Why U.S. Has Decided to Make Its Case Outside Global Court

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has a favorite phrase to describe the United States’ role as the world’s sole remaining superpower: “the indispensable nation.”

But twice in the last eight months most of the world’s democracies and Washington’s best friends around the globe found the U.S. not just dispensable but positively recalcitrant when it came to drawing up two major international treaties.

In December, 125 nations gathered in Ottawa to sign the treaty to ban land mines. The United States was not among them.

Then, on Friday, a United Nations conference here ended with the U.S. vowing to oppose a newly created international criminal court that has the backing of virtually every major American ally.

The court impasse drew much less public attention than did the land mine issue, which had the allure of the late princess of Wales as its patron, but it is far more significant.

If the court treaty gets enough signatures and ratifications to come into force, it will mark the first major international security organization to be boycotted by the U.S. since the League of Nations in 1919.

On Saturday, as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the proposed court as “a gift of hope to future generations and a giant step forward in the march toward universal human rights and the rule of law,” conference delegates were still puzzling at how isolated the U.S. came to be on the issue.

Only six of the 159 other nations represented at the Rome conference voted with the American delegation to oppose the court treaty.

The answer, it appears, is that the U.S. and its allies came to Rome with different, and ultimately conflicting, agendas.

Representatives of most of the Western democracies arrived intent on creating a court given broad powers to invoke uniform rules against widely recognized war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Many delegations were strongly influenced by a coalition of more than 800 human rights groups that included the most passionate and articulate advocates for a purist court divorced from the existing political order and empowered to pierce traditional boundaries of national sovereignty.

But in the American view, the ultimate guarantee of peace and security in the world lies in the strength and resolve of the United States, not a collection of judges and lawyers in The Hague who have no police force or any other ready way to make their decisions stick.

For the American delegation, a tribunal that could be used against what one diplomat called “the nasties”--dictators like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, perpetrators of genocide like Rwanda’s Hutu extremists, rebels like the Sudanese-backed group that kidnaps 12-year-olds and forces them into combat and sexual slavery--would be a desirable tool, as long as it could not impinge on Washington’s ability to project its military might wherever it sees fit.

The American stance appeared contradictory to court supporters and left close allies who normally look to Washington for leadership frustrated and finally angry.

What was doubly infuriating to many was that President Clinton and Albright repeatedly endorsed the concept of the court in public while American officials were, in the words of one chief delegate here, “waging guerrilla war” against the tribunal behind the scenes.

The accumulated resentment came pouring out Friday, on the last night of the five-week conference.

When a last-ditch American effort to amend the treaty text was defeated by a margin of 115 to 17, with 25 abstentions, the conference roared its approval with applause, stomping and shouts that extended for several minutes. In the context of the United Nations, where even the sharpest disagreements normally are cloaked in the most polite terms, it was an extraordinary demonstration.

One Pentagon official observing the scene was overheard joking to a colleague that what the conference needed was a visit from a flight of F-18s.

He wasn’t the only American delegate who was resentful. The countries that emerged as the most dogged supporters of a powerful court--Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries--were privately regarded by many U.S. representatives as a sort of quaint club of dilettantes whose members rarely expose their military forces to danger. If Iraq once again threatens the supply of oil that lubricates the world economy, they noted, it will be U.S. soldiers who will do the bulk of the fighting.

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For these American delegates, the court as proposed opened the door to the prospect of frivolous, politically motivated charges being brought against American service personnel by countries like Libya and Cuba, even if the United States did not sign and ratify the pact.

“Why should the United States be hassled . . . by these politically motivated kinds of charges . . . if we’re not a party to this treaty?” a senior official asked.

That argument was undermined as three of the few other countries in the world with far-reaching military responsibilities--Britain, then France, then Russia--turned away from the American position and embraced the court proposal.

The U.S. found itself aligned with Sudan, Iraq and Libya--the very nations the court is intended to deter.

Because the issue captured scant public attention in the U.S., there was little political downside for the administration.

On the other hand, the disadvantages of signing on to a court were made clear to the administration by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), whose Foreign Relations Committee would have to consider any treaty signed by the president.

Helms said he would kill any proposal for a world court that would have the remotest chance of bringing an American citizen before it.

In coming weeks, American officials here say, the administration will study the treaty text and consider its options. One is to try to block the court’s creation by lobbying to prevent the required 60 countries formally signing and ratifying the treaty.