US won’t put up with them: International courts have no weight and no meaning

Last month, Nuremberg, a film about the Nazi war crime trials, was released to critical acclaim. The film highlights the investigation into the crimes undertaken by officials in the Third Reich before and during World War II. The trials, held shortly after the war, resulted in some jail sentences and a handful of executions. They also gave liberal internationalists the idea that such trials had teeth. After all, the International Court of Justice – which only prosecutes states – had been founded shortly before the trials. And just under half a century later, it was followed by the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals.

These courts have given their supporters, primarily Europeans and sporadic liberal internationalists spread throughout the rest of the world, that international law has true weight, and that these courts have meaning.

They have neither.

War crime trials – or the suggestion of war crime trials – are not just in movies and history books: They’ve also been in the news lately. Democrats in the United States have, over a thinly reported article from the Washington Post, have accused Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of ordering what they deemed an illegal second strike on drug runners in the Caribbean, having given an order to “kill everybody,” including those who survived the initial strike. This single accusation spurred a thousand think-pieces, including many which said Hegseth had breached international law. After the tidal wave of fury had already passed, however, a report from the New York Times revealed that Hegseth had never given any such order.

Across the Atlantic – or the Bering Strait – the European Union has been demanding that President Donald Trump’s peace deal not include any sort of amnesty for Russian officials. The EC’s Commissioner for Justice and Democracy, Michael McGrath, said Russians “must be held accountable for those crimes and that will be the approach of the European Union in all of these discussions”. Ukraine’s government has likewise argued that prosecutions of Russian officials must be included in any future peace agreement.

Unlike Hegseth, who did nothing wrong, the Russians have committed war crimes. But both accusations and implications of facing trials over a breach of international law betray a frightening lack of understanding how geopolitics actually works, and underscores why liberal internationalists have been stuck on their back foot the past few years.

The critical aspect regarding Nuremberg which made it effective was that it was a military tribunal. The victorious Allied Powers ran it as an extension of military might. Soldiers guarded the prisoners, and it was held in the defeated country, Germany. The verdicts could be enforced because the enforcers had guns, and lots of them, and were occupying the entirety of the country.

Contrast that with the two major international “courts,” the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. The former is a relatively new, late-20th century creation. Neither Russia nor the United States is a party to it. America is so opposed that it has on the books a law, the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which allows the president to use military force – without first consulting Congress – to free American soldiers, officials, or anyone else who was working for the American government who have been imprisoned by the ICC. Yes, the ICC is located in a fellow NATO member country, the Netherlands.

But that does not matter here. What matters is that the US has made clear that the ICC does not apply to it, and it can do so because it has the guns and the ICC does not. While Russia does not have the same type of law on the books, it likely would also take action to protect its officials against arrest.

What about the International Court of Justice? Both Russia and the United States cannot be impacted by adverse verdicts because they, as members of the United Nations Security Council, can simply veto any ruling. The United States has not passed an American Service-Members’ Protection Act-equivalent here because it does not need one (thanks to the veto power), but also because the UN has, at times in the past, been a helpful tool for the United States. 

The point of the above exercise is not to rub it in the faces of left-liberals and Europeans, who love the concept of international law and, specifically, international courts. Out of all the continents with members that recognise the ICC,  it is Europe which has the most countries that do so (43; Africa is next at 33). It is to underline that they weaken their own cause by shouting about breaking international law incessantly. Russia committed very real war crimes, but there is no real chance that governing officials will ever be prosecuted because Russia, unlike Germany, has not lost the war and is not occupied by the victorious powers. Hegseth committed no crimes, but the false accusations only serve to weaken the idea that said accusations were real in the first place.

Like with everything else, the trouble for those preaching about international law is that they do not want to actually spend the money to make it a reality. Europe has taken months to agree to a paltry €150 billion defence scheme (which bizarrely now includes Canada), a fiscal drop in the bucket. If they are not willing to spend the dough to defend themselves, will they ever spend enough to will international law into reality?

No, of course not. For a court to have weight, for international law to have meaning, there must be a weapon behind it. Police have the ability to arrest because, if you resist, you could be beaten or shot.

If a major power ignores international law, there is no police force. Liberal internationalists have been trying to wish one into existence for over a century – since the unfortunate Woodrow Wilson sought to impose the Versailles settlement on the world – but it has never materialised. And it won’t materialise now.