by Julian Ku
Apparently, the Obama Administration has decided it will not seek ratification of the ICC Rome Statute. There is still no official policy, as far as I know, but this is the latest from Assistant Secretary of State for War Crimes Stephen Rapp. This is not exactly a surprise, but it shows just how far the U.S. is from the Rome Statute. If President Obama and his sort-of supermajority in Congress do not wish to join the ICC, then it is hard to imagine the U.S. joining during a future Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney administration. This doesn’t exactly bother me. But this raw political fact suggests that the U.S. failure to join the ICC is rooted in deeper political and structural concerns than partisan politics and ideology.