Everyone is a hypocrite when it comes to international law
- Many countries ignore rulings they do not like, but only the US punishes others for alleged breaches of treaties to which it is not even a party
International law is for suckers. We applaud rulings by international judicial bodies against our enemies, but denounce them when they turn against us. That kind of double standard is perhaps the most consistent behaviour of countries in international politics today. It also says volumes about the ineffectiveness of international law, to be distinguished from the “rules-based international order”. The latter is almost its exact opposite, as it is imposed and enforced by only a handful of powerful countries.
So it’s par for the course that the Philippine government of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has rejected a ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which dismissed an appeal by Manila to block the court from investigating alleged human rights violations during the “war on drugs” launched by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.
After all, his vice-president is Sara Duterte, daughter of Rodrigo, and she is already openly critical of his U-turn on her father’s pro-China stance by tilting towards Washington and providing new bases for the US military. If he agrees to let the ICC go after the elder Duterte, he will risk an open breach within his government, if not a civil war. When it comes to human rights, the Marcoses themselves have some serious closet skeletons.
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The situation, though, exposes Manila and Washington to a dilemma, which clearly favours China. Both want to jump on Beijing for abnegating the judgment – delivered in 2016 by an arbitral tribunal, but registered with the Permanent Court of Arbitration, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – which upheld the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its maritime disputes with the Chinese in the South China Sea.
Beijing has been ignoring it ever since. The funny thing, though, is that the United States has not even joined the UNCLOS, unlike the vast majority of nations on the planet. The US is unique among nations to punish others and enforce treaties to which it is not even a party. For example, the Sino-British Joint Declaration over Hong Kong!
If the United States respects international law so much, it may want to hold Manila to the fire. But then, after all those years with the anti-US Duterte in power, Washington will do no such thing.
And, perhaps, there is no dilemma for Washington, which has always jumped on the high horse even when it is in no position to claim the moral high ground. It has been trumpeting the arrest warrant issued by the ICC against Russian President Vladimir Putin, for alleged war crimes.
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Wasn’t it not too long ago that Washington sanctioned the former ICC chief prosecutor and her family, and imposed visa restrictions on its personnel? That was after the court announced a probe into alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan. Her successor, the current chief ICC prosecutor, then announced the US probe had been put on the back burner indefinitely. The Joe Biden administration dutifully lifted those sanctions imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump, but not before denouncing the attempted war crime probe anyway. Another funny thing: the US is not even a state party to the ICC, again unlike most countries.
While Washington denounces China for not respecting the 2016 UNCLOS ruling, it has ignored, for more than three decades, a judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering the United States to pay reparations to Nicaragua in relations to a proxy war waged via the terroristic Contras group against the country. Managua has recently appealed to the United Nations – of which the ICJ is its judicial branch and is not to be confused with the independent ICC – to enforce the ruling. Good luck with that!
Meanwhile, Britain has been ignoring a legal advisory issued in 2019 by the ICJ to return the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius. It can’t do it because the US has a key military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands. This is despite an offer by Mauritius that the US could maintain its base there.
The mighty always write the rules.
