> At some point Netanyahu will be out of power.

I wish and hope that's true.

But I think some of your analysis is really incorrect, unfortunately.

> He's been voted out of office before.

Yes, he was out of power for about a year of the last 15 or so years, and got back into power.

> He's in trouble politically.

True, and I hope it stays that way. However the elections are still two years away, there doesn't seem to be any pathway to forcing the elections to happen sooner, and he is gaining ground, not losing it. It is very much a possibility that he holds on to power.

> He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead.

I'm not sure he actually promised a short war. That said, the war against Lebanon is probably the most successful thing he's done in terms of restoring his power. It's entirely possible that acting more aggressively against more enemies is a winning strategy for him.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

This basically reads as completely wrong to me. Almost every politician on every side of the aisle in Israel has condenmed the ICC. The intrusion into Israeli sovereignity is a big blow to Israel, implying that Israel's democracy isn't trusted to hold people accountable by ourselves.

Even if privately opposition leaders would want Netanyahu gone, giving him up would be suicide politically.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

That seems very unlikely. If the next gov really hates him they might prosecute him domestically (the things he is accused of are all illegal under israeli law), but i can't imagine they would hand him to the icc.

Not just because that would look bad, but also because icc is supposed to be a court of last resort only to be used where domestic courts fail.

"instead" ?!

There was already a cold war with Iran before Oct 7, and many warned it could pop any moment. It could be said to the detriment of Netanyahu that he ignored that and didn't want this on his watch. Iran was priming and planning for a moment where a joint Hezbollah-Hamas ground invasion would have put the Israeli military to a stress beyond its means, and with many thousands casualties on the first day. It would have happened sooner or later if it wasn't for the Hamas independent action.

Also, on Oct 2023 he and other officials said it is going to be a long battle from the beginning. He never once promised this to be short. And also, a clear victory from a long war gets him more electorates, so he aligns his own victory with Israel's.

It will not happen to that next administration would turn over Netanyahu to the ICC. Even if they wanted to, he would seek asylum in the U.S. Embassy and he would certainly be granted asylum.

One thing I've learned these past 20 years: when an awful political leader seems to obviously be undergoing a downfall and on their way out of power, you can be sure they'll be there 20 years later. And they'll outlive all of us too, even if they're already geriatric.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC

The next person to win a fight for a most exclusive position may decide it should be of substantially less value.. But usually only as a tactic to get the position.

>The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

I thought it was the USA that makes these decisions

International crime or not, the long war with Iran like the long war with Russia is not a choice by Biden/netanyahu. It is always Iran here … can Iran promise a short one. Russia will as well. Just no Isreal or Ukraine.

I have no idea how to resolve this. It is a mess. But one side needs to be PC and the other side was constrained to do this and that. When is icc warrant on putin and get him really arrested.

We hope for peace, rule based … but that is hope. One side disarming will not help.

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>What this really does is remove the ICC's authority.

Not yet. The UK and Italy both declared that they would be legally obligated to abide by the decision, which is unprecendented and historic in itself. Sure, Netanyahu could call their bluff and go to these places, and if they backpedal, then it would undermine the ICC's authority like you said. But Netanyahu would have to call their bluff for that to happen, or they would have to do an about-face before he arrives.

But until then, I would suggest that even the fact that just two well known western democracies quickly backed the ICC's authority (regardless of what they thought of the ruling) just gave the ICC more authority than it ever had before.

The UN mediation and general work in Palestine was objectively a failure.

Korea... it preserved South Korea's dictator in power, which allowed for a modern democratic and prosperous South Korea to happen. Back then it was little more than protecting the US-backed dictator against the Soviets-backed one. Both were pretty terrible and murderous.

The Nuremberg Trials were backed by the most force the world had ever known! And even then, the Allies wiped their ass with the rules (that they mostly made up ex post facto) and grabbed any Nazis that were useful and plenty that were not. Even putting aside all the Paperclip scientists, who absolutely knew what they were involved with, the US took plenty of SS officers - Otto von Bolschwing, Klaus Barbie, Alois Brunner, etc. Everyone violated their own “rules” left and right and occasionally, if they could be bothered, made up justifications later. This is not a controversial view: in fact the contemporary British opinion was that you can’t make up laws ex post facto and the Nazis should just be executed. The Soviets anticipated a show trial and their “judges” did nothing before phoning Moscow first. The Nuremberg trials were the 1940s legal equivalent of Calvinball.

To the mediators, I’m unsure why that would be an example. We’ve had mediators for a very long time and UN mediation is only the latest flavor of that.

> Nuremberg Trials

They were effectively arbitrary show trials.

I mean a tiny proportion of nazi war criminals were ever prosecuted and the (covertly pro-nazi) West German government pardoned pretty much everyone who weren’t executed in a handful of years.

Also the Soviets (and even the Allies) continued doing whatever they wanted with no consequences.

Of course at least establishing a clear precedent was a huge achievement.

No, Putin's decision to launch the full-scale invasion in 2022 is what "got us" the war in Ukraine right now.

None of his claimed grievances in regard to the CFE Treaty amount to casus belli, by any rational metric. And they certainly weren't the core of what ultimately moved him to make that decision. They were just another part of his giant smokescreen, basically.

As his Deputy Foreign Minister put the matter, quite succinctly:

   Bondarev also recalled that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov screamed at US officials, including First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, stating that ”[Russia] needs Ukraine” and that Russia will not ”go anywhere without Ukraine” during a dinner amidst the bilateral US-Russian strategic stability talks in Geneva on January 10, 2022.[67] Bondarev added that Rybakov vulgarly demanded that the US delegation ”get out with [their] belongings [to the 1997 borders]” as US officials called for negotiations.

Justice is self hypnosis and self idealization that settles in when there is plenty to go around. If there isn't its just a threatening word , whose values is mostly "we get you all when the good times roll back around ." Which they usually don't do unless there are major scientific breakthroughs generating surplus and a amnesty after armistice.

"The ICJ is at least holding out against that future."

ICJ? Are you implying that what I said, implied or inferred was against the ICC?

Let me be clear, I nether said, meant nor inferred any of those things. In fact I'm in favor of the ICC despite the fact it's a paper tiger in areas where it's most needed.

Edit: that said, like many, I've some criticisms all of which other comments have echoed. Like most things the ICC is a compromise in an imperfect world, it's better than nothing though.

Merely getting "declared" is not enough — North Korea "declares" itself to be a democracy — what matters is actually doing it.

The relevance of the ICC etc. is rooted in how much people actually do, not just say.

Apologies, typo, ICJ -> ICC

Now I'm wondering if airspace spreads out horizontally from the coast the same way that shipping rights do.

I'd assume so, but a quick skim-read didn't tell me either way.

If it does, then they'd pick between going through Spanish or Moroccan airspace, because the straights of Gibraltar are narrow enough you can see Africa from Gibraltar.

> If you mean to imply that Europe is somehow going to shoot down their planes if they fly over that’s obviously absurd.

Shoot down? No.

Force them down? There's precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

You will find that you'll get much better discussions if you do some introspection on how you might misinterpret someone when you think someone says something that you think is 'obviously absurd'. Why would they say something that is obviously absurd?

Maybe it is more revealing that you jump to the obviously absurd interpretation rather than the even more obvious, and not absurd one?

> Presumably if they get invited to Europe it will be with assurance from the state that nothing happens to them.

I believe ICC members are obligated to enforce its warrants, which is why Putin couldn't attend BRICS in South Africa last year. And this applies to almost all the western world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

So no, it's not toothless.

"Invitations" for government officials are pretty much invitations in name only.

Many of the emails of Assad and his government have been leaked and show in great detail how various governments interact with each other. And how Assad ran his country by forwarding NYT articles...

The typical route to the US from Israel passes over much of Europe.

And yet not all pieces of paper are believed to be equal. Some pieces of paper will buy you a loaf of bread and others will buy you a tank full of gas. The difference lies in the magic squiggles printed on the pieces of paper. In other words, the belief that a certain number value equals a fair exchange for a physical good or service. This is a consensual belief. If an extra 0 appeared magically overnight on every piece of paper, what has changed? People will believe they have “more” than they did before. If instead of magic, the government announced a policy of reissuing recycled bits of paper that have had an extra zero printed on them, would people believe they had “more”?

Bear in mind that most of the time, sanctions not only prevent you from doing business with the sanctioned entity, but also with any other entity that's doing business with them.

I think you are agreeing with that. There is not some international law that says countries must deal.with countries they don't want to. It's a national thing.

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Geography is the problem not technology.

> Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.

This falls clearly under 'not wanting to'.

> bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from.

To be clear, bombing is not colonizing. Colonizing entails undoing the current culture and replacing it with your own. You don't replace culture with bombs, but rather by taking the young people, educating them in America, and then shipping them back a la Britain (among other things). You have to do this for several decades, or maybe even a century, maybe multiple centuries.

> However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working

Sure... Such was in the interest of America