I remain perplexed about how that was given up for seemingly nothing, much like how Donald Trump curiously decided to betray the YPG for seemingly nothing too. You got any guesses on that one, given the YPG were the troops that did great work in defeating ISIL for us all? I feel like they didn't deserve that.

Yet you cited "Israel is uniquely popular" as a reason for why they get their way.

Which is not true.

>Israel has a vocal minority that loves it. It has not had, until last last year, a vocal minority that hates it

It not only had a vocal minority that hates it it had a vocal minority of Jews that loathe it.

The minorities arent the point though, the money and the foreign influence over America's government is.

Remember the "vocal minority" in Moldova who fight for pro Russian policy? Theyre not "vocal minorities" thats just Russia.

Israel is no different. It's a foreign country taking control over the American government.

>Even today, very few voters would trade pocketbook issues for a pro-Palestinian policy portfolio

That's probably increasingly less true these days (genocide isnt a historically popular policy) but beside the point.

The "minority" which operates on behalf of a foreign government is getting real close to ramming $200 per barrel oil down everybody's throats not because theyre "motivated" but because America is run along plutocratic lines and is fully captured by that foreign government.

>It’s a tempting tale, and simplifying model, to assume unilateral causes of policies

I assume that'd where the "uniquely popular" thing came from.

Hungary though technically still a party, is withdrawing from the Rome Statute: https://www.reuters.com/world/hungarian-lawmakers-approve-bi...

They would not have to. It will be up to your military to come to allied country and shoot their way through. This might be physically possible but I would imagine that the consequences of it to the standing of the US would be cataclysmic. So unless it is a former president I suspect the US will rather use some severe sanctions and still risk a payback.

We do.

> Two major party leaderships nominate their candidates, backed by hundreds of millions of corporate and special interest funding.

Other Americans. You’re also discounting the impact small-dollar donors have had in American politics as of late and the public primary system.

> Then some process called electoral college (that has some vague resemblance of the plebiscite) weights two candidates and picks a winner.

1) The Electors of the Electoral College are in turn elected by the people of the United States.

2) This only applies to the President and Vice President of the United States and no other public office.

3) Most States have laws against faithless electors, but the slate of electors appointed by each State’s elected legislature reflects the popular vote within that State.

> The candidate then has to obtain approval for every cabinet position from the congress (which is also getting funding in hundreds of mils from major corporate and special interest lobbying groups), that ensure that people occupying cabinet positions have policies aligned with their financial donors

Half of what you’re doing is just describing politics, but yes, the elected President makes appointments, and the elected Senate confirms or denies them.

I’m not. (EDIT: just edited this in, though I thought I’d already written this part earlier when I quoted you. My bad.)

> You are the one who said we defend American interests. If you can't defend that statement, then just retract it.

We do defend America’s interests, but the President—any sitting President—sets the agenda for how the American State and Military goes about it. Resource allocation is a part of leading. What part of that is difficult to understand?

Bruh, are you for real? The very first comment I responded to in this chain of comments was this:

> That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.

Which was in response to this:

> The ICC continues to be targeted because it is a threat to American sovereignty and has been for a long time. The US is not a party to the treaty. Neither is Israel. That the ICC is targeting Israel is clear evidence that the ICC can and will target the US at some point.

I don’t think the ICC is in a position to do jack shit to Americans in real political terms, and what we’re discussing in this sub-thread is whether it would be legitimate for them to even try. If you’re going to follow a thread, take note of the usernames and who is saying what.

> But putting that aside for a second; how is not acceptable for the ICC to have an opinion on the events that have unfolded in the Gaza strip and accordingly issue a warrant?

The answer to this comes down to the following three questions:

1) Should the ICC have jurisdiction over the war time activities of non-party States.

2) Is Israel actively committing a genocide.

3) Is it the ICC’s prerogative to attempt to prosecute the leaders of a nation at war over the conduct of how they prosecute that war.

On all of these, my answer is the same: no. That is why it is unacceptable for the ICC to infringe on the sovereignty of Israel and issue an arrest warrant for their Prime Minister.

This is also separate from my view on whether I think some IDF service members and officers may have committed war crimes. I think it’s clear that at least in some cases, they have, but unfortunately there really isn’t a lot of recourse to serve battlefield justice outside the Israel’s laws around military justice.

> Surely given Israel is a sovereign nation, that is separate from the US and the EU, isn't that entirely acceptable?

First, Israel is an American ally surrounded by current and historically hostile powers. It is long-standing American policy to support and defend Israel. That’s our prerogative, and we do so how we see fit in accordance with our own laws.

Second, where the hell is the EU coming into this? The ICC is an international court, but they’re not an EU court. The ICC’s largest financial contributor is actually Japan, and the EU as an institution is not party to the Rome Statute even though all of its current members are, with the caveat that Hungary has already passed a law to start its withdrawal from the Rome Statute so in about a year this will no longer be true. The EU also does not have one foreign policy with respect to its relations with Israel and their willingness to uphold the Rome Statute and the arrest warrant out for Netanyahu, only its members do.

> I feel like your position continues to double-dip. The US can do whatever it wants at home and abroad and the EU is not afforded the same agency, because if it does have strong opinions then that's evidence that it will ultimately interfere with US internal policy.

Every nation sits on a sliding-scale of agency where on one end you’ve got America and the PRC and on the other end you’ve got, I dunno, Kiribati? The EU counts some of the richest and most powerful countries in the world with their own very active foreign policy interests well outside the continent and who are very much on the America/PRC end of the spectrum. I don’t want to hear any complaints that maybe facing down America might be a bit much for them, I mean hell, we don’t want to get into a shooting war with Europe either, Europe could do some real damage and it doesn’t profit us. America is the cornerstone of NATO which is a defensive alliance intended to protect both of us (and Canada) from outside aggression and so while I think it’s fair to say America has not expected total submission in every and all foreign policy matters, our dumbass of a VP and his butt-buddies aside, a little deference in some foreign policy matters is expected.

If individual European countries want to build up their militaries and challenge this arrangement, or if they want to do so within the framework of the EU (and there has been much activity recently to figure out if they should and how), they’re going to have to pay for it, which probably also means sacrificing at least some of their social welfare policies at the altar. A blue water navy and a crap-ton of military logistical capacity helps.

> and the same is true of US leaders.

The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.

If you don’t care about any of that, sure, you can make the argument the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.

Do note that the key difference between America in 2025 and Germany in 1945 is that we’re not a diminished State without really any sovereignty left to claim and haven’t recently invaded pretty much the entirety of Europe with the intention of subsuming it into a greater Empire and spent the last 4 years systematically destroying the entire Jewish population therein. That’s some important context and shouldn’t be overlooked in your zeal to put American Presidents on trial.

How could you think that 161 convictions was enough for this? Far more than that had direct agency and culpability for those crimes.

Nope. Not even close.

> I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?

This is international law, which is a name used for a huge mess of international treaties. What is there to say? There is no international police. If you don't respect international law, there is nobody to compel you to do anything. In essentially every case, you're beyond the reach of the counter party to the treaty (especially in this case since the ICC has zero reach). This is true whether "you" refers to a person or a country.

Hell, there's even valid reasons this keeps happening like that the political situation sometimes changes far faster than treaties can be negotiated.

There were some truly exceptional times in history, like the ending of WW2, where everyone agreed on a few rules and some limited things happened, but that time is long gone. Most countries find the international order deeply unfair, especially the "you're not allowed to move any borders unless you're one of the original nuclear powers" part. Russia is allowed to attack ... Iran is not. The "non-aligned movement" is essentially aligned on a single point: they all want to start limited wars against one or multiple of their neighbors but would face total economic collapse or worse if they did that and the US responded. That is the last straw holding the UN treaties in existence, the only enforcement mechanism that has survived 80 years of UN disintegration.

And now Trump got elected and has been sighted near said last straw with scissors, asking for money, complaining the straw costs too much. But don't be fooled: there's a lot of shouting at Trump, but nobody working to strengthen the treaties with a few more straws. And while I hate Trump, you have to give him this one: if he cuts, he may be giving the start signal for WW3, but saying he's causing it, is absurd.