The Risks and Weaknesses of the International Criminal Court from America’s Perspective

In the aftermaths of both World War I and World War II, the United States engaged in significant domestic political debates over its proper place in the world. President Wilson’s brainchild, the League of Nations, was the centerpiece of the first debate, and the United Nations the centerpiece of the second. The conventional wisdom is that the dark forces of isolationism defeated Wilson’s League in the Senate, and that the advent of the Cold War gridlocked the nascent United Nations, preventing it from assuming the role intended for it in preserving international peace and security. While the mythology surrounding both of these important debates is wrong and incoherent in many respects, there is no doubt of the far-reaching implications of American political decisions attendant on them. Neither the debate over the League nor the one over the United Nations settled the issue of America’s proper relationship with other governments and international organizations. During the Cold War, there was little or no occasion for the debate to re-emerge in the United States because the life-or-death struggle with Communism dominated U.S. attention, at least at the national level. Nonetheless, below the surface, largely in academic circles, those debates favoring international legal measures to constrain the independence of nation states continued their efforts, both here and in Europe. Although motivated by a wide range of considerations, many of which were contradictory, one broad theme was that it was the nation state itself, and the seemingly inescapable at-