Varieties of Imperial Aggression: The Andean Trade Treaties

When the UN received the recent Mehlis report on the murder of former Lebanese President Rafik Hariri, one suggested tribunal for a possible prosecution was the International Criminal Court. (1) Rejecting such a proposal, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rica remarked, “Everyone knows the United States’ view of the international criminal court.... That view is not going to change.” Rice is on sure ground when she notes most people know why the United States rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. She and her colleagues would soon be in the dock if a US government ever recognized the competence of such a tribunal.

Recently, two foreign courts issued warrants for the arrest of US government personnel protected, in common with terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles, by the US authorities. In September this year, Italian judges in Milan ordered the arrest on kidnapping charges of three CIA agents including Betnie Medero-Navedo, currently First Secretary at the US embassy in Mexico. (2) In October, Spanish judges issued arrest warrants for three US soldiers -- Sergeant Thomas Gibson, Captain Philip Wolford and Lieutenant-Colonel Philip De Camp -- accused of the murder of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (3)

The US government's persistent refusal to recognize inconvenient international law is the fundamental basis for every aspect of United States foreign policy. In practice, the European Union and other US allies like Canada and Japan consistently support US government delinquency by regularly failing to effectively challenge US government breaches of customary international law. As often as not, as in Haiti and now Syria, European Union officials collaborate actively in US power plays. Translated to the trade arena, a good example of the US-EU consensus on justice in international trade was the sabotage of the world trade talks at Cancun in 2003. Then US and EU trade representatives Robert Zoellick and Pascal Lamy threw out less developed countries' proposals for a fairer global commercial framework.