Cops of the World

 Phil Ochs' lyrics were never more true. 

We've got to protect all our citizens fair 

So we'll send a battalion for everyone there 

And maybe we'll leave in a couple of years '

[...]We'll find you a leader that you can't elect 

Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck

'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys 

We're the Cops of the World

As Miles Kington pointed out in one of his Independent columns, imperial Britain used to feel the same way. (He quoted one of Arthur Conan Doyle's lesser-known stories where one of the characters uses just that phrase, "police of the world".) But we never went as far as Donald Trump is now aiming to do, threaten the financial future of two leading officers of an international body.

The International Criminal Court is the spiritual descendant of the international military tribunals held in Nuremberg to prosecute Nazis and others under international law governing warfare. It also follows on from the UN-sponsored international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. However, there had long been a feeling among international jurists that a permanent international court was needed to prosecute genocide and war crimes and the UN duly set the ball rolling in 1989, though the prime mover then was Trinidad & Tobago, concerned more about international drug trafficking than war crimes. 

By implication, Trump is siding with Nazi, Balkan and African ethnic cleansers, not to mention international drug-dealers (who, by the way, have not featured as targets in his pitch for a second-term as president). The US is not a signatory to the Rome treaty setting up the ICC. She is therefore legally (if not morally) justified in ignoring its judgments and has every right to refuse to extradite any persons convicted. She does not have a right to use her control over the international banking system to threaten investigations in another country by citizens of other countries.