against humanity, I do not feel comfortable at all making any assertion one way or the other. It is important to get this right because the Rome Statute does make this distinction.
You also called out crimes of aggression: most of what is listed as crimes of aggression amount to just war. You can probably debate about this with regards to the settlements, but don’t forget this current offensive doesn’t happen without Hamas attacking Israeli civilians on October 7th 2023. Israel was and is fully within their rights to prosecute a war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and even Iran for which all of these groups are proxies for until they achieve their war aims.
Another correction, the United States has never been party to the Rome Statute. We were part of the negotiations, we did sign but we ultimately decided against ratification therefore it never held the force of law and we withdrew our signature. From what I gathered, Israel is in the same boat, though I’m not clear what their ratification process looks like.
> However signatories are expected to respect the warrants should individuals travel to states that are signatories. Therefore it is not exceeding the bounds of its jurisdiction in issuing these warrants, otherwise one could simply withdraw, do a little war crime and rejoin, thereby creating a loophole. The whole point of the court is that it is international and looks at these crimes happening throughout the world, so its signatories play their part in encouraging them to not happen and prosecuting them when they do, when they can (i.e. when someone guilty of them travels to these nations).
The Court’s territorial jurisdiction is not “the world”, it is the territory and vessels of parties to the Rome Statute, nations which accept the ICC’s jurisdiction in a court filing, and others in situations that are referred to it by the United Nations Security Council. The personal jurisdiction is for all persons of nations over which the ICC has territorial jurisdiction, and likewise can be expanded with a referral of a situation by the UNSC.
The argument for prosecuting a non-party here is that well, Palestine is a party. It’s the stronger argument, but I think it should be insufficient, and it is the position of America and Israel that this is insufficient. In any case, the actual allegations are themselves insufficient in any situation where the ICC would have an interest in investigating and prosecuting if they don’t have the jurisdiction to do it.
> In that respect is it like interpol, where a nation can arrest someone who has committed a crime in a different country, if they flee to a country signed up to interpol, despite them not theoretically not having the juristdiction to do so (given the crime wasn't committed where the arrest was made).
Interpol is an outgrowth of bilateral extradition treaties, not a replacement for them. You still need the requisite extradition treaty in place, and if the crime alleged is not a crime for which they can be extradited per the relevant extradition treaty, then the arresting nation is under no obliteration to turn them over. In that sense, Interpol is more like an informational and cooperation forum between nations, whereas the ICC is an organization operationally separate and distinct from its members.
> Given Donald Trump's bizarre demand that the Europe re-arm itself (which imho is terribly short-sighted and might make US foreign policy more tricky in the future)
So, I’m not against re-arming Europe. From a menu of options that looks something like this:
1) Continuing to prop up Europe against Russian aggression regardless of their minimal defense spending.
2) Re-arming Europe but under continued American leadership.
3) Pushing Europe to re-arm and reconsider that whole American leadership bit.
4) Just pulling out of Europe entirely and ripping up NATO.
I favor number 2. I think even Trump favors number 2 but number 3 is what is actually happening. I would have been fine-ish but not happy about number 1 because there’s a real risk of the American public not being willing to defend say, the Baltics, against a Russian invasion regardless of what I think (I’m very pro keeping to our military commitments, even somewhat grudgingly if we must), and the risk of number 4 would have grown over time even in a world where Trump was never elected the first time, let alone the second, and actually getting to number 4 would be a worst of all worlds situation. I actually like Europe. I would like it to continue to be Europe, without getting obliterated again.
> as seen most recently with Netanyahu's trip to Poland
Did Netanyahu actually make the trek to Poland? I know he was went to Hungary, but Hungary has also decided to withdraw from the ICC. I heard reports he went to Greece, but haven’t actually seen that substantiated. I couldn’t find anything about a Polish visit earlier when I looked.
my bad, he never made that trip to Poland in the end, but the Polish government passed a resolution to enable it, which made me figure it was a done deal.
I only listed the four crimes the ICC deals with in terms of stating its directive, I wasn't asserting that Israel was necessarily guilty of all of them. In terms of things relevant to the current conflict in Gaza, war crimes and crimes against humanity are relatively easy to clear and genocide is a maybe because of the aid blockade. I entirely supported Israel's right to respond to the October the 7th attacks but we're so far past the point of the response being anywhere near proportionate and that we're so far in and Israel's objectives still have failed to have been met, demonstrates the issues with their approach. Its almost as if the cruelty is the point as opposed to the objectives of the supposed mission (especially now they're flinging rockets at Iran seemingly distracting themselves further from recovering the hostages).
There are other factors at play. Palestine is a signatory to the ICC and the crimes were committed in Gaza, also Israel themselves are failing to investigate these war crimes through their own legal system. These are apparently the arguments that give the ICC the confidence to issue these warrants. I mean what does it matter anyway? Netanyahu can just avoid travelling to signatory countries and he's fine.
The whole NATO thing remains short sighted, in the years to come, the USA will learn that some things are priceless. I imagine that GOP donor pressure to reduce the budget to maintain/enact tax cuts is the root source of these desires, which if true, is digustingly short-sighted. I LOVE the USA but the pre-2025 USA, that US hegemony policy from the 20th century promised peace and prosperity at an irksome but acceptable price. However I don't like it right now and if that nation continues to prop up erratic rulers like Donald Trump who enable warmongering rulers like Netanyahu instead of restraining them, then I will start to hate it and I am _far_ from alone on that. Combining that with encouraging Europe to re-arm is just lacking in imagination given that the USA will transition in such a future from the guaranteed winner to a potential loser. You didn't vote for this mess, did you?
I dont get why Americans are willing to die on a hill of defending some third-world country's president who committed well documented crimes against humanity and genocide
We have the Uniform Code of Military Justice for military personnel, and on paper, a Congress to hold the President accountable, although that obviously needs to be beefed up because the results lately have been unsatisfactory. It does not need to be the ICC, nor should we allow it.
I don't understand what you mean by "allow it". The ICC are free to do what they like, and the US are free to ignore it (outside any sanctions the international community impose).
And then we have presidents that almost uniformly pardon people convicted of the grossest war crimes.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
Germany also lost the war. Their highest ranking officials and military were not in a position to prevent it; moreover I’m pretty okay with having applied the winner’s justice over Nazi Germany. Put us in the position where we can’t say “no” before you apply your own justice, but we’re still going to do everything in our power to defend ourselves.
I thought I was clear on this, but I guess not: it was entirely appropriate. They lost so thoroughly and the Holocaust was so repulsive that it was arguably necessary. Germany itself was also in such a precarious position that the continued existence of the German State was in jeopardy, and probably the only way it could continue to exist in any form even after being divided was to go through the Nuremberg Trials first. Don’t forget Stalin and the USSR was out for blood and new additions to the Eastern Bloc.
I would have thought calling out the repulsiveness of the Holocaust and the health and wellbeing of a continued German-state would have been the moral justifications, but okay, sure.
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
You are becoming incoherent. By your own argument, the Nuremberg trials were not necessary. Anybody lacking the military might to defy the U.S. can be summarily executed without a trial. Anybody enjoying the support of the U.S. military is exempt from any courtroom regardless of their actions.
Then here you write that Nurenmberg was appropriate and necessary.
You don't seem to be able to hold the thread of your own argument.
If the alternative was to leave Germany to the Soviet wolves, allow France to colonize it, or disregard the events of the Holocaust and not thoroughly document what occurred, how, and under whose orders, then it was necessary.
If you don’t care about any of that, sure, you can make the argument the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.
Do note that the key difference between America in 2025 and Germany in 1945 is that we’re not a diminished State without really any sovereignty left to claim and haven’t recently invaded pretty much the entirety of Europe with the intention of subsuming it into a greater Empire and spent the last 4 years systematically destroying the entire Jewish population therein. That’s some important context and shouldn’t be overlooked in your zeal to put American Presidents on trial.
"America" is a lot of things. Of course it is a sovereign nation. But let me here propose to you a different idea of America.
I was raised inside the United States. I have a very deep love for America. But the America I love is not a place. It is a collection of principles. It is an ideal. In as much as that ideal has been realized in the place I grew up, it makes that place America to me. But America the place and people have not been perfect executing America the idea. What group of humans ever were perfect? One of the beauties of America the place, and one of the things I cherish most about it is the constant willingness to put itself and its ideals on trial. I love an America that asks "What is right?" before asking "What are you going to do about it?"
I believe it is un-American to refuse to ask the first question, but constantly ask the second question without considering the first. Using the second question to intimidate all those who ask the first question is repugnant to me. It threatens the America that I love.
America is on trial whether you like it or not. The America I love will always be on trial as long as it exists. To end the trial would kill that America.
> I love an America that asks "What is right?" before asking "What are you going to do about it?"
Agreed, but I’ll put forth that the context for the first question also matters.
The context within this particular sub-thread which is within a larger thread regarding the ICC, the warrant issued againstNetanyahu and American sanctions on ICC staff is whether America and Americans as a non-signatory of the Rome Statute should be subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction. Actually it was originally Presidents, current and former, but there’s been some scope creep.
My answer is “No”. Your answer may be “Yes”, but I’m making the case for my “No”, not advocating for discarding all morality and total lawlessness and might-makes-right behavior, even if I think “might” is a mighty great deterrent for backing up that “No” to non-Americans that believe the answer should be “Yes” and would be willing to try out that “Yes” in the real world.
you are being dishonest. Only 161 people were convicted at Nurembourg trials, Nazi Germany's population was 70 mln (I am not even including Italy or Japan).
The rest of the Nazis were given amnesty and continued working for the USA, or continued living/serving as usual as part of West Germany's Wehrmacht forces.
The whole process was heavily politicized and completely sham, massive tortures were used to obtain "evidence" of guilt.
What sort of punishment do you think would have been appropriate for the systemic extermination of an entire race of people? And for starting a war that killed tens of millions? For an illegal coup against the government of a country (which is what the Nazis did in 33)?
How could you think that 161 convictions was enough for this? Far more than that had direct agency and culpability for those crimes.
don't you think that if there was some form of systematic extermination system, there should have been more than 161 people involved in it??????
this basic contradiction basically tells you that it was all bogus, either there was no systematic extermination, or there was not enough people brought to justice for their crimes.
How many people do you think are required to do anything systematic on the territory spanning from France to Belarus ?
161 people is probably the headcount of my local DMV office.
also, the fact that mainstream western history over-indexes on the plight of one ethnic group (6 mln dead), and completely ignores the deaths of Soviets (27 mln dead) or China (20 mln) pretty much seals this whole thing as bogus politicized process.
Typical eurocentric history rewriting, while simultaneously white-washing the crimes of the same white europeans
I am not even mentioning genocide of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki via nuclear bombs and genocide of civilians in Dresden: all three cities were basically civilian with no large military armies in there. Mostly women elderly and kids died
The Hague Conventions and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Although, in reality, it was a matter of the winners deciding on a suitable punishment for the losers. They did, however, go to considerable lengths to find legal justification in international law for the prosecutions and punishments of Nazi leaders. They could have just shot them: Churchill and Stalin both supported summary execution, although Churchill later changed his mind.
Given we’re not party to the ICC, we maintain a permanent seat on the UNSC, and nobody within striking distance of The Hague is willing to back you up on this, it is decidedly not appropriate.
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
I’m sure you want to try and catch me in an act of hypocrisy but I think I’ve been clear throughout this thread.
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
So, in the end, your point is not whether the ICC should have the right to put foreign presidents on trial. It's about who has got the strongest military power.
My position is that the ICC should not even exist, but if it is going to exist, then America should safeguard itself and its allies from it.
If you look at the real history of the ICC, it’s effectively toothless over any nation that can safeguard its own sovereignty, and otherwise a fig leaf for the supposed lawfulness of foreign intervention into nations that cannot.
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?
How is it a threat to American sovereignty? It has no jurisdiction in America, only within nations that are party to the treaty - which is their sovereign right?
Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?
> If the US is in the wrong, why should I as a citizen not want our government officials held accountable?
A core principle of American justice is judgement by a jury of your peers from your community according to our laws, not by foreigners on the other side of the planet according to foreign laws. Violations of our core principles through means we were not a party to is a violation of our sovereignty.
>>jury of your peers from your community according to our laws
when it comes to Crimes against humanity (genocide, mass killings, tortures, etc) - our peers are whole Humanity, and everyone who support United Nation's Human Rights Declaration.
You cannot have American human rights to live, and at the same time deny the right to live to non-Americans. Which is what America is doing: extrajudicial murder of foreigners (drone strikes + collateral murder) and sponsoring of terrorism and genocide (Israel-gaza war).
the point is not to argue specific bullet points on obscure US codes, but 30 very basic unalienable universal human rights.
if USA denies these rights to the whole world, then there is no reason to expect the whole world support america in any way, like lending money by buying US treasuries, exchanging oil for freshly printed worthless USD, respecting US tourists' right to live when they are exploring the world, etc
> A core principle of American justice is judgement by a jury of your peers from your community according to our laws, not by foreigners on the other side of the planet according to foreign laws.
When a US president signs a death list - the assassination of someone, does that person get a trial by a jury of their peers first?
Or do they just get a predator drone missile in their direction?
I think it's accurate to say that a core principle of American justice is that there is one set of rules for the in-group, and another for the out-group. And any institution that tries to normalize this is anathema to that principle.
"In the wrong" is often jurisdiction specific. I do not want otherwise reasonable candidates to avoid the ballot because of the risk of being convicted by some external court.
Unfortunately, there are enough courts that are very willing to slap any label on any suitably vilified candidate. Pick any president of India; you can probably find a Pakistani court would be willing to convict for "crimes against humanity". And vice versa. Or pick some Iraq-Iran pairings. Or Armenian- Azerbaijani, etc.
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
We're talking about any random court, however, but the ICC.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
This is exactly right. "Might makes right" is very true on the international stage. The ICC tried to fix that, but they have been muzzled when it comes to real might.
To the degree the ICC has precedent, it’s in being powerless over great powers.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it if the goal is checking the U.S. and its allies, or China and its allies. (Maybe it’s useful for checking Western Europe? Idk.)
For example: selective enforcement, for example states vs terrorists. Even Russia became a victim of that, which I'll point out in hopes of avoiding discussion on Israel.
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
The ICC takes actions against people. It very specifically does not have jurisdiction over conflicts between states.
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
So it’s like a court where only law abiding citizens agree to its jurisdiction and all the criminals get away with murder because they never signed a treaty.
Your entire argument boils down do "this is legal for the ICC, and that that definition of legal differs greatly from your sense of justice doesn't matter"
The answer, of course, is that sanctioning the ICC is legal for the US government too. Apparently people's feelings about that don't matter (except for the next presidential election of course). Well, then, we're done here, aren't we?
> The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute
If this is the case can you explain ICC action against US and Israel, neither of which are parties to the Rome statute? This is one aspect of their selective justice. And some of the crimes they accuse Russia of (e.g. the ones relating to treatment of POWs) happened in Russia too, you could even say the same of their "great success" in Yugoslavia. The ICC respects boundaries selectively.
Also from the other side: the ICC most certainly COULD sue South Africa for working with Putin and Bashar Al-Assad to help them escape justice. They chose not to. Frankly, MANY signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to ever hold up their end.
Also, of course, this rule is also selective justice if it is applied.
In a lot of state vs "resistance movement" the ICC has systematically failed to do anything about sometimes truly abhorrent crimes by movements. No shortage of examples there.
And your claim "they follow their own rules" ... you also neglected to discuss why the ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE to sue Israel ... once during the trial I might add. Same with US. Not that "we couldn't convict the Jew, obviously the law is wrong, let's change the law" isn't a longstanding legal tradition. Not very just though ...
As I said, the ICC is a beautiful theoretical idea. Unfortunately the ICC is not even remotely close to that idea and will never be. Their rules form selective justice even if they were applied and what they practically do is much worse than that.
I’m not seeing how this causes human rights abuses like you originally claimed. Your post has also left me with two more questions:
> Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
Isn’t this because they are non-members?
> A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
No. For non-members it is assumed that they by default ask the ICC to not investigate any human rights crimes either involving their state, or on their soil. Which the ICC then has to respect ...
Or that WAS the case until last year. In the middle of their existing court case against Israel it became clear that Israel requested ICC drop the case on their territory, and of course Palestine has neither borders nor are they a member of the ICC (despite Palestine signing the Rome accords to immediately afterwards start screaming on TV that they wouldn't respect them as they relate to Palestinians themselves), and therefore there were no grounds for the case. So South Africa, amidst allegations of Qatarese bribery, was allowed to bring a claim, and that South Africa has now twice helped people convicted at the ICC escape ICC justice did not negate that (they helped Bashar Al-Assad, and Putin)
So then the ICC modified their own statutes, which they're not allowed to do, so that the particular kind of non-member that Palestine is, would be allowed to put disputed territory as valid territory retroactively for such complaints (because despite how the press presents it, Palestine's claims relate to the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, specifically underage ones, on Israeli soil, NOT about what happened in Gaza. You see, the court has accepted an argument that since neither Hamas nor the PA allow investigators or journalists on their soil, claims there cannot reasonably be the basis for any conviction)
In other words, the court allowed what is effectively Hamas (not the PA) to enter Tel Aviv as territory for this court case.
You see, this is about Hamas scoring a PR victory. The idea that Hamas, through Qatar, via South Africa, is worried about the treatment of a West Bank resident Palestinian boy is utterly absurd. The only thing they care about is that it is an argument they might win, at which point the papers will be full of "Israel convicted at ICC for human rights abuses". This is the same Hamas that has mounted a suicide vest on an unwilling underage girl who was being treated in Israel for cancer, forced her to try to cross the Israeli border, and blew her to pieces when she tried to get help from the border guards, you see, THAT organization, is really worried about whether children who killed someone people get to see their parents sufficiently often in prison ...
Yes, Hamas is a party to the Rome statute (they agreed to respect it so they could partake in elections, elections, I might add, that ended with Hamas executing election officials in the emergency ward of a Gazan hospital) and plenty of other treaties at the UN. Including treaties that they'll prevent any and all terror attacks against civilians ... Meanwhile they AND the PA, pay Palestinians a monthly pension based on how badly they hurt Jews [1] (sorry, this organization that signed treaties to arrest any terrorists they know of "has stopped doing that" 4 months ago. They promise. Needless to say, the payments continue)
Obviously this ICC rule change is insanity and will lead to disaster, and they'll retract the rule when it is used by anyone else, for example, when Kurds enter a claim about abuse in Ankara for example, Iran or Iraq, or Druze against Syria, or ...
And while this is the most egregious example of abusing the ICC, it is far from the only one. There's a similar conflict with the US. The problem with the ICC is really quite simple: a lot of signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to respect any court decisions made by the ICC, and the ICC allows states to openly defy their treaty obligations without any consequences. The US and Israel, when they realized they didn't either, publicly withdrew so they'd remain honest. South Africa, Mongolia, Palestine, Hungary and others just started violating the treaties they agreed to without withdrawing.
When push comes to shove, a LOT of nations want war, but can't do it, or can't win it, and they see the ICC itself as a weapon of war. A weapon against "the international order" (ie. what the security council represents). The ICC lets them.
> How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
> Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
> However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
> That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
> I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
This is international law, which is a name used for a huge mess of international treaties. What is there to say? There is no international police. If you don't respect international law, there is nobody to compel you to do anything. In essentially every case, you're beyond the reach of the counter party to the treaty (especially in this case since the ICC has zero reach). This is true whether "you" refers to a person or a country.
Hell, there's even valid reasons this keeps happening like that the political situation sometimes changes far faster than treaties can be negotiated.
There were some truly exceptional times in history, like the ending of WW2, where everyone agreed on a few rules and some limited things happened, but that time is long gone. Most countries find the international order deeply unfair, especially the "you're not allowed to move any borders unless you're one of the original nuclear powers" part. Russia is allowed to attack ... Iran is not. The "non-aligned movement" is essentially aligned on a single point: they all want to start limited wars against one or multiple of their neighbors but would face total economic collapse or worse if they did that and the US responded. That is the last straw holding the UN treaties in existence, the only enforcement mechanism that has survived 80 years of UN disintegration.
And now Trump got elected and has been sighted near said last straw with scissors, asking for money, complaining the straw costs too much. But don't be fooled: there's a lot of shouting at Trump, but nobody working to strengthen the treaties with a few more straws. And while I hate Trump, you have to give him this one: if he cuts, he may be giving the start signal for WW3, but saying he's causing it, is absurd.
Danish digitization ministry will soon attempt a move away from Microsoft because of this. We can only hope that this is only the first step, and that broader move away from US tech companies will follow.
Trump has several times threatened to take Greenland, by military force if necessary. He categorically has "not ruled out" military force against a NATO ally.
This has, for obvious reasons, been huge news in all of Europe and especially in Denmark.
I'm sure MAGA Americans want to hand-wave it away, and since Trump is so difficult to understand and says so many whacky things, we're all hoping he doesn't mean it, but it's underscored the need to quickly get independent of the USA.
Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.
Edit: @ujkhsjkdhf234 Answering your question from below here:
>Trump says many things no one believes then he does. Stop steelmanning for Trump.
That's actually a good political strategy in tough times: Keep your opponents always unsure about what you're gonna do next. Why do you think Putin invaded Ukraine under Biden and not under Trump?
> Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.
It's not a valid argument to use the general case here. Because in the case of this particular statement, it clearly isn't true that "nobody actually believes" it. It's clear that many people actually believe it.
> That's actually a good political strategy in tough times: Keep your opponents always unsure about what you're gonna do next.
I mean, sure. But in this case Denmark thought they were an ally, not an opponent. Should they also be unsure about whether one of their territories is going to be attacked?
> Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.
I've made this point so many times before but I'll say it again: Trump being either an idiot or a liar is not a valid defense of Trump. Nor is it a "good political strategy".
Also, it's not tough times. I know it doesn't feel that way because Trump is acting as though he requires powers only endowed in times of war, but no, it is not tough times.
Trump says many things no one believes then he does. His supporters often play it off as he's joking and then whoops turns out he does it. Stop excusing Trump and take his words seriously.
That's still for rage-bait. Trump says a lot of things, most of them aren't true. Everyone operating in good faith, knew this wasn't true. Nobody above a room temperature IQ would think the US would invade Denmark.
Edit: @danieljacksonno answering your comment from below here:
>He repeated it several times.
Trump repeats everything all the time. So what? That's what all politicians do. Your brain (if you have one) is supposed to filter that.
>Germany and France has spoken out officially against it, with Macron even visiting Greenland to show support.
That's you typical politician virtue signaling, because speaking is free. Since EU politicians are toothless all they do is talk to look good and score brownie points in front of their voters on $CURRENT_ISSUE. France and Germany can't keep their countries safe from illegal migrants, what are they gonna do against Trump if push comes to shove? Talk him to death about how orange he is?
>Denmark is freaking out, and want to remove all dependencies on the US as quickly as possible.
Are they also removing the F35 jets from their military and H100 Nvidia GPUs from their supercomputer? Who's gonna buy all that Ozempic that makes Denmark rich if not the US?
I feel like you're talking fantasy politick instead of realpolitik.
Great, but look at this. This is a joke. Let's see ... the EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year, and have been funding it for 50 years (starting at 0 of course). How much software does the EU expect to get for "between 5000 and 50000 euro"? (one-time). A software engineer in Bangalore can expect to make more than that, even after tax!
The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.
Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.
Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.
Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).
So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!
This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?
And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.
And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.
They aren't.
This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.
The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
It doesn't need to throw out the baby with the (US-controlled) bathwater. The EU should present Microsoft with an ultimatum similar to what China might: setup a non-controlled european licensee to own and manage all MS & Azure infrastructure in the region, or have some legislators force a similar structure on them. Complete control, full sourcecode, EU-only support/access - as a condition for corp HQ being allowed to have a monopolistic market share. Either way, nothing the US might decide to do should have any effect in "EU Microsoft", short of severing US Microsoft off completely, in which case EU MS just becomes fully autonomous and bye-bye US. Clearly, a US-controlled Microsoft without this structure is a deep security risk to europe now.
the problem the EU has is that such an ultimatum lacks teeth. China gets to make these demands because they've down willingness to fund and build homegrown alternatives and then blacklist the foreign competitor. If the EU wants the leverage to make these sorts of demands, they need to start by giving out a couple million here and there for the competitors they want to see.
There is another problem: EU politicians would immediately use this against each other. For example, the Spanish governments in Barcelona and Madrid constantly do anything they can to sabotage each other. And this is not the only such pair. Hell, the French and German governments, the main force behind the whole EU, still hate each other.
The amount of dilly-dallying on the Israeli question (which is at the heart of the OP issue also) is enough evidence that the EU is a has-been power - they can't even make up their minds, what with France against the Iran strikes, while Germany likes Israel "doing our dirty work".
And both are centre-right governments to boot! If the White House is the clownshow in the circus, the EU is the acrobatics act.
You have a great point, but discussing 'Linux' misses the forest for the trees. American vendors had solutions, European vendors did not. Because you are correct and Europeans don't really value software.
('Linux distros' get into the HN zone where nobody needs dropbox because they could write a shell script. Or install a crappy webmail package on a VPS. Google is entirely Linux and that's not what you are suggesting. It's irrelevant to the larger picture.)
A $200B grant would be globally unprecedented. The LHC only cost $5B. European countries are market economies, moving more in that direction, and would like a local competitor.
A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
Just think if any EU business didn't have to pay the Microsoft tax or the open source TCO tax/labor, because there is a non-profit full-stack solution running at cost. Make any business out of the EU pay retail rates to subsidize development. It would be a huge competitive advantage. Just like payments have become so much easier in the EU over the past decade.
This, 100X this. The EU wants to have the shiny SW toys the US has spent decades and trillions building, but without forking up the money needed to develop them. They want everything done on cheap labor. Paying rank and file engineers shit tonne of money is not part of European business owner culture (barring few exceptions). You're expected to be grateful you've been given a job.
Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.
China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.
Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.
There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
Same about GitHub, it's better to push for federated or truly decentralized system instead, like in Forgejo's roadmap [1]. This way everyone can benefit instead of ceding control to a sole organization wherever it might be.
I’m in the U.S. and don’t want to rely on this stuff either, but I don’t know that I’d really trust any sufficiently complex software. Anything can be compromised. Even if you build from source, your compiler might be compromised, or you buy a cool new usb peripheral and plug it in- boom! Compromised. Bought a new device? Compromised already. That printer you bought years ago? Compromised and in your secure wireless network. Your sniffer and firewall? Compromised. Firefox? Compromised. Tor? Compromised. Wikileaks? Compromised. Your dishwasher? Compromised. You drive out in the woods without any devices and live in a tent. Hiker comes along and takes photos. You and tent are compromised. Walking out in the middle of nowhere naked hiding under a bush my ass.
Europe is very pro-Israel. You act as if you have been champions of human rights and a subjugated people like the Palestinians. As far as I know, Ireland is the only exception. Israel could have executed Greta on camera and the Swedish embassy would have sent a strong worded letter. Europe has no power whatsoever in any of this
US has never been "good". Listening to Sachs and Measrheimer they keep saying (in these or other words) that "you know a US president is lying because their mouth is moving". Microsoft is just one more cog in the power-hungry apparatus of the US.
And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena.
The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
This is insane. They aimed his corporate account. Europeans move away from the US even faster now. This guy is literally breaking decades old relationships.
You think Europe would really behave any different?
Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
> Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
China and India? and Russia? Israel doesn't care about them.
Israel is using America and Europe to gain control of the middle east, so they want to eliminate Iran (and just like with Iraq, they want the US to do it for them).
Pakistan is somewhat friendly so not really a threat to Israel's control over the middle east.
US and Europe do not benefit from this. Europe actually suffers as instability in middle east causes a refugee crisis in Europe.
Europe probably would behave differently to be honest, but we’re so far away from either of us finding out if we’re correct or not that its not worth talking about.
What we should instead focus on is digital sovereignty.
They didn't even resist/appeal the order? It is an EO, not a law. Goes to show just how subservient and feckless Microsoft is. Nominative determinism much?
You have a bunch of tech execs getting sworn in as lieutenant colonels for the Army Reserve, SF aligns itself with the White House just like Germany's big industry aligned itself with the NSDAP. It doesn't particularly matter whether an order is legal or not, it only matters if the ones in power want it.
The NSDAP-style alignments went both ways: if the industry bigwig joined the party, he got access to lucrative contracts and insider information. The NSDAP also helped strike down strikes for the bigwigs, and later, supplied slaves from concentration camps for cheap. In turn, the party got to deeply control the bigwig: don't toe the party line and you're either out, or you're in danger. Join the party and publicly demonstrate your allegiance to the leadership.
It was a very mafia-like arrangement. Loyalty meant being rewarded with lucrative opportunities but it also meant you owed them and sooner or later they'd come back asking for one favour or another.
Nazis were very good at making both industrialists and military feel rich. The German stock market went up like a rocket between 1933 and 1941.
And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:
” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”
With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?
Do you have any idea how the investors in the German stock market in that period made out after the war? I'm guessing that they probably lost a lot, especially in East Germany, but I'm interested in reading more detailed accounts or investigations of the situation.
Fascism is the last step in the merger between the state and corporate power, the state is currently trying its best to take the country there, and the sycophants who are ready to assist it are getting in line.
And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.
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[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.
It gives them a chance for grift. They're going into an "innovation" unit whose job is to get the Army (or DOD more broadly, but they're in the Army now) to select particular technologies moving forward. Naturally, they'll recommend whatever their employer produces, and recommend to their employer that they expand into other areas so they can get the Army to buy that as well later on.
Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.
People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations. Corporate behavior is well-established science at this point. They almost always do what is in their own financial interests. "Feckless" means "lacking initiative or strength of character". Corporations have one character: Making money. Fighting the government over a few user accounts has no short-term or long-term monetary value. It doesn't even win you a PR victory because it's unclear how many people support or don't support this.
This is what makes it interesting: banning the professional account of an employee of an organisation based in another part of the world makes the existing trust issues against that company even worse, and enhances the process of orgs in these places to move away from it. Currently microsoft is a stone pillar in the IT infrastructure in a lot of european organisations. I do not think this will be the case in 1-2 years.
So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.
> People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations.
I understand where you are coming from, but this also sounds like a way to remove individual responsibility from the people that make up a corporation.
As far as I know, we haven't seen widescale pull out of Europeans from American Tech companies, alot of talk but not a ton of action. Also, email is so centralized at this point between 365 and GMail, they probably figure there is nowhere to go.
Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.
Microsoft has claimed in the past to want to fight for their European customers in an attempt to gain trust and not lose out on billions in their European contracts.
They did appeal a few times, but this time it seems like they're no longer interested. To be fair, Trump could probably illegally deport half the Microsoft employees to a foreign prison camp if he'd feel like it and the courts seem powerless to stop him, so I don't blame Microsoft for falling in line.
I do blame the Dutch government for being blasé about the American threat and their refusal to move away from American technology for critical infrastructure.
50% of people do not support this. That’s a made up number. Trump has barely over 40%. He is an unpopular criminal who has shown time and again he will break the law. What even makes you think a criminal like this would win an election fairly?
Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.
He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.
I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.
As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.
I think what's missing from the 40% number is that it says nothing about how passionately the other 60% feels.
I'm not concerned about the fact that the election was close.
I'm concerned that, post election, the country is so deeply polarized. For the first time in my life, I fear there's a small but real chance that we're headed for civil war.
> Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.
For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.
Trump won an election but the majority of his voters are anti-Israel; polls show all Republican demographics apart from boomers have a net-negative view on Israel (and a non-trivial amount are outright anti-Semitic).
70% of voting eligible Americans didn’t do the bare minimum to prevent Trump. 30% voted for him directly, and 40% couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. I’m even willing to excuse third party voters. But the Trump voters and non-voters don’t get a pass, not at all. It’s absolutely the majority of Americans.
Not quite as clear cut. The EO triggers a national emergency under IEEPA, which is the basis of sanctions — so there is a well established legal underpinning. Unclear whether Microsoft has standing to challenge the designation of the ICC, and the courts give a lot of deference to the President on foreign affairs/national security. Microsoft is more “stuck” than “feckless” I think.
Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power.
I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don't recall reading once, i.e. at the time of the sweeping China or GPU sanctions, a peep of protest along the lines of, "This should *not* be something a President should be able to do unilaterally! That's far too much discretionary power in the hands of one person! Congress should have to debate it". We didn't invent an imperial presidency in 2025; it's the agglomeration of decades of civic apathy.
It’s a result of Congress being unable to actually debate anything or fundamentally deadlocked for decades. While many Americans do not want the President to have this power, likely more don’t want Congress to have it either.
You not reading that commentary and it not taking place are two very different things! Plenty of folks expressed constitutionality concerns for several types of actions that the Biden admin took. However, you may find that the enacted sanctions hold up significantly better under meaningful scrutiny than Trump cutting off email for one person investigating the war crimes and evidence of genocide in Gaza at the hands of our proxy state in the ME.
for the sake of understanding your position, could you provide some examples? to me it doesn’t seem clear that israeli foreign policy is far removed from US foreign policy or even in contention. The way we vote at the UNSC proves our support for some of the most grotesque of actions - deliberately killing infants and children. Their recent preemptive strike on Iran is, imo, further evidence of that proxy status.
Israel is very much not in the control of the US. The US didn’t want Gaza razed to the ground. The US didn’t want to start another regional war. We were try to get out if this mess. Our population voted to get out of military action in the Middle East.
Unfortunately for the US, we’re stuck with what Israel decides to do. A lot of Americans are in favor of supporting Israel for one reason or another. If Irsael is somehow controlling the United States via lobbying or whatever, that kind of invalidates the whole client state idea.
US is the most powerful country in the world but that doesn’t mean we directly control our allies as client states.
That commentary was far less prevalent and met a lot of resistance from the same people here.
Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.
My point is that those conversations were happening in earnest, irrespective of the GPs perception or lack thereof. Additionally, the element of scrutiny I described would still be interesting to explore with the particular EOs referenced by the GP.
Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.
Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.
the last three administrations (Trump I, Biden, Trump II) have shown a willingness to use the law to punish the companies of political opponents. in this light, many companies are going to be reluctant to challenge the feds here
Europe had a plan after they learned Merkel’s blackberry contents were going to Fort Meade, but they never enacted it. They planned their own MS Office (and email) replacement. Even got as far as scouting data centre sites and identifying first 40M accounts.
The EU seems to have a problem with the whole "talk is cheap" thing. They're always making grand announcements of new initiatives like this but they hardly ever materialize.
It looks like Microsoft is doing everything it can to avoid repeating this in the future:
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, visited the Netherlands and announced new “sovereign solutions” for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for “a time of geopolitical volatility.” Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers.
not trying to justify it even a bit, but shouldn't people in his position (actively acting against the US-supported position) use something more secure?
Like proton for starters?
I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).
They're not activists, but a 900 people intergovernmental org representing 100+ countries that needs to deal with a lot of bureaucracy efficiently.
They might start spending the time and money to move away from Microsoft's control, but there's few solutions that reliably work at that scale and for their needs, and I honestly wouldn't fault them for assuming that the arrangement that worked for decades wouldn't suddenly fall apart.
I think that's just another side of the same coin.
Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.
Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.
Not surprising that the biggest tech companies are complicit in the biggest war crimes and atrocities of a generation. In the 1940s it was IBM providing holocaust tabulation machines. In the 2020s, it's companies like Microsoft providing the tech infrastructure for AI-assisted targeting and pervasive surveillance in the ongoing Gaza holocaust.
can we stick with the word genocide? i don't understand the need to make constant comparisons with the holocaust - they only undermine the point in my mind and are unnecessarily incendiary. it feels to me to be a product of a certain style of left-wing oneupsmanship
They aren't even able to count the number of civilians killed by Israel due to all of the hospitals in Gaza being blown up. There is no way to gauge the population (not that that would matter for the definition of genocide anyway). Israel is killing Palestinians as fast as the world will allow.
Disgusting. Yet another reason for Europe to ditch US-tech. Its also interesting to see how the US managed within a couple of month to destroy its trust, influence and soft-power it has built over many decades. Kinda like Musk did, but on a nation-wide scale. the orange emperor truly has a talent for wrecking anything he touches. maga all the way baby
This administration is destroying US soft power in a way that no rival could ever have imagined possible. The big winner here is China.
DOGE? Absolutely performative. Even things like USAID are a trival amount of money and miss the point that it's a very cheap way of getting influence. Plus I'm sure there's some CIA money buried in there too.
Abusing the power in such a trivial manner like suspending this account does nothing but hasten this downfall.
It's always worth adding that 20+ years ago the US passed a law colloquially known as the "Hage Invasion Act" [1], which not only authorized but requires the US to invade the Hage if ever any US servicemember are brought up on charges to the ICC. And this extends to servicemembers and leaders of allies.
Empires don't die quietly or quickly. This is going to be long, drawn out and chaotic.
In the late 90's Microsoft suspended my email, thepimp@hotmail.com, with no warning or possibility to recover. We should view this latest ICC prosecutor suspension as part of a much larger, more sinister pattern.
How on earth does the ICC plan to arrest Netanyahu or Putin? Even if one of them does make the mistake of setting foot in a compliant country, do they really think arresting a foreign head of state wouldn't be seen as an act of war?
The ICC doesn’t arrest anyone themselves, they issue arrest warrants. The 125 ICC signatory states are required to comply with the warrants under the Rome Statute.
The ICC acts under the Rome Statute. Strictly speaking, it isn’t concerned about whether arrests succeed or not, that’s not its job. Its job is to investigate and (if possible) perform trials.
You don’t stop investigating war crimes and bring charges just because the accused is currently unavailable. The latter may change, and has already changed in the past. Furthermore, the mere act of investigating can already put pressure on the investigated.
Except that one is an ally and presumably the leader of the free world or something like that. The other is an aggressive dictatorial kleptocracy. So yeah, just as shocking.
Did everyone miss the last line of the article and/or is everyone unaware of the fact this particular prosecutor has been suspended and is being investigated by the police for rape? Kind of pertinent to the story...
His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
Impertinent and disingenuous if you pay attention to the timeline; the EO was issued in February. The ICC has changed internal policies, and other members of the body sanctioned post-hoc have not had their email accounts suspended. The sexual misconduct allegations surfaced in May.
Thank you for providing that context. My follow up question is do you think that had any pertinence towards the issuance of that particular executive order and subsequent suspension of their email account? Or, is it perhaps a persuasive nugget put in there to lend mild credibility to what Trump is doing?
I missed it because it was at the very end so thanks for pointing it out.
Sounds like Trump’s EO had nothing to do with with suspending the account?
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
That sounds exactly like it was because of Trump‘s EO but MS doesn’t want to do it anymore
Having worked in the startup scene in Europe, the main exit strategy was to sell off to the American original - because most European startups were copycats of their American counterparts.
So I won’t say it’s all just the US coming in and buying everything up. It was partly European investors wanting to make a profit.
sure but that's a consequence of US firms having that capital. Ultimately all investors and owners want an exit, if not as a strategy, eventually as a retirement plan. It's just that US firms buying you out is the most likely exit in this world.
But the point remains that the EU also innovates. So to suggest that it doesn't and its reliance on US tech is somehow its own fault for not trying, is missing the detail.
No one's angry. This just gives a bigger impetus to de-Americanizing the tech stack. I've recently taken part in a decision at our university to use a non-US based cloud storage provider for some relatively sensitive health data. The risk is just too high, and justifies paying a slight premium elsewhere. Sadly we're not likely to migrate away from Office 365 over here, but for any new vendor decisions, US now definitely equals premium for risk of fuckery.
Not seeing this coming, I guess. IT experts where warning of this for years but where essentially ridiculed instead. I still blame the US for backstabbing their allies though.
I can perfectly well blame my home country of America for this. This is terrible business policy that destroys America's business advantages with unjustifiable federal overreach.
That's an issue with America. For all American businesses.
The Trade Balance between the US and Europe was very balanced if you included services. So the US wasn't getting ripped off in Trade.
The dumb actions by the current US Administrations give the EU a big incentive now to buy their services elsewhere in the future, so Trumps fever dream about the disbalance might come true thanks to his own actions
https://archive.ph/tjJgW
Month old news.
Some previous discussions:
Microsoft blocked the email account of Chief Prosecutor of the ICC
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44039719
Microsoft's ICC blockade: digital dependence comes at a cost
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44032717
>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans had been looking for.”
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
The US continues to burn its soft power capital to defend Israel - this guy was only targeted because of his investigations on Israeli war crimes.
The ICC continues to be targeted because it is a threat to American sovereignty and has been for a long time. The US is not a party to the treaty. Neither is Israel. That the ICC is targeting Israel is clear evidence that the ICC can and will target the US at some point.
That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.
It’s not appropriate for an international court that we’re not even a part of to put our Presidents and their subordinates on trial, nor is it something we should meekly concede to.
I don't advocate for the U.S. to concede its sovereignty to an outside court.
But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
The U.S. openly assassinates foreigners in foreign countries without even faking a trial.
It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial. Do you think it is inappropriate for a high school moot court team to put U.S. Presidents on trial? Or for speech and debate teams to argue the morality of the actions of U.S. politicians?
How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
> But I do think that having an outside court publicly try the guilt or innocence of somebody within the U.S. is much more palatable than having some non-court within the U.S. decide on whether non-U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. should live or die.
If I were neutral on America and if a neutral disposition, you might be correct. However, I’m not.
The President of the United States is elected to be a civil and military leader, as the Head of the United States Government, as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, and to represent the United States abroad as our Head of State.
All other things being equal, I would prefer the POTUS to also be moral and to generally be a good moral leader in his capacity as the POTUS, but that is not the same as being nice, and “nice” is not what the elected President is elected to be.
So, would I for example, prefer to capture people like Qasem Soleimani and try them in an open court? Absolutely. Is that more practical than having killed him when the opportunity presented itself dealing a blow to an enemy nation, taking out one of the most important men in his nation which is openly hostile to America and our ally? Not really, but I’d rather see someone like that dead than in a position to threaten American assets and personnel in the region. You can even debate whether American assets or personnel should be in the region, but as long as they are, it is absolutely the President’s job to defend them, because it is under his orders that they are present at all and the American military is formed from the people of our country, and nowhere is it written in our Constitution that the President’s decisions should be second-guessed or tried in an International Court. Even our own courts shy away from this as it relates to foreign policy and the policy of the military.
> It's hard to complain that a court with very little power to enforce any ruling is giving U.S. citizens an open trial.
It would be pretty easy to complain if they pursued trying American citizens when we don’t recognize their jurisdiction over American citizens. The ICC, whatever else it is, is still a court with the backing of real sovereign nations. They’re not a high school debate club.
> How exactly do you judge what is appropriate and what is not?
A combination of morality, the law, diplomacy and hard power. You can even concoct scenarios if you wanted to where the United States may even been in the losing moral position but still win on all other fronts, but for starters, we’re not party to the Rome Statute, we do have our own laws on trying war crimes, and we also maintain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
I'm sure I am not alone to be alarmed and disgusted at the satisfaction in "winning" from a position of moral deficiency. As an American I reject and reprove this attitude.
At what point did I say I would be satisfied with that? I much prefer the moral victories, but one country’s morality is not another’s, but we do not carry out justice under foreign principles.
My point was that even without the moral victory, there are real problems and limits with an International court attempting to second-guess our actions against hostile powers and serve process to our leaders, and that in reality, they’re not winning that fight. Certainly not today they’re not.
It is however appropriate for a group of nations to agree that a person who has committed crimes (according to them) is to be arrested upon entering one of their nations.
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
Historically speaking, Westphalian sovereignty meant that there was no such thing as an "international criminal court", nor "war crimes". An ICC party such as France hypothetically arresting, for example, Netanyahu, for things that he did in Israel, would amount to a substantial erosion of Israel's sovereignty in the Westphalian sense. Under the Westphalian system, Israel's prince would have sole jurisdiction in such cases.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
The Westphalian sovereignty that you describe would refuse the authority of the Nuremberg trials.
The Nuremberg trials were just victor's justice, as demonstrated by the total impunity for all war crimes committed by the USSR.
The winner takes it all ...
Maybe, but I think Westphalian sovereignty generally permitted conquerors to dispose of the conquered as they saw fit. It's not a moral system, just a Schelling point.
Sure, but we’re going to interpret the arrest of a sitting or former POTUS, their direct subordinates or military personnel for the purposes of trying them in the ICC as a political act, not an act to maintain law and order in their home countries and its going to be much easier for us to justify invading and evacuating those people.
That is definitely true. I can imagine the ICC would fall shortly after (since I think enough member states will not execute the arrest order and so it’s existence does not do much)
You're imagining this happening in a world where the US has the political status it had ten years ago, not the political status it will have ten years in the future.
No, it’s already happening today. There is an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu. Netanyahu visited Hungary, a party of the Rome Statue, and was not arrested.
In a similar vein, Poland has said Netanyahu would have been welcome to visit the liberation of Auschwitz, without having to worry about out any arrest.
Depending on how Hungary’s actions are resolved, the ICC will lose much of it’s use if member states just ignore the treaty.
Just to add to your point, Germany’s Chancellor Merz has also extended an invitation to Netanyahu: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/election-winner-merz-in...
Hungary though technically still a party, is withdrawing from the Rome Statute: https://www.reuters.com/world/hungarian-lawmakers-approve-bi...
Netanyahu isn't "a sitting or former POTUS, their direct subordinates or military personnel", the arrest of which is the event you said "the ICC would fall shortly after". That's what I disagreed with.
We’re only talking about today, bruh. There’s no sense worrying about a tomorrow that may never come, but I’m willing to bet that 10 years from now we still have the strongest military in and around The Hague and even beyond, very very few would ever be willing to threaten war with us to back up the ICC.
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
>"...very few would ever be willing to threaten war with us to back up the ICC"
They would not have to. It will be up to your military to come to allied country and shoot their way through. This might be physically possible but I would imagine that the consequences of it to the standing of the US would be cataclysmic. So unless it is a former president I suspect the US will rather use some severe sanctions and still risk a payback.
It won’t even come to that because the real truth is that no ICC member is ever going to arrest and extradite to the ICC a sitting or former POTUS putting us in a position where the Marine Corps. would have to roll into The Hague with a carrier group or two nearby and multiple submarine ICBMs aimed at every capital in Europe. Also you know, the American military personnel already situated nearby within Europe on American and NATO bases.
Should the Marine Corps. actually be put into a position to roll in and say “hi” to the people of The Hague for less than peaceful purposes on their leisurely stroll to the ICC’s courthouse, who in their right minds is also going to stand in their way and exchange fire?
Not to mention that whoever arrested the President has now effectively declared war on the United States.
Taking president of course means war. I mostly meant someone who is not the president, sitting of former. Then it will be the US thinking of potential consequences.
That’s also not going to happen. Even taking a former President is effectively an Act of War, especially with all the classified intel they were privy to during and still privy to after. Honestly you should consider it the same way all the way down to the rank of General, although I sure would hate to be a rank-and-file soldier caught by the ICC somehow. Even in that case they might not get a full on invasion on their behalf, you should still expect the State Department to intervene.
>"Even taking a former President is effectively an Act of War ..."
I already said "...someone who is not the president, sitting of former....". You are just repeating.
I’ll admit I overlooked you also included “or former”, but I did address you and say you should consider it practically the same down to the rank of at least General, which includes the Vice President and Cabinet Secretaries.
10 years from now either a non-state entity or the People's Republic of China will have the strongest military, and geography won't matter for military power.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, that’s true just to shortcut this: the PRC is also not party to the Rome Statute. Neither is Russia if you’re wondering. The largest military of a country party to the Rome Statute and the largest financial contributor to the ICC is Japan. Good luck.
Yeah, I don't think the ICC is going to be relevant in that environment.
The ICC is only truly relevant today as a means of imposing justice on smaller countries without the rule of law or the power to protect themselves from larger nations. Not quite irrelevant, but certainly not a powerhouse in real political terms.
Then one should add K to ICC as for Kangaroo.
We decided to not be a part of it. Meanwhile, we systematically bully other nations and kill high ranking officials with impunity. We can't have our cake and eat it too.
Put another way, we defend American interests.
We defend some of America's interests, and harm some of its other interests. Mostly we defend the interests of the richest people in America and its military industrial complex.
We also elect the leaders that make those decisions and form the parties that nominate leaders to choose from. The winners of those elections get to choose the direction to lead.
you don't elect the leaders in america.
Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding. Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
> you don't elect the leaders in america.
We do.
> Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding.
Other Americans. You’re also discounting the impact small-dollar donors have had in American politics as of late and the public primary system.
> Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.
1) The Electors of the Electoral College are in turn elected by the people of the United States.
2) This only applies to the President and Vice President of the United States and no other public office.
3) Most States have laws against faithless electors, but the slate of electors appointed by each State’s elected legislature reflects the popular vote within that State.
> The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors
Half of what you’re doing is just describing politics, but yes, the elected President makes appointments, and the elected Senate confirms or denies them.
> You’re also discounting the impact small-dollar donors have had in American politics as of late and the public primary system.
Yes, we all saw it. It's a very small impact and it attracts the opposition of every big-dollar donors. Bernie Sanders proved it.
Small-dollar donors had an outsized impact outside of just Sanders and others on the left, and helped, just as two examples on the right: Donald J. Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The massive infusion of cash from small-dollar donors and politicians playing to their base on TV to boost their fundraising is doing far more to undermine both the Democratic and Republican parties than large donors ever have.
Please don't conflate the interests of an American with "American interests".
Like it or not, the elected President does lead on defending American interests, including which ones to prioritize, and they get to do that because they won the election.
I callout the naivety of believing the the U.S. President personally decides the "American interest" of every action taken. It is a reality today that a nameless, faceless, unelected somebody on the third floor of a building in Arkansas or Arizona can decide on the spur of the moment whether a person in Yemen or Canada should die and press the button to make it happen at the hands of the U.S. government. No elected official needs to be consulted.
If you’re talking about drone operators within the military, they are part of the President’s chain of command. Accountability resides there.
Could you give some examples of accountability?
https://www.jagcnet.army.mil/ACMPRS/cases/docket-case-list
Anything that violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice can land a soldier in the Army on that list up to and including killing random civilians abroad with military equipment outside the scope of an operation. You can look up the dockets for the other service branches yourself, but you don’t get impunity for all of your actions just for being part of the military.
Or if you want something more specific, here’s a rather high profile example: https://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/prosecutions_convictions/
You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am talking about your Orange Guy. I am not. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden all murdered people and should be held accountable.
> You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am talking about your Orange Guy.
I’m not. (EDIT: just edited this in, though I thought I’d already written this part earlier when I quoted you. My bad.)
> You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.
We do defend America’s interests, but the President—any sitting President—sets the agenda for how the American State and Military goes about it. Resource allocation is a part of leading. What part of that is difficult to understand?
Only through circular logic. If Trump dropped a nuclear bomb on Ohio tomorrow, he'd say it were in America's interests to do so, and six supreme court justices and most of congress would shrug their shoulders and say it's not their place to second-guess him, he has an electoral mandate of an entire 48%.
I agree that America needs to cut back on to be sabre-rattling but you actually can have your cake and eat it too if nobody is both capable and willing to stop you.
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
Do you think the same about the Nuremberg trials? Why?
given a future where the US slides into despotism, who would hold it to account and be a champion for its people?
Frankly that is our problem to worry about.
US interventionalism over the course of its existence would make that a form of hypocrisy. Also where would the US be without support of nations like France, Spain and the Dutch Republic in its revolutionary war?
You can't have it both ways, we're intrinsically tied together. I think its important part of friendship to call one another to account.
Well let me put it this way, I’m under no illusions that foreign nations will always attempt to exert their influence over American affairs. The only obligations we maintain with other nations are the ones we committed ourselves to, and yes, I know some of that is in question right now, but for what it’s worth I’m actually on the side of maintaining our commitments rather than pissing all over them or playing this silly “will they, won’t they” game. Our relationships with nations across the world, most of which did not exist or at least did not exist in anything like their current form including France, the Kingdom of the Netherlands née the Dutch Republic, and Spain (which we have actually and directly waged war with) have not remained static since the Revolutionary War.
All of that said, our Government, our problem, and while weighing what kind of intervention you might hypothetically support, also weigh how that stands up to the power of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. So, really, we can have it both ways, even if that makes us hypocrites. Also for what it is worth: people can be hypocrites, organized entities led by different factions of people over the course of their history like nations cannot.
Returning to the OP for a second, we're talking about the ICC issuing a warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes he has clearly overseen in Gaza. I appreciate that you've slippery sloped this into a "they're coming for us next" and I cannot prove or disprove such a notion. But putting that aside for a second; how is not acceptable for the ICC to have an opinion on the events that have unfolded in the Gaza strip and accordingly issue a warrant?
Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable? I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.
> I appreciate that you've slippery sloped this into a "they're coming for us next" and I cannot prove or disprove such a notion.
Bruh, are you for real? The very first comment I responded to in this chain of comments was this:
> That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.
Which was in response to this:
> The ICC continues to be targeted because it is a threat to American sovereignty and has been for a long time. The US is not a party to the treaty. Neither is Israel. That the ICC is targeting Israel is clear evidence that the ICC can and will target the US at some point.
I don’t think the ICC is in a position to do jack shit to Americans in real political terms, and what we’re discussing in this sub-thread is whether it would be legitimate for them to even try. If you’re going to follow a thread, take note of the usernames and who is saying what.
> But putting that aside for a second; how is not acceptable for the ICC to have an opinion on the events that have unfolded in the Gaza strip and accordingly issue a warrant?
The answer to this comes down to the following three questions:
1) Should the ICC have jurisdiction over the war time activities of non-party States.
2) Is Israel actively committing a genocide.
3) Is it the ICC’s prerogative to attempt to prosecute the leaders of a nation at war over the conduct of how they prosecute that war.
On all of these, my answer is the same: no. That is why it is unacceptable for the ICC to infringe on the sovereignty of Israel and issue an arrest warrant for their Prime Minister.
This is also separate from my view on whether I think some IDF service members and officers may have committed war crimes. I think it’s clear that at least in some cases, they have, but unfortunately there really isn’t a lot of recourse to serve battlefield justice outside the Israel’s laws around military justice.
> Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable?
First, Israel is an American ally surrounded by current and historically hostile powers. It is long-standing American policy to support and defend Israel. That’s our prerogative, and we do so how we see fit in accordance with our own laws.
Second, where the hell is the EU coming into this? The ICC is an international court, but they’re not an EU court. The ICC’s largest financial contributor is actually Japan, and the EU as an institution is not party to the Rome Statute even though all of its current members are, with the caveat that Hungary has already passed a law to start its withdrawal from the Rome Statute so in about a year this will no longer be true. The EU also does not have one foreign policy with respect to its relations with Israel and their willingness to uphold the Rome Statute and the arrest warrant out for Netanyahu, only its members do.
> I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.
Every nation sits on a sliding-scale of agency where on one end you’ve got America and the PRC and on the other end you’ve got, I dunno, Kiribati? The EU counts some of the richest and most powerful countries in the world with their own very active foreign policy interests well outside the continent and who are very much on the America/PRC end of the spectrum. I don’t want to hear any complaints that maybe facing down America might be a bit much for them, I mean hell, we don’t want to get into a shooting war with Europe either, Europe could do some real damage and it doesn’t profit us. America is the cornerstone of NATO which is a defensive alliance intended to protect both of us (and Canada) from outside aggression and so while I think it’s fair to say America has not expected total submission in every and all foreign policy matters, our dumbass of a VP and his butt-buddies aside, a little deference in some foreign policy matters is expected.
If individual European countries want to build up their militaries and challenge this arrangement, or if they want to do so within the framework of the EU (and there has been much activity recently to figure out if they should and how), they’re going to have to pay for it, which probably also means sacrificing at least some of their social welfare policies at the altar. A blue water navy and a crap-ton of military logistical capacity helps.
The purpose of the ICC is that the crimes of: Genocide, Crimes against humanity, War crimes and the crime of aggression should be prosecuted among its signatories. You are correct that its jurisdiction does not contain Israel or the US, given they withdrew. However signatories are expected to respect the warrants should individuals travel to states that are signatories. Therefore it is not exceeding the bounds of its jurisdiction in issuing these warrants, otherwise one could simply withdraw, do a little war crime and rejoin, thereby creating a loophole. The whole point of the court is that it is international and looks at these crimes happening throughout the world, so its signatories play their part in encouraging them to not happen and prosecuting them when they do, when they can (i.e. when someone guilty of them travels to these nations). In that respect is it like interpol, where a nation can arrest someone who has committed a crime in a different country, if they flee to a country signed up to interpol, despite them not theoretically not having the juristdiction to do so (given the crime wasn't committed where the arrest was made).
You don't even have to talk about genocide given that Israel (as you also state) has clearly committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in its war against Hamas. Its entirely in keeping with the ICC aims that an arrest warrant has been issued for both Yahya Siwar (now deceased) and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Given Donald Trump's bizarre demand that the Europe re-arm itself (which imho is terribly short-sighted and might make US foreign policy more tricky in the future), I imagine in the future we will see more instances where Europe tries to gain a ROI on its military spending and becomes more assertive in the future. Right now, it can be politically difficult for European countries to respect the warrants (as seen most recently with Netanyahu's trip to Poland) but in the future that could change.
Let me get this correction out at the top: I conceded that some IDF service members are probably guilty of some war crimes. I said absolutely nothing about crimes against humanity, which in reviewing the list of what the ICC considers a crime against humanity, I do not feel comfortable at all making any assertion one way or the other. It is important to get this right because the Rome Statute does make this distinction.
You also called out crimes of aggression: most of what is listed as crimes of aggression amount to just war. You can probably debate about this with regards to the settlements, but don’t forget this current offensive doesn’t happen without Hamas attacking Israeli civilians on October 7th 2023. Israel was and is fully within their rights to prosecute a war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and even Iran for which all of these groups are proxies for until they achieve their war aims.
Another correction, the United States has never been party to the Rome Statute. We were part of the negotiations, we did sign but we ultimately decided against ratification therefore it never held the force of law and we withdrew our signature. From what I gathered, Israel is in the same boat, though I’m not clear what their ratification process looks like.
> However signatories are expected to respect the warrants should individuals travel to states that are signatories. Therefore it is not exceeding the bounds of its jurisdiction in issuing these warrants, otherwise one could simply withdraw, do a little war crime and rejoin, thereby creating a loophole. The whole point of the court is that it is international and looks at these crimes happening throughout the world, so its signatories play their part in encouraging them to not happen and prosecuting them when they do, when they can (i.e. when someone guilty of them travels to these nations).
The Court’s territorial jurisdiction is not “the world”, it is the territory and vessels of parties to the Rome Statute, nations which accept the ICC’s jurisdiction in a court filing, and others in situations that are referred to it by the United Nations Security Council. The personal jurisdiction is for all persons of nations over which the ICC has territorial jurisdiction, and likewise can be expanded with a referral of a situation by the UNSC.
The argument for prosecuting a non-party here is that well, Palestine is a party. It’s the stronger argument, but I think it should be insufficient, and it is the position of America and Israel that this is insufficient. In any case, the actual allegations are themselves insufficient in any situation where the ICC would have an interest in investigating and prosecuting if they don’t have the jurisdiction to do it.
> In that respect is it like interpol, where a nation can arrest someone who has committed a crime in a different country, if they flee to a country signed up to interpol, despite them not theoretically not having the juristdiction to do so (given the crime wasn't committed where the arrest was made).
Interpol is an outgrowth of bilateral extradition treaties, not a replacement for them. You still need the requisite extradition treaty in place, and if the crime alleged is not a crime for which they can be extradited per the relevant extradition treaty, then the arresting nation is under no obliteration to turn them over. In that sense, Interpol is more like an informational and cooperation forum between nations, whereas the ICC is an organization operationally separate and distinct from its members.
> Given Donald Trump's bizarre demand that the Europe re-arm itself (which imho is terribly short-sighted and might make US foreign policy more tricky in the future)
So, I’m not against re-arming Europe. From a menu of options that looks something like this:
1) Continuing to prop up Europe against Russian aggression regardless of their minimal defense spending.
2) Re-arming Europe but under continued American leadership.
3) Pushing Europe to re-arm and reconsider that whole American leadership bit.
4) Just pulling out of Europe entirely and ripping up NATO.
I favor number 2. I think even Trump favors number 2 but number 3 is what is actually happening. I would have been fine-ish but not happy about number 1 because there’s a real risk of the American public not being willing to defend say, the Baltics, against a Russian invasion regardless of what I think (I’m very pro keeping to our military commitments, even somewhat grudgingly if we must), and the risk of number 4 would have grown over time even in a world where Trump was never elected the first time, let alone the second, and actually getting to number 4 would be a worst of all worlds situation. I actually like Europe. I would like it to continue to be Europe, without getting obliterated again.
> as seen most recently with Netanyahu's trip to Poland
Did Netanyahu actually make the trek to Poland? I know he was went to Hungary, but Hungary has also decided to withdraw from the ICC. I heard reports he went to Greece, but haven’t actually seen that substantiated. I couldn’t find anything about a Polish visit earlier when I looked.
my bad, he never made that trip to Poland in the end, but the Polish government passed a resolution to enable it, which made me figure it was a done deal.
I only listed the four crimes the ICC deals with in terms of stating its directive, I wasn't asserting that Israel was necessarily guilty of all of them. In terms of things relevant to the current conflict in Gaza, war crimes and crimes against humanity are relatively easy to clear and genocide is a maybe because of the aid blockade. I entirely supported Israel's right to respond to the October the 7th attacks but we're so far past the point of the response being anywhere near proportionate and that we're so far in and Israel's objectives still have failed to have been met, demonstrates the issues with their approach. Its almost as if the cruelty is the point as opposed to the objectives of the supposed mission (especially now they're flinging rockets at Iran seemingly distracting themselves further from recovering the hostages).
There are other factors at play. Palestine is a signatory to the ICC and the crimes were committed in Gaza, also Israel themselves are failing to investigate these war crimes through their own legal system. These are apparently the arguments that give the ICC the confidence to issue these warrants. I mean what does it matter anyway? Netanyahu can just avoid travelling to signatory countries and he's fine.
The whole NATO thing remains short sighted, in the years to come, the USA will learn that some things are priceless. I imagine that GOP donor pressure to reduce the budget to maintain/enact tax cuts is the root source of these desires, which if true, is digustingly short-sighted. I LOVE the USA but the pre-2025 USA, that US hegemony policy from the 20th century promised peace and prosperity at an irksome but acceptable price. However I don't like it right now and if that nation continues to prop up erratic rulers like Donald Trump who enable warmongering rulers like Netanyahu instead of restraining them, then I will start to hate it and I am _far_ from alone on that. Combining that with encouraging Europe to re-arm is just lacking in imagination given that the USA will transition in such a future from the guaranteed winner to a potential loser. You didn't vote for this mess, did you?
I dont get why Americans are willing to die on a hill of defending some third-world country's president who committed well documented crimes against humanity and genocide
Why not? Someone has to do it.
We have the Uniform Code of Military Justice for military personnel, and on paper, a Congress to hold the President accountable, although that obviously needs to be beefed up because the results lately have been unsatisfactory. It does not need to be the ICC, nor should we allow it.
I don't understand what you mean by "allow it". The ICC are free to do what they like, and the US are free to ignore it (outside any sanctions the international community impose).
The US electing to ignore the ICC’s activities with regards to ourselves or our allies is functionally the same actively allowing their activities.
And then we have presidents that almost uniformly pardon people convicted of the grossest war crimes.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
All I’ll say is the President’s pardon power either needs to die, or be massively rethought. I’m not a fan lately.
> multiple murders
That's selling the Mai Lai massacre short. Hundreds of rapes and murders, convicted by a court of law.
Commuted to three years house arrest.
Was Germany a part of any such treaty? Or was it inappropriate for those Nazis to be held accountable for their crimes?
Germany also lost the war. Their highest ranking officials and military were not in a position to prevent it; moreover I’m pretty okay with having applied the winner’s justice over Nazi Germany. Put us in the position where we can’t say “no” before you apply your own justice, but we’re still going to do everything in our power to defend ourselves.
What does that have to do with what is appropriate?
I thought I was clear on this, but I guess not: it was entirely appropriate. They lost so thoroughly and the Holocaust was so repulsive that it was arguably necessary. Germany itself was also in such a precarious position that the continued existence of the German State was in jeopardy, and probably the only way it could continue to exist in any form even after being divided was to go through the Nuremberg Trials first. Don’t forget Stalin and the USSR was out for blood and new additions to the Eastern Bloc.
Those are reasons it was feasible. It was appropriate for moral reasons, and the same is true of US leaders.
I would have thought calling out the repulsiveness of the Holocaust and the health and wellbeing of a continued German-state would have been the moral justifications, but okay, sure.
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
You are becoming incoherent. By your own argument, the Nuremberg trials were not necessary. Anybody lacking the military might to defy the U.S. can be summarily executed without a trial. Anybody enjoying the support of the U.S. military is exempt from any courtroom regardless of their actions.
Then here you write that Nurenmberg was appropriate and necessary.
You don't seem to be able to hold the thread of your own argument.
If the alternative was to leave Germany to the Soviet wolves, allow France to colonize it, or disregard the events of the Holocaust and not thoroughly document what occurred, how, and under whose orders, then it was necessary.
If you don’t care about any of that, sure, you can make the argument the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.
Do note that the key difference between America in 2025 and Germany in 1945 is that we’re not a diminished State without really any sovereignty left to claim and haven’t recently invaded pretty much the entirety of Europe with the intention of subsuming it into a greater Empire and spent the last 4 years systematically destroying the entire Jewish population therein. That’s some important context and shouldn’t be overlooked in your zeal to put American Presidents on trial.
"America" is a lot of things. Of course it is a sovereign nation. But let me here propose to you a different idea of America.
I was raised inside the United States. I have a very deep love for America. But the America I love is not a place. It is a collection of principles. It is an ideal. In as much as that ideal has been realized in the place I grew up, it makes that place America to me. But America the place and people have not been perfect executing America the idea. What group of humans ever were perfect? One of the beauties of America the place, and one of the things I cherish most about it is the constant willingness to put itself and its ideals on trial. I love an America that asks "What is right?" before asking "What are you going to do about it?"
I believe it is un-American to refuse to ask the first question, but constantly ask the second question without considering the first. Using the second question to intimidate all those who ask the first question is repugnant to me. It threatens the America that I love.
America is on trial whether you like it or not. The America I love will always be on trial as long as it exists. To end the trial would kill that America.
> I love an America that asks "What is right?" before asking "What are you going to do about it?"
Agreed, but I’ll put forth that the context for the first question also matters.
The context within this particular sub-thread which is within a larger thread regarding the ICC, the warrant issued againstNetanyahu and American sanctions on ICC staff is whether America and Americans as a non-signatory of the Rome Statute should be subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction. Actually it was originally Presidents, current and former, but there’s been some scope creep.
My answer is “No”. Your answer may be “Yes”, but I’m making the case for my “No”, not advocating for discarding all morality and total lawlessness and might-makes-right behavior, even if I think “might” is a mighty great deterrent for backing up that “No” to non-Americans that believe the answer should be “Yes” and would be willing to try out that “Yes” in the real world.
you are being dishonest. Only 161 people were convicted at Nurembourg trials, Nazi Germany's population was 70 mln (I am not even including Italy or Japan).
The rest of the Nazis were given amnesty and continued working for the USA, or continued living/serving as usual as part of West Germany's Wehrmacht forces.
The whole process was heavily politicized and completely sham, massive tortures were used to obtain "evidence" of guilt.
What sort of punishment do you think would have been appropriate for the systemic extermination of an entire race of people? And for starting a war that killed tens of millions? For an illegal coup against the government of a country (which is what the Nazis did in 33)?
How could you think that 161 convictions was enough for this? Far more than that had direct agency and culpability for those crimes.
don't you think that if there was some form of systematic extermination system, there should have been more than 161 people involved in it??????
this basic contradiction basically tells you that it was all bogus, either there was no systematic extermination, or there was not enough people brought to justice for their crimes.
How many people do you think are required to do anything systematic on the territory spanning from France to Belarus ?
161 people is probably the headcount of my local DMV office.
also, the fact that mainstream western history over-indexes on the plight of one ethnic group (6 mln dead), and completely ignores the deaths of Soviets (27 mln dead) or China (20 mln) pretty much seals this whole thing as bogus politicized process.
Typical eurocentric history rewriting, while simultaneously white-washing the crimes of the same white europeans
I am not even mentioning genocide of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki via nuclear bombs and genocide of civilians in Dresden: all three cities were basically civilian with no large military armies in there. Mostly women elderly and kids died
Israels leaders should be punished yes.
The Hague Conventions and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Although, in reality, it was a matter of the winners deciding on a suitable punishment for the losers. They did, however, go to considerable lengths to find legal justification in international law for the prosecutions and punishments of Nazi leaders. They could have just shot them: Churchill and Stalin both supported summary execution, although Churchill later changed his mind.
Yes it is. FAFO
Given we’re not party to the ICC, we maintain a permanent seat on the UNSC, and nobody within striking distance of The Hague is willing to back you up on this, it is decidedly not appropriate.
Why not?
The US has several ways to acquire jurisdiction over foreign defendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_over_int...
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
I’m sure you want to try and catch me in an act of hypocrisy but I think I’ve been clear throughout this thread.
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
So, in the end, your point is not whether the ICC should have the right to put foreign presidents on trial. It's about who has got the strongest military power.
My position is that the ICC should not even exist, but if it is going to exist, then America should safeguard itself and its allies from it.
If you look at the real history of the ICC, it’s effectively toothless over any nation that can safeguard its own sovereignty, and otherwise a fig leaf for the supposed lawfulness of foreign intervention into nations that cannot.
You know who else said that?
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?
How is it a threat to American sovereignty? It has no jurisdiction in America, only within nations that are party to the treaty - which is their sovereign right?
Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?
It has juridiction when referred to by the UN Security Council, and possibly other cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute#Jurisdiction,_str...
Thanks, I didn’t know this!
If the US is in the wrong, why should I as a citizen not want our government officials held accountable?
> If the US is in the wrong, why should I as a citizen not want our government officials held accountable?
A core principle of American justice is judgement by a jury of your peers from your community according to our laws, not by foreigners on the other side of the planet according to foreign laws. Violations of our core principles through means we were not a party to is a violation of our sovereignty.
>>jury of your peers from your community according to our laws
when it comes to Crimes against humanity (genocide, mass killings, tortures, etc) - our peers are whole Humanity, and everyone who support United Nation's Human Rights Declaration.
You cannot have American human rights to live, and at the same time deny the right to live to non-Americans. Which is what America is doing: extrajudicial murder of foreigners (drone strikes + collateral murder) and sponsoring of terrorism and genocide (Israel-gaza war).
the point is not to argue specific bullet points on obscure US codes, but 30 very basic unalienable universal human rights.
if USA denies these rights to the whole world, then there is no reason to expect the whole world support america in any way, like lending money by buying US treasuries, exchanging oil for freshly printed worthless USD, respecting US tourists' right to live when they are exploring the world, etc
"Core principles" here also being America assassinating and kidnapping citizens of other countries wherever they may be on the globe.
> A core principle of American justice is judgement by a jury of your peers from your community according to our laws, not by foreigners on the other side of the planet according to foreign laws.
When a US president signs a death list - the assassination of someone, does that person get a trial by a jury of their peers first?
Or do they just get a predator drone missile in their direction?
I think it's accurate to say that a core principle of American justice is that there is one set of rules for the in-group, and another for the out-group. And any institution that tries to normalize this is anathema to that principle.
"In the wrong" is often jurisdiction specific. I do not want otherwise reasonable candidates to avoid the ballot because of the risk of being convicted by some external court.
If they're planning to do something that might get them indicted for crimes against humanity, then they are not reasonable candidates.
Unfortunately, there are enough courts that are very willing to slap any label on any suitably vilified candidate. Pick any president of India; you can probably find a Pakistani court would be willing to convict for "crimes against humanity". And vice versa. Or pick some Iraq-Iran pairings. Or Armenian- Azerbaijani, etc.
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
We're talking about any random court, however, but the ICC.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
This is exactly right. "Might makes right" is very true on the international stage. The ICC tried to fix that, but they have been muzzled when it comes to real might.
To the degree the ICC has precedent, it’s in being powerless over great powers.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it if the goal is checking the U.S. and its allies, or China and its allies. (Maybe it’s useful for checking Western Europe? Idk.)
There is absolutely zero evidence that you can point to that credibly suggests this court would or has done anything like you’re describing.
If you look at the history of the ICC, what makes you think they hold people accountable for human rights violations? Never mind effectively.
The ICC is a cool idea in theory. The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
> The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
How is that?
For example: selective enforcement, for example states vs terrorists. Even Russia became a victim of that, which I'll point out in hopes of avoiding discussion on Israel.
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_City_Hall_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Morocco [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Turkey#...
The ICC takes actions against people. It very specifically does not have jurisdiction over conflicts between states.
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
So it’s like a court where only law abiding citizens agree to its jurisdiction and all the criminals get away with murder because they never signed a treaty.
Yes. These are countries, not individuals. Short of aliens taking over control of earth, this is the best we have.
Your entire argument boils down do "this is legal for the ICC, and that that definition of legal differs greatly from your sense of justice doesn't matter"
The answer, of course, is that sanctioning the ICC is legal for the US government too. Apparently people's feelings about that don't matter (except for the next presidential election of course). Well, then, we're done here, aren't we?
> The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute
If this is the case can you explain ICC action against US and Israel, neither of which are parties to the Rome statute? This is one aspect of their selective justice. And some of the crimes they accuse Russia of (e.g. the ones relating to treatment of POWs) happened in Russia too, you could even say the same of their "great success" in Yugoslavia. The ICC respects boundaries selectively.
Also from the other side: the ICC most certainly COULD sue South Africa for working with Putin and Bashar Al-Assad to help them escape justice. They chose not to. Frankly, MANY signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to ever hold up their end.
Also, of course, this rule is also selective justice if it is applied.
In a lot of state vs "resistance movement" the ICC has systematically failed to do anything about sometimes truly abhorrent crimes by movements. No shortage of examples there.
And your claim "they follow their own rules" ... you also neglected to discuss why the ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE to sue Israel ... once during the trial I might add. Same with US. Not that "we couldn't convict the Jew, obviously the law is wrong, let's change the law" isn't a longstanding legal tradition. Not very just though ...
As I said, the ICC is a beautiful theoretical idea. Unfortunately the ICC is not even remotely close to that idea and will never be. Their rules form selective justice even if they were applied and what they practically do is much worse than that.
I’m not seeing how this causes human rights abuses like you originally claimed. Your post has also left me with two more questions:
> Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
Isn’t this because they are non-members?
> A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
> Isn’t this because they are non-members?
No. For non-members it is assumed that they by default ask the ICC to not investigate any human rights crimes either involving their state, or on their soil. Which the ICC then has to respect ...
Or that WAS the case until last year. In the middle of their existing court case against Israel it became clear that Israel requested ICC drop the case on their territory, and of course Palestine has neither borders nor are they a member of the ICC (despite Palestine signing the Rome accords to immediately afterwards start screaming on TV that they wouldn't respect them as they relate to Palestinians themselves), and therefore there were no grounds for the case. So South Africa, amidst allegations of Qatarese bribery, was allowed to bring a claim, and that South Africa has now twice helped people convicted at the ICC escape ICC justice did not negate that (they helped Bashar Al-Assad, and Putin)
So then the ICC modified their own statutes, which they're not allowed to do, so that the particular kind of non-member that Palestine is, would be allowed to put disputed territory as valid territory retroactively for such complaints (because despite how the press presents it, Palestine's claims relate to the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, specifically underage ones, on Israeli soil, NOT about what happened in Gaza. You see, the court has accepted an argument that since neither Hamas nor the PA allow investigators or journalists on their soil, claims there cannot reasonably be the basis for any conviction)
In other words, the court allowed what is effectively Hamas (not the PA) to enter Tel Aviv as territory for this court case.
You see, this is about Hamas scoring a PR victory. The idea that Hamas, through Qatar, via South Africa, is worried about the treatment of a West Bank resident Palestinian boy is utterly absurd. The only thing they care about is that it is an argument they might win, at which point the papers will be full of "Israel convicted at ICC for human rights abuses". This is the same Hamas that has mounted a suicide vest on an unwilling underage girl who was being treated in Israel for cancer, forced her to try to cross the Israeli border, and blew her to pieces when she tried to get help from the border guards, you see, THAT organization, is really worried about whether children who killed someone people get to see their parents sufficiently often in prison ...
Yes, Hamas is a party to the Rome statute (they agreed to respect it so they could partake in elections, elections, I might add, that ended with Hamas executing election officials in the emergency ward of a Gazan hospital) and plenty of other treaties at the UN. Including treaties that they'll prevent any and all terror attacks against civilians ... Meanwhile they AND the PA, pay Palestinians a monthly pension based on how badly they hurt Jews [1] (sorry, this organization that signed treaties to arrest any terrorists they know of "has stopped doing that" 4 months ago. They promise. Needless to say, the payments continue)
Obviously this ICC rule change is insanity and will lead to disaster, and they'll retract the rule when it is used by anyone else, for example, when Kurds enter a claim about abuse in Ankara for example, Iran or Iraq, or Druze against Syria, or ...
And while this is the most egregious example of abusing the ICC, it is far from the only one. There's a similar conflict with the US. The problem with the ICC is really quite simple: a lot of signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to respect any court decisions made by the ICC, and the ICC allows states to openly defy their treaty obligations without any consequences. The US and Israel, when they realized they didn't either, publicly withdrew so they'd remain honest. South Africa, Mongolia, Palestine, Hungary and others just started violating the treaties they agreed to without withdrawing.
When push comes to shove, a LOT of nations want war, but can't do it, or can't win it, and they see the ICC itself as a weapon of war. A weapon against "the international order" (ie. what the security council represents). The ICC lets them.
> How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...
> The US and Israel, when they realized they didn't either, publicly withdrew so they'd remain honest.
This seems like an incredibly charitable reading of the US withdrawal given the ASMPA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I’m curious, are you Israeli yourself?
> Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
> However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
> That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
> I’m curious, are you Israeli yourself?
Nope. Not even close.
> I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
This is international law, which is a name used for a huge mess of international treaties. What is there to say? There is no international police. If you don't respect international law, there is nobody to compel you to do anything. In essentially every case, you're beyond the reach of the counter party to the treaty (especially in this case since the ICC has zero reach). This is true whether "you" refers to a person or a country.
Hell, there's even valid reasons this keeps happening like that the political situation sometimes changes far faster than treaties can be negotiated.
There were some truly exceptional times in history, like the ending of WW2, where everyone agreed on a few rules and some limited things happened, but that time is long gone. Most countries find the international order deeply unfair, especially the "you're not allowed to move any borders unless you're one of the original nuclear powers" part. Russia is allowed to attack ... Iran is not. The "non-aligned movement" is essentially aligned on a single point: they all want to start limited wars against one or multiple of their neighbors but would face total economic collapse or worse if they did that and the US responded. That is the last straw holding the UN treaties in existence, the only enforcement mechanism that has survived 80 years of UN disintegration.
And now Trump got elected and has been sighted near said last straw with scissors, asking for money, complaining the straw costs too much. But don't be fooled: there's a lot of shouting at Trump, but nobody working to strengthen the treaties with a few more straws. And while I hate Trump, you have to give him this one: if he cuts, he may be giving the start signal for WW3, but saying he's causing it, is absurd.
Danish digitization ministry will soon attempt a move away from Microsoft because of this. We can only hope that this is only the first step, and that broader move away from US tech companies will follow.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dum...
With USA threatening invasion of Denmark - it's not surprising. :/
When did the US make that threat?
Trump has several times threatened to take Greenland, by military force if necessary. He categorically has "not ruled out" military force against a NATO ally.
First source, but there are many: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/04/world/greenland-annexatio...
This has, for obvious reasons, been huge news in all of Europe and especially in Denmark.
I'm sure MAGA Americans want to hand-wave it away, and since Trump is so difficult to understand and says so many whacky things, we're all hoping he doesn't mean it, but it's underscored the need to quickly get independent of the USA.
See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=44340630
Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.
Edit: @ujkhsjkdhf234 Answering your question from below here:
>Trump says many things no one believes then he does. Stop steelmanning for Trump.
That's actually a good political strategy in tough times: Keep your opponents always unsure about what you're gonna do next. Why do you think Putin invaded Ukraine under Biden and not under Trump?
> Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.
It's not a valid argument to use the general case here. Because in the case of this particular statement, it clearly isn't true that "nobody actually believes" it. It's clear that many people actually believe it.
> That's actually a good political strategy in tough times: Keep your opponents always unsure about what you're gonna do next.
I mean, sure. But in this case Denmark thought they were an ally, not an opponent. Should they also be unsure about whether one of their territories is going to be attacked?
Or are they, after all, an opponent?
> Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.
I've made this point so many times before but I'll say it again: Trump being either an idiot or a liar is not a valid defense of Trump. Nor is it a "good political strategy".
Also, it's not tough times. I know it doesn't feel that way because Trump is acting as though he requires powers only endowed in times of war, but no, it is not tough times.
Trump says many things no one believes then he does. His supporters often play it off as he's joking and then whoops turns out he does it. Stop excusing Trump and take his words seriously.
Greenland is an “autonomous territory” of Denmark
1) That's avoiding to answer my question.
2) And it's still false.
Can't tell if any Americans call it that, but it is widely known by the name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague_Invasion_Act in Europe.
Trump, not the US, did
That's still for rage-bait. Trump says a lot of things, most of them aren't true. Everyone operating in good faith, knew this wasn't true. Nobody above a room temperature IQ would think the US would invade Denmark.
Edit: @danieljacksonno answering your comment from below here:
>He repeated it several times.
Trump repeats everything all the time. So what? That's what all politicians do. Your brain (if you have one) is supposed to filter that.
>Germany and France has spoken out officially against it, with Macron even visiting Greenland to show support.
That's you typical politician virtue signaling, because speaking is free. Since EU politicians are toothless all they do is talk to look good and score brownie points in front of their voters on $CURRENT_ISSUE. France and Germany can't keep their countries safe from illegal migrants, what are they gonna do against Trump if push comes to shove? Talk him to death about how orange he is?
>Denmark is freaking out, and want to remove all dependencies on the US as quickly as possible.
Are they also removing the F35 jets from their military and H100 Nvidia GPUs from their supercomputer? Who's gonna buy all that Ozempic that makes Denmark rich if not the US?
I feel like you're talking fantasy politick instead of realpolitik.
He repeated it several times.
Europe certainly takes it seriously. Germany and France has spoken out officially against it, with Macron even visiting Greenland to show support.
Denmark is freaking out, and want to remove all dependencies on the US as quickly as possible.
So it sounds like you'll "filter out the noise" until the wannabe dictator stands on /your/ neck, and then it's a bit late to react..
They’re working on it! And they’re making it open source :)
https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-collaboration/Great, but look at this. This is a joke. Let's see ... the EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year, and have been funding it for 50 years (starting at 0 of course). How much software does the EU expect to get for "between 5000 and 50000 euro"? (one-time). A software engineer in Bangalore can expect to make more than that, even after tax!
The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.
Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.
Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.
Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).
So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!
This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?
And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.
And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.
They aren't.
This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.
The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
It doesn't need to throw out the baby with the (US-controlled) bathwater. The EU should present Microsoft with an ultimatum similar to what China might: setup a non-controlled european licensee to own and manage all MS & Azure infrastructure in the region, or have some legislators force a similar structure on them. Complete control, full sourcecode, EU-only support/access - as a condition for corp HQ being allowed to have a monopolistic market share. Either way, nothing the US might decide to do should have any effect in "EU Microsoft", short of severing US Microsoft off completely, in which case EU MS just becomes fully autonomous and bye-bye US. Clearly, a US-controlled Microsoft without this structure is a deep security risk to europe now.
the problem the EU has is that such an ultimatum lacks teeth. China gets to make these demands because they've down willingness to fund and build homegrown alternatives and then blacklist the foreign competitor. If the EU wants the leverage to make these sorts of demands, they need to start by giving out a couple million here and there for the competitors they want to see.
There is another problem: EU politicians would immediately use this against each other. For example, the Spanish governments in Barcelona and Madrid constantly do anything they can to sabotage each other. And this is not the only such pair. Hell, the French and German governments, the main force behind the whole EU, still hate each other.
The amount of dilly-dallying on the Israeli question (which is at the heart of the OP issue also) is enough evidence that the EU is a has-been power - they can't even make up their minds, what with France against the Iran strikes, while Germany likes Israel "doing our dirty work".
And both are centre-right governments to boot! If the White House is the clownshow in the circus, the EU is the acrobatics act.
France has been okay with iran strikes
You have a great point, but discussing 'Linux' misses the forest for the trees. American vendors had solutions, European vendors did not. Because you are correct and Europeans don't really value software.
('Linux distros' get into the HN zone where nobody needs dropbox because they could write a shell script. Or install a crappy webmail package on a VPS. Google is entirely Linux and that's not what you are suggesting. It's irrelevant to the larger picture.)
A $200B grant would be globally unprecedented. The LHC only cost $5B. European countries are market economies, moving more in that direction, and would like a local competitor.
LHC is funded by more than just the EU.
A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
Just think if any EU business didn't have to pay the Microsoft tax or the open source TCO tax/labor, because there is a non-profit full-stack solution running at cost. Make any business out of the EU pay retail rates to subsidize development. It would be a huge competitive advantage. Just like payments have become so much easier in the EU over the past decade.
You make some very good arguments, but
EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year
???
Yea that seems like the vast majority of Microsoft's total worldwide revenue for a given year.
The relevant number is probably the EU only fraction, and maybe just the EU governments' part. Which I'd guess is at least like 1/10 or smaller? Idk
This, 100X this. The EU wants to have the shiny SW toys the US has spent decades and trillions building, but without forking up the money needed to develop them. They want everything done on cheap labor. Paying rank and file engineers shit tonne of money is not part of European business owner culture (barring few exceptions). You're expected to be grateful you've been given a job.
Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.
China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.
Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.
There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
Same about GitHub, it's better to push for federated or truly decentralized system instead, like in Forgejo's roadmap [1]. This way everyone can benefit instead of ceding control to a sole organization wherever it might be.
[1] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/m...
I’m in the U.S. and don’t want to rely on this stuff either, but I don’t know that I’d really trust any sufficiently complex software. Anything can be compromised. Even if you build from source, your compiler might be compromised, or you buy a cool new usb peripheral and plug it in- boom! Compromised. Bought a new device? Compromised already. That printer you bought years ago? Compromised and in your secure wireless network. Your sniffer and firewall? Compromised. Firefox? Compromised. Tor? Compromised. Wikileaks? Compromised. Your dishwasher? Compromised. You drive out in the woods without any devices and live in a tent. Hiker comes along and takes photos. You and tent are compromised. Walking out in the middle of nowhere naked hiding under a bush my ass.
Of course you can't protect yourself from everything. But you can still pick a reasonable threat model and act accordingly.
Please do. Some real competition would be good for all sides!
Why stop there? You have a call, its a Rafale: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/no-us-in-nato-thats-ok-rafal...
No AI features in Rafale?
No AI features is a plus for me.
I can see the Microsoft board room meeting now.
A: The Europeans grow restless that we are suspending email accounts of Trump's political enemies.
B: What are they going to do, host their own email servers?
[maniacal cackling]
I see it as strong evidence we should all run our own servers. Internet Access instead of internet connectivity needs to end.
It is possible using IPv6 to make end to end connections without having to do weird hole punching through NAT, etc.
Each house with its own ASN
Europe is very pro-Israel. You act as if you have been champions of human rights and a subjugated people like the Palestinians. As far as I know, Ireland is the only exception. Israel could have executed Greta on camera and the Swedish embassy would have sent a strong worded letter. Europe has no power whatsoever in any of this
The US could save an enormous amount of money if the US military were sized to defend the US and only the US.
US has never been "good". Listening to Sachs and Measrheimer they keep saying (in these or other words) that "you know a US president is lying because their mouth is moving". Microsoft is just one more cog in the power-hungry apparatus of the US.
And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena.
The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
This is insane. They aimed his corporate account. Europeans move away from the US even faster now. This guy is literally breaking decades old relationships.
You think Europe would really behave any different?
Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
> Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
China and India? and Russia? Israel doesn't care about them.
Israel is using America and Europe to gain control of the middle east, so they want to eliminate Iran (and just like with Iraq, they want the US to do it for them).
Pakistan is somewhat friendly so not really a threat to Israel's control over the middle east.
US and Europe do not benefit from this. Europe actually suffers as instability in middle east causes a refugee crisis in Europe.
> You think Europe would really behave any different?
And do you think America would run their government on the software of European tech monopolies?
They run their tech and production on Chinese monopolies
Europe probably would behave differently to be honest, but we’re so far away from either of us finding out if we’re correct or not that its not worth talking about.
What we should instead focus on is digital sovereignty.
They didn't even resist/appeal the order? It is an EO, not a law. Goes to show just how subservient and feckless Microsoft is. Nominative determinism much?
You have a bunch of tech execs getting sworn in as lieutenant colonels for the Army Reserve, SF aligns itself with the White House just like Germany's big industry aligned itself with the NSDAP. It doesn't particularly matter whether an order is legal or not, it only matters if the ones in power want it.
What would motivate them to join the army?
The power that comes with military contract-type money, connections, and influence.
That's the kind of situation that gives CEOs lifelong reputations (that they think it's in a good way).
The NSDAP-style alignments went both ways: if the industry bigwig joined the party, he got access to lucrative contracts and insider information. The NSDAP also helped strike down strikes for the bigwigs, and later, supplied slaves from concentration camps for cheap. In turn, the party got to deeply control the bigwig: don't toe the party line and you're either out, or you're in danger. Join the party and publicly demonstrate your allegiance to the leadership.
See the secret industry meeting from 1933 as the prime example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_...
It was a very mafia-like arrangement. Loyalty meant being rewarded with lucrative opportunities but it also meant you owed them and sooner or later they'd come back asking for one favour or another.
Nazis were very good at making both industrialists and military feel rich. The German stock market went up like a rocket between 1933 and 1941.
And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery_of_senior_Wehrmacht_of...
” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”
With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?
Do you have any idea how the investors in the German stock market in that period made out after the war? I'm guessing that they probably lost a lot, especially in East Germany, but I'm interested in reading more detailed accounts or investigations of the situation.
Yup. All of those men will need to be investigated and, if appropriate, tried for corruption.
Like the days of the British Army selling commissions, it's for corruption opportunities and cosplay.
Fascism is the last step in the merger between the state and corporate power, the state is currently trying its best to take the country there, and the sycophants who are ready to assist it are getting in line.
And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.
---
[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.
It gives them a chance for grift. They're going into an "innovation" unit whose job is to get the Army (or DOD more broadly, but they're in the Army now) to select particular technologies moving forward. Naturally, they'll recommend whatever their employer produces, and recommend to their employer that they expand into other areas so they can get the Army to buy that as well later on.
Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.
FOMO
People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations. Corporate behavior is well-established science at this point. They almost always do what is in their own financial interests. "Feckless" means "lacking initiative or strength of character". Corporations have one character: Making money. Fighting the government over a few user accounts has no short-term or long-term monetary value. It doesn't even win you a PR victory because it's unclear how many people support or don't support this.
This is what makes it interesting: banning the professional account of an employee of an organisation based in another part of the world makes the existing trust issues against that company even worse, and enhances the process of orgs in these places to move away from it. Currently microsoft is a stone pillar in the IT infrastructure in a lot of european organisations. I do not think this will be the case in 1-2 years.
So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.
> People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations.
I understand where you are coming from, but this also sounds like a way to remove individual responsibility from the people that make up a corporation.
Corporations already make it impossible to hold people to account.
No responsibility should be expected when there is no accountability.
How's that making money thing going to go when Europe boycotts American tech for several decades?
As far as I know, we haven't seen widescale pull out of Europeans from American Tech companies, alot of talk but not a ton of action. Also, email is so centralized at this point between 365 and GMail, they probably figure there is nowhere to go.
Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.
Microsoft has claimed in the past to want to fight for their European customers in an attempt to gain trust and not lose out on billions in their European contracts.
They did appeal a few times, but this time it seems like they're no longer interested. To be fair, Trump could probably illegally deport half the Microsoft employees to a foreign prison camp if he'd feel like it and the courts seem powerless to stop him, so I don't blame Microsoft for falling in line.
I do blame the Dutch government for being blasé about the American threat and their refusal to move away from American technology for critical infrastructure.
50% of people do not support this. That’s a made up number. Trump has barely over 40%. He is an unpopular criminal who has shown time and again he will break the law. What even makes you think a criminal like this would win an election fairly?
Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.
He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.
I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.
As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.
I think what's missing from the 40% number is that it says nothing about how passionately the other 60% feels.
I'm not concerned about the fact that the election was close.
I'm concerned that, post election, the country is so deeply polarized. For the first time in my life, I fear there's a small but real chance that we're headed for civil war.
> Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.
For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...
Donald Trump has never won a majority vote in any public election. 49.9% is not a majority.
Trump won an election but the majority of his voters are anti-Israel; polls show all Republican demographics apart from boomers have a net-negative view on Israel (and a non-trivial amount are outright anti-Semitic).
That's a good point.
70% of voting eligible Americans didn’t do the bare minimum to prevent Trump. 30% voted for him directly, and 40% couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. I’m even willing to excuse third party voters. But the Trump voters and non-voters don’t get a pass, not at all. It’s absolutely the majority of Americans.
Not quite as clear cut. The EO triggers a national emergency under IEEPA, which is the basis of sanctions — so there is a well established legal underpinning. Unclear whether Microsoft has standing to challenge the designation of the ICC, and the courts give a lot of deference to the President on foreign affairs/national security. Microsoft is more “stuck” than “feckless” I think.
- "It is an EO, not a law."
Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power.
I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don't recall reading once, i.e. at the time of the sweeping China or GPU sanctions, a peep of protest along the lines of, "This should *not* be something a President should be able to do unilaterally! That's far too much discretionary power in the hands of one person! Congress should have to debate it". We didn't invent an imperial presidency in 2025; it's the agglomeration of decades of civic apathy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom... ("International Emergency Economic Powers Act"; C-f "14203" for the current topic)
It’s a result of Congress being unable to actually debate anything or fundamentally deadlocked for decades. While many Americans do not want the President to have this power, likely more don’t want Congress to have it either.
You not reading that commentary and it not taking place are two very different things! Plenty of folks expressed constitutionality concerns for several types of actions that the Biden admin took. However, you may find that the enacted sanctions hold up significantly better under meaningful scrutiny than Trump cutting off email for one person investigating the war crimes and evidence of genocide in Gaza at the hands of our proxy state in the ME.
Israel is not a proxy state, they self-determine oftentimes against what their allies have wanted them to do.
for the sake of understanding your position, could you provide some examples? to me it doesn’t seem clear that israeli foreign policy is far removed from US foreign policy or even in contention. The way we vote at the UNSC proves our support for some of the most grotesque of actions - deliberately killing infants and children. Their recent preemptive strike on Iran is, imo, further evidence of that proxy status.
Israel is very much not in the control of the US. The US didn’t want Gaza razed to the ground. The US didn’t want to start another regional war. We were try to get out if this mess. Our population voted to get out of military action in the Middle East.
Unfortunately for the US, we’re stuck with what Israel decides to do. A lot of Americans are in favor of supporting Israel for one reason or another. If Irsael is somehow controlling the United States via lobbying or whatever, that kind of invalidates the whole client state idea.
US is the most powerful country in the world but that doesn’t mean we directly control our allies as client states.
Well, Biden and Netanyahu famously did not get along by any means.
That commentary was far less prevalent and met a lot of resistance from the same people here.
Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.
My point is that those conversations were happening in earnest, irrespective of the GPs perception or lack thereof. Additionally, the element of scrutiny I described would still be interesting to explore with the particular EOs referenced by the GP.
Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-cut-china-off-more-...
Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.
How would fighting it serve Microsoft?
the last three administrations (Trump I, Biden, Trump II) have shown a willingness to use the law to punish the companies of political opponents. in this light, many companies are going to be reluctant to challenge the feds here
https://archive.is/QIvhV
US tech dominance has long been seen as a benefit and this administration is ruining that position.
> this administration is ruining that position.
this administration is ruining many things. China doesnt even have to fight to win new soft power - the US is doing it to themselves.
Agent Krasnov, mission accomplished.
In related news, the Danish government announced the switch to Linux this month, apparently to protect their sovereignty.
https://politiken.dk/viden/tech/art10437680/Caroline-Stage-u...
Europe had a plan after they learned Merkel’s blackberry contents were going to Fort Meade, but they never enacted it. They planned their own MS Office (and email) replacement. Even got as far as scouting data centre sites and identifying first 40M accounts.
The EU seems to have a problem with the whole "talk is cheap" thing. They're always making grand announcements of new initiatives like this but they hardly ever materialize.
Which part of Europe? There's plenty of alternatives for off the shelf, or self hosted mail. An oldie, but still good is gmx for mail.
I cant see the Azure salespeople in EU having a good day after this
It looks like Microsoft is doing everything it can to avoid repeating this in the future:
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, visited the Netherlands and announced new “sovereign solutions” for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for “a time of geopolitical volatility.” Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers.
not trying to justify it even a bit, but shouldn't people in his position (actively acting against the US-supported position) use something more secure? Like proton for starters?
I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).
They're not activists, but a 900 people intergovernmental org representing 100+ countries that needs to deal with a lot of bureaucracy efficiently.
They might start spending the time and money to move away from Microsoft's control, but there's few solutions that reliably work at that scale and for their needs, and I honestly wouldn't fault them for assuming that the arrangement that worked for decades wouldn't suddenly fall apart.
I think that's just another side of the same coin.
Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.
Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.
Not great news for the US tech industry...
This clearly shows the risk of letting someone else run your email services.
Do we know by now whether this was an Office 365 enterprise account or a regular "Hotmail" (Outlook.com) account?
Microsoft should’ve sued the government instead of immediately complying.
Should. Yes. But disappointing agent Krasnov will cost you future government business.
Not surprising that the biggest tech companies are complicit in the biggest war crimes and atrocities of a generation. In the 1940s it was IBM providing holocaust tabulation machines. In the 2020s, it's companies like Microsoft providing the tech infrastructure for AI-assisted targeting and pervasive surveillance in the ongoing Gaza holocaust.
As always, it's Palantir: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/palantir...
can we stick with the word genocide? i don't understand the need to make constant comparisons with the holocaust - they only undermine the point in my mind and are unnecessarily incendiary. it feels to me to be a product of a certain style of left-wing oneupsmanship
"The Gaza holocaust, the only holocaust where population level actually increased": https://www.memri.org/tv/sami-abu-zuhri-hamas-gaza-war-babie...
They aren't even able to count the number of civilians killed by Israel due to all of the hospitals in Gaza being blown up. There is no way to gauge the population (not that that would matter for the definition of genocide anyway). Israel is killing Palestinians as fast as the world will allow.
Completely appropriate.
Israel strikes again.
Nah, everybody watched closely what happened to Russia.
Disgusting. Yet another reason for Europe to ditch US-tech. Its also interesting to see how the US managed within a couple of month to destroy its trust, influence and soft-power it has built over many decades. Kinda like Musk did, but on a nation-wide scale. the orange emperor truly has a talent for wrecking anything he touches. maga all the way baby
This administration is destroying US soft power in a way that no rival could ever have imagined possible. The big winner here is China.
DOGE? Absolutely performative. Even things like USAID are a trival amount of money and miss the point that it's a very cheap way of getting influence. Plus I'm sure there's some CIA money buried in there too.
Abusing the power in such a trivial manner like suspending this account does nothing but hasten this downfall.
It's always worth adding that 20+ years ago the US passed a law colloquially known as the "Hage Invasion Act" [1], which not only authorized but requires the US to invade the Hage if ever any US servicemember are brought up on charges to the ICC. And this extends to servicemembers and leaders of allies.
Empires don't die quietly or quickly. This is going to be long, drawn out and chaotic.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
This is why my company will never, ever use any Microsoft product.
In the late 90's Microsoft suspended my email, thepimp@hotmail.com, with no warning or possibility to recover. We should view this latest ICC prosecutor suspension as part of a much larger, more sinister pattern.
Do not know why this personal tragedy is so funny to me. Continue to let that fury burn.
How on earth does the ICC plan to arrest Netanyahu or Putin? Even if one of them does make the mistake of setting foot in a compliant country, do they really think arresting a foreign head of state wouldn't be seen as an act of war?
The ICC doesn’t arrest anyone themselves, they issue arrest warrants. The 125 ICC signatory states are required to comply with the warrants under the Rome Statute.
that doesn't answer the question.
The ICC acts under the Rome Statute. Strictly speaking, it isn’t concerned about whether arrests succeed or not, that’s not its job. Its job is to investigate and (if possible) perform trials.
You don’t stop investigating war crimes and bring charges just because the accused is currently unavailable. The latter may change, and has already changed in the past. Furthermore, the mere act of investigating can already put pressure on the investigated.
Great way to build up European comms business and take revenue from American companies.
Europe already own the US comms network. Nokia and Erricsson are the only real players there.
Qualcomm and Cisco are both American companies that play an enormous role in our telephony and network ecosystem.
about as shocking as if a russian company did the same. if you dont get it yet, do you get it now?
Except that one is an ally and presumably the leader of the free world or something like that. The other is an aggressive dictatorial kleptocracy. So yeah, just as shocking.
Israel can do no wrong apparently
Did everyone miss the last line of the article and/or is everyone unaware of the fact this particular prosecutor has been suspended and is being investigated by the police for rape? Kind of pertinent to the story...
His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
He is not being investigated for rape. The article says "sexual misconduct"
Read other articles about the accusations themselves. It's rape.
> His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
At my organization, if an employee is suspended, I don't expect Microsoft to manage it. We have to do it ourselves. It is different elsewhere?
Even if so, do rapists not get email accounts anymore?
Rape allegations? Reminds me of Assange.
And he also lost his bank account, that’s hardly because of the allegations
Impertinent and disingenuous if you pay attention to the timeline; the EO was issued in February. The ICC has changed internal policies, and other members of the body sanctioned post-hoc have not had their email accounts suspended. The sexual misconduct allegations surfaced in May.
The sexual assault allegations were reported internally at the ICC last year.
Look at this article discussing the allegations, by AP, from last year: https://apnews.com/article/war-crimes-international-criminal...
Thank you for providing that context. My follow up question is do you think that had any pertinence towards the issuance of that particular executive order and subsequent suspension of their email account? Or, is it perhaps a persuasive nugget put in there to lend mild credibility to what Trump is doing?
I missed it because it was at the very end so thanks for pointing it out.
Sounds like Trump’s EO had nothing to do with with suspending the account?
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
ICC could’ve suspended his email themselves if they wanted to. Microsoft corp didn’t need to be included.
> The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
That sounds exactly like it was because of Trump‘s EO but MS doesn’t want to do it anymore
Perhaps Europe should try building their own tech industry so they have fewer problems like this.
Europe needs to stop selling its tech industry to non-European companies.
yeah, the problem Europe faces is insufficient barriers to foreign capital.
the EU does. US corps acquire most of our successful companies.
Having worked in the startup scene in Europe, the main exit strategy was to sell off to the American original - because most European startups were copycats of their American counterparts.
So I won’t say it’s all just the US coming in and buying everything up. It was partly European investors wanting to make a profit.
sure but that's a consequence of US firms having that capital. Ultimately all investors and owners want an exit, if not as a strategy, eventually as a retirement plan. It's just that US firms buying you out is the most likely exit in this world.
But the point remains that the EU also innovates. So to suggest that it doesn't and its reliance on US tech is somehow its own fault for not trying, is missing the detail.
Get angry at Europe, not Microsoft and USA.
Europeans live in a fairy land dream and need to wake up.
No one's angry. This just gives a bigger impetus to de-Americanizing the tech stack. I've recently taken part in a decision at our university to use a non-US based cloud storage provider for some relatively sensitive health data. The risk is just too high, and justifies paying a slight premium elsewhere. Sadly we're not likely to migrate away from Office 365 over here, but for any new vendor decisions, US now definitely equals premium for risk of fuckery.
What should we be getting angry at Europe for in this context?
Not seeing this coming, I guess. IT experts where warning of this for years but where essentially ridiculed instead. I still blame the US for backstabbing their allies though.
I can perfectly well blame my home country of America for this. This is terrible business policy that destroys America's business advantages with unjustifiable federal overreach.
That's an issue with America. For all American businesses.
It's funny seeing Americans start to repeat Russian line of thought.
"Who allowed you to live like that"...
The Trade Balance between the US and Europe was very balanced if you included services. So the US wasn't getting ripped off in Trade.
The dumb actions by the current US Administrations give the EU a big incentive now to buy their services elsewhere in the future, so Trumps fever dream about the disbalance might come true thanks to his own actions