War Crime Immunity
U.S. shielding Israel (and itself) from war crime allegations and threatening The Hague. Brics+ countries are determined to trade in their own currencies, German neo-colonial paternalism toward India.
War Crimes Have Never Stopped the U.S. Before
The U.S. has a long tradition of shielding Israel (and itself) from war crime allegations — and threatening The Hague.
By Jonah Valdez
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed a bill into law that gave the U.S. president the power to invade the Netherlands — or anywhere else on earth — in order to liberate an American citizen or citizen of a U.S. ally being detained for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, based in the Dutch city of The Hague.
While no president has yet made good on this military threat, it serves as shorthand for the U.S. relationship to the international institution of justice. (President Joe Biden, then a senator, opposed the amendment authorizing a Hague invasion before ultimately voting for the bill.)
The law was meant to fend off the specter of American troops standing trial for atrocities committed during the fledgling “war on terror,” but the U.S. horror of The Hague has its roots in the longstanding policy of unconditional support for Israel.
That same year Bush and his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon, withdrew the U.S. and Israeli signatures from the Rome Statute, the treaty that formed the ICC. U.S.-Israel opposition to any attempt by the court to hold Israel accountable for possible international law violations has been ironclad ever since.
The ICJ Ruling Confirms What Palestinians Have Been Saying for 57 Years
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Thursday, alleging that the leaders intentionally blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in order to target Palestinian civilians and targeted civilians with military strikes on Gaza. They also issued a warrant for Hamas leader Muhammad Deif, while also rescinding warrants for Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, two Hamas leaders killed by Israel. Israel has also claimed to have killed Deif.
The warrants, issued by a panel of three judges, require the 124 member nations of the Rome Statute to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant and turn them over to Hague officials for trial the moment that either wanted man steps onto their soil. The ranks of member nations includes many U.S. allies, such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada, along with most of the rest of the world.
Although the Biden administration has yet to comment on the arrest warrants, when ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan first applied for warrants in May, the president called the idea “outrageous.”
“Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” Biden continued during a White House event to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
Biden has kept his word in the months since, continuing to send arms to Israel and vote down all international measures that criticize Israeli conduct — or even call for a ceasefire — in the United Nations. In September, the United States voted against a U.N. resolution that called for the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, with 124 of the 181 U.N. General Assembly nations voting in favor of the measure.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration vetoed yet another ceasefire resolution in the U.N. Security Council — the fourth such resolution it has voted down. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Woods claimed that the resolution did not include calls for an immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, despite the fact that the document called for an unconditional release of the hostages. Among the 15 nations on the council, the U.S. was the lone dissenting vote.
“I think we’re heading for a significant showdown on international law between the United States and the rest of the world,” said Michael Lynk, an international law expert who served as the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. “I think this is going to open up an even wider breach between the U.S. on the one hand, in international law, and most of the rest of the world on the other.”
The ICC arrest warrants place U.S. and Israel allies in an awkward position: maintain U.S. partnership or respect its obligations to The Hague and international law. So far, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would “stand up for international law” and “abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.” France and the U.K. have expressed similar support, but Germany, which also provides military aid to Israel, has yet to issue any official statement on how it plans to respond.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also faces an ICC arrest warrant, has had to alter his travel plans to avoid arrest. In September, however, he was able to travel to and from Mongolia, a Rome Statute signatory, without incident.
UN Deadline
In addition to the ICC warrants, next September is the expiration of the U.N. deadline for Israel to cease its occupation of West Bank and East Jerusalem. Also, the U.N.’s top court, the International Court of Justice, is continuing to oversee the genocide trial South Africa has brought against Israel, but that process will likely take several more years.
“This alliance the United States has with Israel has really stained the image of the United States to the rest of the world,” said Lynk. He celebrated the ICC’s warrant announcement and said the measure is a rare form of accountability missing from the international community amid Israel’s war on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967.
“There has been virtually no red line drawn for Israel that it hasn’t crossed and that it understands in crossing all these lines, the international community doesn’t have the political will to demand accountability and the end of impunity,” he said.
But Lynk noted that such lack of accountability to Israel is longstanding. He said that among the reasons the U.S. opposed the Rome Statute and formation of The Hague’s criminal court had been concerned that the court’s statutes criminalize Israel’s settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Israel also cited the statute, which outlaws the forcible movement of civilian populations by an occupying military power, as among its reasons for opposing the treaty.
Since then, the U.S. has opposed other investigations into alleged Israeli atrocities, as well as the court’s attempts to hold American military members accountable for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. The Trump administration also sanctioned the ICC officials involved in past investigations into Israeli conduct, freezing their assets and banning their travel to the U.S. Biden overturned the measure but has continued to voice his support of Israel in the face of further ICC pressure. In June, a Republican-led House bill, supported by 42 Democrats, called for a new round of sanctions on the ICC.
While condemning the court’s due process when applied to Israel, the U.S. has cheered on some of the court’s other actions, including the ICC’s issuing of arrest warrants for Russian officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, over atrocities committed in its war in Ukraine.
“We either hate this institution, or we’ll cooperate on cases we like,” said Jennifer Trahan, an international law and human rights professor at New York University. “Initially Biden called these warrants ‘outrageous’ — but it’s the same institution that has issued warrants against Russian nationals and received praise for doing so. Ultimately you don’t want to have politics involved in a judicial institution — it should be allowed to do its work.”
She also referenced the U.S. support for other ICC investigations, such as the 2012 case against Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Biden’s State Department in 2021 put out a $5 million reward for information that leads to finding Kony, who remains a fugitive. The Obama administration also threw its support behind the ICC case against al-Bashir, the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the court.
“Keep in mind, this is the first time that arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court have been issued against any ally of the West — they’ve almost exclusively been in Africa,” Lynk said.
While human rights groups also praised the ICC warrants, some wondered whether Biden himself would be held accountable for complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The Biden administration has given more than $20 billion in military aid to Israel, fueling its military aggression in Gaza, where more than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than half of which are women and children, and more than 3,500 in Lebanon. And last week, the State Department said it would continue to arm Israel, even after the country failed to meet most of the administration’s demands to improve the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
There is legal precedent for similar cases against arms suppliers, such as the case of Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman who was convicted by The Hague in 2005 for complicity in war crimes due to his role in selling materials to Saddam Hussein’s government, which were used to create chemical weapons.
Lynk said that both the ICJ and ICC have legal standing to pursue a case against U.S. officials for aiding Israel’s atrocities, but due to limited judicial resources, such charges would be unlikely.
Update: November 22, 2024
This story has been updated with more information on President Biden’s support for the 2002 law that gave the U.S. president the power to use military force to retrieve U.S. citizens or allied citizens detained by the International Criminal Court. Biden did vote for the law as part of a larger appropriations bill, but had earlier opposed the amendment that added those specific powers to the bill.
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/21/icc-netanyahu-arrest-us-war-crimes/
Brics+ countries are determined to trade in their own currencies – but can it work?
By Lauren Johnston (The Conversation)
Brics+ countries are exploring how they can foster greater use of local currencies in their trade, instead of relying on a handful of major currencies, primarily the US dollar and the euro.
The forum for cooperation among nine leading emerging economies – Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russian Federation, South Africa, United Arab Emirates – emphasised this determination at their 16th summit in October 2024.
Why do BRICS+ countries want to trade in local currencies?
There are economic and political reasons to use local currencies.
Using local currencies to trade among themselves will lower the transaction costs and reduce these countries’ dependence on foreign currencies.
Over the past few centuries, the world’s economy has developed in a way that makes certain currencies more valuable and widely trusted for international trade. These include the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound. These currencies hold value around the world because they come from countries with strong economies and a long history of trading globally.
When people or countries trade using these currencies and end up collecting or holding them, they consider it “safe” because the value of these currencies remains stable and they can be easily used or exchanged anywhere in the world.
But for countries in the global south, like Ethiopia, whose currency (the birr) isn’t widely accepted outside its borders, trading is far more difficult. Yet these countries struggle to earn enough of the major currencies through exports to buy what they need on international markets and to repay their debts (which tend to be in those currencies). In turn, the necessity of trading in major currencies, or the inability to trade in them, can create challenges that slow down economic growth and development.
Therefore, even some trade in local currencies between BRICS+ members will support growth and development.
Oil exporter Russia is a unique case. Though there are fewer foreign currency constraints overall, Russia faces extensive financial sanctions for its war of aggression against Ukraine. Using a variety of currencies in its foreign transactions may make it easier to get around these sanctions.
Politically, the reasons for using other currencies primarily relates to freedom from sanctions.
One of the tools for making sanctions work is an international payments systems known as Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication). Swift was founded in 1973 and is based in Belgium. It enables secure and standardised communication between financial institutions for international payments and transactions. And it’s almost the only way to do this.
It was first used to impose financial sanctions on Iran in 2012, and has since been used to impose sanctions on Russia and North Korea.
If a country is cut off from Swift, it faces disruptions in international trade and financial transactions, as banks struggle to process payments. This can lead to economic isolation and challenges in accessing global markets.
The reality, and possibility, of exclusion from Swift’s payments system is one of the factors galvanising momentum towards a new payments system that also relies less on the currencies of the countries that govern Swift – like the euro, Japanese yen, British pound and US dollar.
What are the likely challenges they will face?
The Brics+ plan to use local currencies faces some hurdles.
The central problem is the lack of demand for most currencies internationally. And it’s hard to supplant the international role of existing major currencies.
If, for example, India accumulates Ethiopian birr, it can mainly only use them in trade with Ethiopia, and nowhere else. Or, if Russia allows India to buy oil in rupees, what will it do with those rupees?
Since most countries seeking alternatives to dollar dependence tend to sell more than they buy from other countries, or are lower-income importers, they must consider what currencies to accumulate via trade.
When it comes to payment systems, at least, alternatives are emerging.
Brics+ is creating its own, Brics+ Clear. Some 160 countries have signed up to using the system. China also has its own, Cross-border Inter-bank Payment System, which broadly works the same way as Swift.
There’s a risk, though, that these payment methods could merely fragment the system and make it even more costly and less efficient.
Has trading in local currencies been done elsewhere?
Not all trade is done in major western currencies.
For example, in southern Africa, within the Southern African Customs Union, the South African rand plays a relatively important role in cross-border trade and finance. Just as in south-east Asia the currencies of Singapore and Thailand compete to be the dominant currency in the sub-region.
China – the world’s biggest exporter and producer of industrialised goods – is also signing bilateral currency swap agreements with countries. The goal is greater use of the renminbi in the world.
As a means of circumventing sanctions, India and Russia recently trialled using the rupee to trade. Russia’s oil exports to and through India have risen strongly since the Ukraine war and some 90% of that bilateral trade takes place in the rupee and rouble. This leaves Russia with a challenge – what to do with all the rupees it has accumulated. These deposits are sitting in Indian banks and being invested in local shares and other assets.
Another example of efforts to side-step major international currencies is China’s model of “barter trade”. The model works like this: China exports, for instance, agricultural machinery to an African country and receives payment in that country’s currency. China then uses that currency to buy goods from the same country, which are then imported back to China. After these goods are sold in China, the Chinese trader is paid in renminbi.
Ghana is one country involved in this barter model. Challenges facing the model include the digitisation of payments and trade, and trust – high levels are needed to establish and maintain relationships between trading parties as individuals and as businesses. It also requires some level of centralisation and coordination, but lacks strong laws, regulations and industry standards. This means that different platforms and enterprises may not be compatible, which can add to transaction time and costs.
Another example is when Chinese investors in Ethiopia make profits in birr. They use these birr to buy Ethiopian goods, like coffee, and export the goods to China. In China, when they sell these goods, they receive renminbi. So they transfer their profits from Ethiopia to China by increasing Ethiopia’s exports to China.
Anecdotal reports suggest this is feasible at a small scale but has relatively high coordination costs.
There could be other challenges. For example, if Chinese buyers pay Ethiopian coffee farmers in their local currency, instead of US dollars, it could lead to fewer dollars being available overall. Some international transactions still rely heavily on dollars.
How should BRICS+ nations structure their arrangement?
There is no simple, or easily scalable, solution to moving past the reliance on major international currencies or circumventing Swift.
A fast, digital payment system is needed. This system would calculate and balance currency demand efficiently. It must also be reliable, replace parts of the current system, and not create extra costs for countries that aren’t using it yet.
Although some BRICS+ members, like Russia, may have more interest in fast-tracking change, this may be less in the interest of other Brics+ members. A move away from Swift, for instance, requires buy-in from local financial institutions, and those in African countries may not be under pressure to shift to a new lesser-known platform.
Given these challenges, I argue that BRICS+ should progress incrementally. What can happen soon, though, is to conduct some trade in local currency.
NB: Economist Lauren Johnston recently wrote a paper on this development.
https://theconversation.com/brics-countries-are-determined-to-trade-in-their-own-currencies-but-can-it-work-243053
