With great anticipation, I clicked on the link this morning for the Reuters story headlined "U.S. makes debut attendance at Hague war crimes court". "Wow", I thought, "have we actually turned over torturers for prosecution? How did I miss that?" Knowing that couldn’t possibly be the case, I opened the article.

What I found, under the byline of Aaron Gray-Block, was a very strange description of a situation that was so lacking in its historical footing as to border on historical revisionism. Here are the opening paragraphs:

U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues Stephen Rapp made a debut appearance for the United States at the world’s war crimes court Thursday and said the U.S. remained wary of politically driven prosecutions.

The United States is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and Rapp’s attendance at meetings this week and next is the clearest sign yet of Washington engaging with the court.

Entirely missing from the "not a signatory" language regarding the United States and the International Criminal Court is a background that puts today’s story into proper perspective. Nowhere in the article do we learn that in December of 2000, Bill Clinton signed the treaty establishing the Court, only for George W. Bush to withdraw US support for the court in May, 2002.

Here is a portion of a statement from the United Nations Foundation when Clinton signed the treaty:

US President Bill Clinton on Sunday signed the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), just hours before the 31 December signature deadline. The action is seen as a tactical maneuver to keep the United States involved in negotiations over the court’s potential establishment, the Washington Post reports. Sunday was the last day nations could sign the treaty without first having ratified it.

"We do so to reaffirm our strong support for international accountability," Clinton said in a statement. "We do so as well because we wish to remain engaged in making the ICC an instrument of impartial and effective justice."

Clinton signed the treaty with an understanding that its ratification was far from assured, but said this in the statement accompanying his signature:

The United States has a long history of commitment to the principle of accountability, from our involvement in the Nuremberg tribunals that brought Nazi war criminals to justice to our leadership in the effort to establish the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Our action today sustains that tradition of moral leadership.

Under the Rome Treaty, the International Criminal Court will come into being with the ratification of 60 governments, and will have jurisdiction over the most heinous abuses that result from international conflict, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Knowing that the Senate as composed then would not ratify the treaty, Clinton added this:

The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction. Given these concerns, I will not, and do not recommend that my successor, submit the treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.

In signing the treaty, Clinton sought engagement with the court over a long enough period to convince the Senate that prosecutions would not be politically based, but would be pursued only in the case of real international crimes. Contrast that with the attitude displayed when the Bush administration withdrew from the treaty:

Bush administration officials said today that the new International Criminal Court should expect no cooperation from the United States, and that its prosecutors would not be given any information from the United States to help them bring cases against any individuals.

On the day the Bush administration formally renounced support for the treaty, as expected,Pierre-Richard Prosper, the State Department’s ambassador for war crimes, said ”If the prosecutor of the I.C.C. seeks to build a case against an individual, the prosecutor should build the case on his or her own effort and not be dependent or reliant upon U.S. information or cooperation.”

Knowing the history of the two previous administrations provides much better perspective for the discussion in the Reuters article. For example, this quote from William Pace makes little sense without the background information:

William Pace, one of the conveners of a coalition of groups supporting the ICC, said although the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not calling Rapp’s attendance at the ICC meeting a policy change, he welcomed what was "essentially a constructive speech of re-engagement."

"We are not surprised that every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council wants to keep as much control over the power to determine whether an act of aggression has occurred as they interpret the U.N. charter to give them," he said.

But Pace said most other countries do not believe the Security Council’s permanent members should have sole control over determining whether an act of aggression has occurred.

The Reuters article ends with a statement from Human Rights Watch that essentially addresses Clinton’s original concerns, and states that the court has now proven itself to be apolitical:

Elizabeth Evenson, counsel at the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the United States’ concerns, stressing the independence of the prosecution and ICC judges.

"We are hoping the U.S. will see that there is nothing in the experience of the ICC that would give them the hesitation to think that this is a politically motivated court," she said.

Gray-Block provides highly significant quotes from relevant parties in his coverage of this historic development. Unfortunately, he provides none of the historical perspective required for understanding that significance.

The United States has great reason to be concerned that the invasion of Iraq would qualify under the International Criminal Court as the war crime of waging a war of aggression. The US wants to hide behind its "authorization" from the UN, but the ICC argues that the UN, with its domination by the permanent voting members of the Security Council, should not be the sole arbiter of what constitutes a war of aggression. Granted, having a representative appear at the ICC to make a statement is a far cry from the US ratifying the treaty and submitting to ICC jurisdiction, but even resuming any kind of engagement with the court is a very important step in the Obama administration’s huge task of moving the United States back into good legal standing in the international community.

Update: While this post was being composed, AP went even further in historical revision. Here is the relevant paragraph from the AP article by Mike Corder:

The United States refused to ratify the court’s founding treaty, the 1998 Rome Statute, partly because of fears the court could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of troops in unpopular wars like Iraq.

So Corder says the US "refused to ratify", while conveniently leaving out the actions of Clinton and Bush. I guess we just don’t need to know that.