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pazimzadeh 5 days ago

what do you mean by 'invite to the table'? it's a criminal court, so it's going to deal with criminals

you're also assuming that israel is a good faith actor in all of this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#I...

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gspencley 5 days ago | parent [-]

> what do you mean by 'invite to the table'? it's a criminal court, so it's going to deal with criminals

"Criminals" in this context is meaningless. Please hear me out.

We're dealing with the concept of "International Law", which is largely understood as agreements / treaties amongst different countries.

This means that those agreements are no more valid or better or righteous than the countries that enter into them. If the nations involved share certain basic principles and make an agreement that aligns with those principles, the enforcement of these "laws" would come from those nations that are party to the treaty.

BUT - if one nation changes its mind, or changes its internal laws or decides "nah, no thanks" then how do you enforce these so-called "laws"? Do the other nations declare war on this nation?

It gets even worse than that. Because the very concept of "International Law" contains a logical contradiction.

The idea is that we are going make war (force, violence, death, destruction, conflict) subject to some kind of rules. The problem is, you can't. You can have two parties to a conflict agree to certain things: like not to murder civilians, or prisoners etc. if it can be helped. But at the end of the day it's an agreement that doesn't have any kind of binding power or significance because the idea of war means that two groups have decided that they can't reach any kind of rational agreement and so they have resorted to violent conflict.

War, by definition, is the absence of law. The absence of reason. The breakdown of civilization. It comes about when two groups cannot reason with one another; cannot agree with one another on what the rules ought to be.

Law is not a concept that comes out of nowhere. It is the idea that in order to protect individual rights and liberty, the element of force and violence is going to be taken out of civil existence and placed into the hands of a monopoly: the government, which sets the rules and enforcement mechanisms around when force is and is not justifiable within their respective operating jurisdictions.

When you have multiple nations that operate independently, each with their own laws and rules, all you can do is get them to agree to certain things, as long as they have some basis upon which to enter into an agreement.

My thesis is that a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights. That the dictatorship has everything to gain by getting the free nation to agree to what its evil desires want, while the free nation has only things to lose (through compromise, which is part and parcel of coming to terms).

That's what I mean by "invite to the table."

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jll29 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement [between any two or more states] with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights.

Wikipedia quote: "States and non-state actors may choose to not abide by international law, and even to breach a treaty but such violations, particularly of peremptory norms, can be met with disapproval by others and in some cases coercive action ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to war."

I think isolating bad actors can be a limited solution to the absence of physical power/not wanting to start a way, which ultimately as you rightly state corresponds to a situation of absence/breakdown of law that is best avoided.

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pazimzadeh 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm using "criminals" as a short-hand for "the worst of the worst in terms of rights-violating countries and dictatorial regimes" which is what you initially said.

If there is no such thing as international law, then what "rights" are these countries violating?

> When you have multiple nations that operate independently, each with their own laws and rules, all you can do is get them to agree to certain things, as long as they have some basis upon which to enter into an agreement.

It sounds like you do think all countries should be 'invited to the table' unless they fail to meet a standard which you yourself don't think exists. Confusing.

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bawolff 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> We're dealing with the concept of "International Law", which is largely understood as agreements / treaties amongst different countries.

Well this is true of a lot of international law, it doesn't apply here. The ICC largely deals with things that are preemptory norms which apply regardless of if you sign the treaty.

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gspencley 5 days ago | parent [-]

> The ICC largely deals with things that are preemptory norms which apply regardless of if you sign the treaty.

That's irrelevant. Anyone can form an independent organization and proclaim that nations of the world are subject to the rules set forth by that independent organization.

The point is that they have no intrinsic authority.

Authority comes from either moral sanction (of the people, by the people / consent of the governed) or through force.

In other words, the enforcement mechanism has to come from those that opt-in to that organization. i.e: through mutual agreement.

Which means that any "violator" nation can then say "GTFO and I dare you to come at me and see the full force of my police (if you try to arrest my citizens) or my military (if the participating nations declare war on me in an attempt to enforce these 'laws')."

So it still can only come about through mutual agreements between nations. Otherwise it is nothing more than a rogue body that sends armed thugs to try and enforce its rules while nations get to say "We neither recognize nor agree to those rules, nor do we recognize your authority to enforce them. However, you are subject to our laws while you are trying to execute your 'warrants' on our soil. And we will arrest YOU and throw you in our jails if you interfere with the rights of any one of our citizens."

	▲	bawolff 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> In other words, the enforcement mechanism has to come from those that opt-in to that organization. i.e: through mutual agreement. Tell that to the germans who were hanged at the nuremburg trials. They certainly didn't consent. You are right to a certain extent, that enforcement requires agreement or force, but at the same time the general rules and procedures of international law do have some force to them. They have this force because they are widely agreed on. This includes Israel which broadly agree all these things are illegal, they just take issue with that specific court. However their donestic courts recognize all the things the icc prosecutes as crimes locally broadly speaking. (Well there is some dispute over what forced population transfer means, but that isn't one of the crimes in question for this warrant)