As an outside observer, the US administration is an embarrassment to the country. You're never going to come back from this. Well done.

The sanctions announcement coincided with a former ICC judge, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to enlarging the scope and impact of international law. -- https://thehill.com/policy/international/6138693-rubio-impos...

The American Service-Members' Protection Act has been US law since 2002, and was nicknamed "the Hague Invasion Act, since the act would allow the president to order military action in The Hague, the seat of the ICC, to prevent U.S. or allied officials and military personnel from being prosecuted or detained by the ICC." The sanctions are new, but the posture is old and bipartisan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

> America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it.

Wow, so tough, much decision

I was getting rather tired of SV opinions shaping all of our daily lives far outside the SV, but I did not expect that this would be how that would slowly end.

Not a week passes without the US giving other nations very good reasons to cut out any dependencies on anything under their jurisdiction.

Is California now panicking and exiting the United states? That would be really funny.

The article is (probably purposefully) unclear of what actually is happening here... what sanctions are being applied, to whom, and to what effect?

I know there's a lot of (deserved) hate for the current administration, but the ICC situation is somewhat nuanced. You can argue that international law doesn't / shouldn't exist because each country has the right to self-determination, and any disputes on that line are always decided by who has more economic sway or military strength. There's no world police that a smaller and less powerful country can send to arrest the leaders of a more powerful neighbor, unless they find enough friends with fighter jets.

Now, as it happens, the US is one of the most economically and militarily powerful states out there, so they're the closest we have to an actual world police - but again, that police doesn't follow "international law", they act in what they think is the best interest of the West. That's how all regional powers roll, albeit on a smaller scale. Russia and China make claims to neighboring states, Germany unceremoniously protects its economic interests in the EU, Iran bankrolls terrorists in neighboring states who in turn bomb Iran, and so on.

The ICC is a bit unusual in that it's an initiative of some Western states trying to get the most powerful state to play by their rules. It's a nice try, but also... obviously doomed? And it's not something the US can ignore, because the court does assert the authority to arrest and try US servicemen and politicians. So this was kinda inevitable, and if you think the sanctions are bad, consider the bipartisan Hague Invasion Act of 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

Why stop there? Let's do all other collaborative groups that don't put the US and their corrupted agenda first. You wanna be left alone and we don't want to have you so just make the calls.

Does this mean that Microsoft or Google can no longer offer services (like mail/office/search etc..) to the ICC? Similar to what happened with the ICC prosecutor last year?

I believe the term is 'superpower suicide'. Amazing to see it in real-time.

Meanwhile, the EU is working on further entrenching payment and identity into American service providers (mainly: Apple and Google).

Do these sanctions also affect anyone working at the ICC?

If you choose not to join a club, you don’t need to try to “cripple its ability to operate”.

Did a child write this? So embarrassing to be an American.

That's the kind of thing only a rogue state would do.

So just when the whole Greenland debacle seemed to be settled, it's time to create another rift with the EU.

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All of this, because one war criminal can't come to Europe anymore

I'm confused, if you're not a criminal, what have you got to hide?

See the similarity here...?

Some context per the below articles, and as a general IR nerd.

The proximal cause of the sanctions appears to be that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a former ICC judge, and Trump covets it.

The distal cause is that the US never joined the ICC, arguing that US political & military leaders should not be subject to a binding foreign jurisdiction. This is a longstanding disagreement, with bipartisan consensus in DC.

Putting pressure on this disagreement, the ICC has a warrants out for Netanyahu and others that the current administration views as a political & military ally.

My interpretation is basically: this is a petty move about the Nobel, which builds on a long-simmering disagreement about the role of international law.

https://apnews.com/article/us-icc-trump-rubio-4ea3555403e3c6... https://www.reuters.com/world/us-imposes-sanctions-internati...

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50021066

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It's hard to tell which executive orders are meant as a joke and which are meant as sincere (but horrible) policy perspectives.

I suspect this one was actually meant as a joke, although it is not remotely funny in my opinion.

Someone in Trump's orbit who writes them gets an immature charge out of trolling people.

So far my prediction about Trump have sadly been correct: The US is getting weaker and poorer every day.

I don't understand why this is such an urgent topic. Is ICC currently prosecuting an US citizen?

Yikes.

Another match lighting US soft power on fire

The last round of ICC sanctions got everyone here talking about tech sovereignty, now France and Germany are rolling their own productivity suites, the Netherlands are rolling their own NixOS distro, etc etc.

This is just going to further hurt US interests. Biting the hand that feeds, burning down their own empire out of hubris. And Americans voted for this! Twice!

It's time the EU rolls out the Blocking Statute [0] to counteract this nonsense.

[0] https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...

Will Trump be able to change the law so that he becomes a lifetime dictator of USA?