May 8, 2024 | The Wall Street Journal
An Aggressive ICC Puts U.S. Troops in Danger
If the International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israelis, Americans would likely follow.
May 8, 2024 | The Wall Street Journal
An Aggressive ICC Puts U.S. Troops in Danger
If the International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israelis, Americans would likely follow.
Regarding your editorial “Will the ICC Self-Destruct to Hurt Israel?” (April 27): House Speaker Mike Johnson rightly says the rumored International Criminal Court warrants for Israeli officials “would directly undermine U.S. national-security interests” by creating a precedent for issuing “arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats and American military personnel, thereby endangering our country’s sovereign authority.”
The ICC has an open investigation of alleged U.S. war crimes relating to Afghanistan, which the court placed on the back burner in 2021. The Military Coalition, representing more than 5.5 million current and former U.S. service members, has warned that the Afghanistan investigation “could lead to the arrest, prosecution, and detention of American military personnel and veterans in foreign countries.” If the ICC issues arrest warrants for Israelis, Americans would likely follow.
Two-thirds of the ICC’s 127 million euro budget is provided by the following close U.S. allies: Japan (25 million euros), Germany (18 million euros), France (13 million euros), U.K. (13 million euros), Italy (9 million euros), South Korea (8 million euros). These countries all rely on U.S. troops to defend them from the increasingly aggressive Russian and Chinese governments.
Do these close U.S. allies really want to endanger the U.S. troops that defend them by funding the ICC’s baseless, politically driven proceedings against Israel? Appropriate channels exist ffor these allies to convey to the prosecutor and other ICC officials the strong arguments that ICC warrants for Israeli officials would be contrary to the ICC’s own rules. As a White House spokesman has said, “The ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation.” The U.S. should strongly encourage its ICC-funding allies to weigh in as well.
Orde F. Kittrie is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served for more than a decade as a State Department attorney and policy official.