Alfred P. Rubin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Law at the Fletcher School at Tufts.
"Secondly, international law does not involve personal crimes. I know that a lot of international lawyers disagree with that statement, and I'm prepared to take them all on. (I have, in a number of articles.) There is simply no-I repeat, no evidence in the usual logic of international lawyers to support the notion of an international criminal court other than the positive law document concluded in Rome in 1998.
"Victor's justice, as in Nuremberg, applied our version of international law to the defeated enemy. It did not apply our version of international law to our own people who admitted war crimes. There is documented evidence of this. For example, the note was passed to the court during the trial of the commander-in-chief of the German navy, Admiral Doenitz, saying it was a war crime for him personally to be involved in the unrestricted submarine warfare decree that Germany had made. Admiral Nimitz submitted a letter saying that under orders from Washington, he had issued an identical decree on December 7, 1941. As far as I know Admiral Nimitz has never been tried for the crime for which Doenitz was convicted. He was never even hauled before a domestic tribunal. In fact, if I remember correctly he was given a ticker tape parade.
"The notion that an international criminal court will work, therefore, assumes that we are prepared to have our people tried for the same things that we say others violate international law by doing. It has never, never happened except in victor's justice courts. Never-I repeat, never.
"There are all sorts of reciprocal operations about which we purport to get upset from time to time. For example, in the last election there was a big fuss made about Chinese paying the Democratic party for helping support its campaign. And yet I saw not a mention in the press of the things that Christopher talks about, the United States paying various folks in Greece, Portugal, Indonesia, and elsewhere, to affect their local elections. Obviously, the things that we do come back to haunt us. We fuss about them when they're against the perceived interest of these who are fussing, we do not fuss about them when those people neglect the rules of reciprocity."
-- From a Panel Discussion, "Regarding Henry Kissinger" held February 22, 2001
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Last modified: Fri Sep 27 15:51:25 CDT 2002