Here is the diplomatic fudge of the week: One president, South Africa’s, calls another, Russia’s, and begs him not to come visit. The Russian one, Vladimir Putin, reluctantly agrees and would instead send his foreign minister to a summit in Johannesburg next month. His South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, exhales in relief: He has just sidestepped a decision between arresting Putin on the tarmac, which would cause Russia to declare war, and not arresting him, which would flout international law and neuter the prosecution of genocides such as the one Putin is waging in Ukraine.
Crisis averted, or at least postponed, people might think. Opportunity wasted, I say. What South Africa should have said — in unison with the international community and its strongest member state, the US — is that an existing arrest warrant against Putin would of course be executed, his threats of war be damned. Such a gesture would have shown that the world is finally getting serious about enforcing international law in the face of Putin’s war crimes. Now people must hope for another occasion.
The guilt of omission here actually belongs less to South Africa than to the US. That is because, a quarter century after the US negotiated a treaty to launch the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, it never ratified that so-called Rome Statute. To this day, Washington does not recognize the tribunal it helped create. And without that support, the ICC and the 123 parties to the Rome Statute would keep flinching when faced with the worst evil.
Illustration: Yusha
Putin’s war of aggression is in that category. In March, the ICC’s judges issued arrest warrants against him and one of his minions for kidnapping and deporting Ukrainian children en masse — part of the definition of genocide. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is party to the Rome Statute, although Ukraine cooperates with the court, whereas South Africa is.
Moreover, South Africa is punching above its weight in world politics. It fancies itself a bullhorn of the “Global South,” the loose bloc of countries that prefer to remain “non-aligned” between the democratic West and autocratic Russia and China. Ramaphosa also leads a well-meaning but hopeless African effort to broker peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow. And he is about to host next month’s gathering of the BRICS, an economic grouping that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Putin, like the other four heads of state, was planning to attend — he had RSVPed before the ICC’s arrest warrant. If he did, Ramaphosa’s people would have to handcuff him or be in contempt of the court.
However, Russia “made it clear that the arrest of President Putin would be a declaration of war,” Ramaphosa said.
Leave aside what that war would have looked like, or whether the Kremlin has any military capacity left to bomb more cities on the other side of the world. For Ramaphosa to comply with the warrant, he still would have needed assurances from the only country resembling a world hegemon, the US.
Nonetheless, that superpower is strung up in its tortuous relationship with the ICC. The US’ allies, except Israel and Turkey, have ratified the Rome Statute. Many countries that have not — such as China, Belarus or North Korea — are among the biggest rogues in world politics. Not a club which one should seek to join.
Congress and various administrations, Republican and Democrat, have had their reasons, of course. The US’ specific fear is that the ICC’s prosecutors could one day accuse US soldiers of committing atrocities.
In a way, this yes-but-no is de rigueur in US foreign policy, where good intentions often succumb to an overweening neuralgia over any multilateral infringements of sovereignty. After World War I, the US proposed the League of Nations, but never joined it either. It also hashed out other agreements without then ratifying them, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, two protocols of the Geneva Conventions or — most bizarrely — the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
As for the Rome Statute, the US should not stay out of a treaty just to have the option of committing future war crimes with impunity. Instead it ought to trust in its own oversight and legal system to prosecute atrocities if they occur — the ICC only takes cases where there are gaps in the law of signatory countries.
Moreover, what many US policymakers underestimate is the staggering diplomatic cost of boycotting international conventions, and in effect snubbing the world. Poor countries in Asia, Africa and South America — that Global South I mentioned — especially seethe at perceived US hypocrisy in world affairs. That is one reason they often balk when Washington requests help, even on morally unambiguous matters such as opposing the Russian war of aggression at the UN.
The good news is that the US debate has started to move. The nadir of the relationship between Washington and The Hague — as of so many US relationships, really — came during the administration of former president Donald Trump, who even imposed sanctions on two ICC officials, including a prosecutor. Trump’s successor, US President Joe Biden, lifted those.
Moreover, since Putin’s invasion last year, the Biden administration and Congress have noticed that the US and the ICC are really on the same side, or could be. A new law allows the US government to cooperate with the court by feeding it intelligence. The departments of Justice and State are doing so; but the Pentagon refuses, still fretting that foreigners might someday prosecute US soldiers.
The US should long ago have joined the ICC it helped create, but Putin’s war of aggression now makes ratification urgent and imperative. As a participant, the US could then have a say in setting the court’s priorities and maybe even get an American on the bench. And to the Global South and the whole world, Washington would be signaling an end to hypocrisy, or at least less of it. This could unite more countries that value the rule of law and norms of civilization against those that do not, such as Russia.
Knowing that the US has its back, a country such as South Africa could then prepare differently for a visit by Putin and get the shackles ready. And that is the goal. People want Putin and his ilk to see their own future Nuremberg Trials as a real possibility. If he fears that, let him stay cooped up in the Kremlin, for all the world to see his guilt and shame.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. A former editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for The Economist, he is author of Hannibal and Me. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives it a strategic advantage, but that advantage would be threatened as the US seeks to end Taiwan’s monopoly in the industry and as China grows more assertive, analysts said at a security dialogue last week. While the semiconductor industry is Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” its dominance has been seen by some in the US as “a monopoly,” South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University academic Kwon Seok-joon said at an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, Taiwan lacks sufficient energy sources and is vulnerable to natural disasters and geopolitical threats from China, he said.
After reading the article by Hideki Nagayama [English version on same page] published in the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) on Wednesday, I decided to write this article in hopes of ever so slightly easing my depression. In August, I visited the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, to attend a seminar. While there, I had the chance to look at the museum’s collections. I felt extreme annoyance at seeing that the museum had classified Taiwanese indigenous peoples as part of China’s ethnic minorities. I kept thinking about how I could make this known, but after returning
What value does the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hold in Taiwan? One might say that it is to defend — or at the very least, maintain — truly “blue” qualities. To be truly “blue” — without impurities, rejecting any “red” influence — is to uphold the ideology consistent with that on which the Republic of China (ROC) was established. The KMT would likely not object to this notion. However, if the current generation of KMT political elites do not understand what it means to be “blue” — or even light blue — their knowledge and bravery are far too lacking
Taipei’s population is estimated to drop below 2.5 million by the end of this month — the only city among the nation’s six special municipalities that has more people moving out than moving in this year. A city that is classified as a special municipality can have three deputy mayors if it has a population of more than 2.5 million people, Article 55 of the Local Government Act (地方制度法) states. To counter the capital’s shrinking population, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) held a cross-departmental population policy committee meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss possible solutions. According to Taipei City Government data, Taipei’s