What’s with all the globalism?

It’s been a pretty busy week for political news, and there are two stories that may have slipped under the radar.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning calls attention to Obama’s flirtation with a world court. President Clinton signed the Rome Treaty after the ICC was formed in 1998. He urged the Senate not to ratify the treaty, and later President Bush informed the world court that the US was not bound by Clinton’s signature. Apparently, the Obama administration wants to change all that.

Some U.S. officials, such as Mr. Koh, support what they call “pragmatic cooperation” with the ICC—for example, helping it with investigations and sitting in on court bodies.

Proponents argue that this would give the U.S. a voice on decisions that affect its interests, such as helping the ICC define the “crime of aggression.” U.S. officials were stunned that a recent draft defining aggression was so wide-reaching that NATO would have been criminally liable in the 1999 Kosovo war. The court’s powers aren’t retroactive, but proponents ask why shouldn’t the U.S. be in the room to stop this nonsense in the future?

Color us skeptical. The ICC’s indictments have so far targeted nasty characters in Africa, but the court has always resisted outside oversight, especially from the U.S. What’s more, no amount of reform of the founding treaty will change the ICC’s inherent flaw. The ICC is a child of the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction,” which holds that courts can adjudicate crimes committed anywhere in the world. Politically ambitious prosecutors in Belgium, Britain and Spain have invoked “universality” to go after Ariel Sharon and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, for alleged war crimes.

Eight years ago, Mr. Koh hailed the court’s creation as “an international Marbury versus Madison moment,” referring to the 1803 Supreme Court decision that gave a fledgling court authority over other branches of government. By this logic, the world court should have similar power over America’s democratic decisions and global leadership. No thanks.

We have enough problems with radicals in the US courts. Imagine if an international court had jurisdiction here!

This reminded me of something I read the other day in the Financial Times that is equally disturbing. Dare I say, it makes the current debate over financial regulatory reform here in the US sound sort of silly and petty.

The US is preparing to pivot from domestic regulatory reform to a push for a tough new international capital regime after the weekend’s G20 and International Monetary Fund meetings glossed over differences between leading economies.

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, met Mario Draghi, chairman of the Financial Stability Board, on Sunday to discuss the contours of a system that would decide the safety and profitability of banks for decades to come and could eclipse the arguments over bank taxes and regulation.

At the present time there isn’t much agreement between the parties to the discussion. Countries like France want to slow down the negotiations, while the US is looking to speed things up. Now is the time to hope our world dominance is downplayed, and the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit. Our own elected officials don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to the financial sector. Do you really believe officials in other nations know better? I certainly don’t want to take that gamble.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the direction any of this is heading. Who was it that said “only fools rush in?”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.