It was a Wall Street Journal column by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “This is only the beginning,” he wrote. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick if necessary.”
Holy moly, I thought, my faith in newspapers is restored!
He was referring, naturally, to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, a body receiving much attention in the Philippines lately for reasons we shall discuss.
For me, however, that invigorating spurt of joy came from two major sources. First, Rubio is my newest hero, who I fervently hope will become the next US president. Especially after Vice President JD Vance—his most likely rival on the Republican side—recently succumbed to an avalanche of conspiracy theories involving Israel and Iran.
More importantly, though, I was cheering for the demise of the ICC, an organization I have long considered corrupt, overreaching, and political. I said so, in fact, in a column published last year. “Don’t get me wrong,” I wrote, “I understand the concept behind the Netherlands-based” court. “Like the United Nations, it is charged with providing its own brand of justice. And, like the UN, it has failed miserably in that endeavor.”
My outburst was prompted by the arrest and deportation of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to face trial by the ICC for alleged “crimes against humanity.” I said then—and repeat now—that I have no opinion on Duterte’s guilt or innocence. What I felt, and still feel, however, is that the ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines or anywhere else, and that giving it any violates the offending country’s sovereignty.
Which is exactly the point Rubio was making. “The ICC and its allies,” he wrote, “seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the US and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.” For America, he concluded, that would mean “the death of the US as a sovereign and independent nation…To accept the ICC is to surrender control of our national destiny.”
To which I say, “bravo!”
Rubio’s declaration got lots of reactions in the Philippines, especially given his visit to Manila last week during which he met with President Marcos. “The ICC is an independent body,” this newspaper proclaimed in an editorial, “and US policy will not legally invalidate its operations.”
Growled another columnist: “The peace and security of all people depend on the establishment and implementation of a strong rule of law in all nations. Otherwise, chaos and atrocities of all kinds—including war crimes—will prevail.”
The problem, of course, is that the world’s population doesn’t always agree on what constitutes “atrocities” and “war crimes,” differences fueled by local history, culture, and practice amid conflicting political values, outlooks, and interpretations.
While many, for instance, consider Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for whom the ICC has issued an arrest warrant—a heinous war criminal, millions of other intelligent and well-meaning people, including me, see him as a necessarily strong defender of a nation under attack. And though many Filipinos view Duterte’s faraway incarceration and trial as morally and legally justified, countless others perceive it as nothing more than politically motivated corruption.
Which gets to the crux of the matter: given the diversity of legal cultures, it’s hard to recognize the ICC as anything but a dogmatic political entity guilty of, in Rubio’s words, “grave overreach of its purported authority.” And easy to understand why major powers like the US, China, Russia, India, and Israel routinely ignore its pronouncements, while weaker nations including Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic—and now the Philippines—honor and bow to its every demand.
I’m sorry, folks, but I think we can do better.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, was a finalist in this year’s Next Generation Indie Book Awards. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
