Via the NYT: Bush’s Aid Cuts on Court Issue Roil Latin American Neighbors

Three years ago the Bush administration began prodding countries to shield Americans from the fledgling International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was intended to be the first permanent tribunal for prosecuting crimes like genocide.

The United States has since cut aid to some two dozen nations that refused to sign immunity agreements that American officials say are intended to protect American soldiers and policy makers from politically motivated prosecutions.

Ok, a few things:

1) I am a skeptic when it comes to institutions such as the International Criminal Court. Indeed, I generically find international law itself to lack some of the requisite features to make it truly “law”–not the least of which is the simple fact that there is no central sovereign power to agree to, and enforce, these laws.

2) Because there is no country that puts its own people in harm’s way like to US (and not just in controversial deployments like Iraq, but in places like Bosnia), the US is uniquely exposed to this institution. Couple this fact with the acrimony that exists towards the US (and again, even pre-Iraq), then it seems to me that the International Criminal Court would create a a situation uniquely problematic for US soldiers and officials.

As such, I understand the opposition to the institution.

I will grant, that the exposure to US personnel is likely small, as the article notes. However, I think that the article does downplay the degree to which opponents of the United States might attempt to use the Court to file charges against US officials as a political tool.

3) In regards to aid, one’s initial response to this policy might well be: well, the US gives aid of its own free will, and if countries won’t behave like the US government want them to, then the US has every right to withdraw that aid. No country is entitled to aid, correct?

Logically this withstands assault. However, it also ignores why aid is given in the first place. On balance, aid is given not primarily to aid the recipient country, but, rather, to aid US policy goals.

As such, it may well be that this policy ends up being what my mother used to call “cutting of your nose to spite your face.”

To wit:

some Americans are also beginning to question the policy, as political and military leaders in the region complain that the aid cuts are squandering good will and hurting their ability to cooperate in other important areas, like the campaigns against drugs and terrorism.

In testimony before Congress in March, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, [Is that a name out of central casting (or a comic book), or what?-Ed] the commander of American military forces in Latin America, said the sanctions had excluded Latin American officers from American training programs and could allow China, which has been seeking military ties to Latin America, to fill the void.

“We now risk losing contact and interoperability with a generation of military classmates in many nations of the region, including several leading countries,” General Craddock told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This strikes me as a reasonable assessment, and also one that calls into serious question as to whether the policy of cutting aid is really working in the best interest of the United States. As the map above notes, we are talking about some major countries in the region. Do we really want, for example, for the Brazillians to increase strategic ties to China?

Beyond that, there are humanitarian considerations, not to mention issues that can affect the development of democracy in the region:

Most of the penalties, outlined in a law that went into effect in 2025, have been in the form of cuts in military training and other security aid. But a budget bill passed in December also permits new cuts in social and health-care programs, like AIDS education and peacekeeping, refugee assistance and judicial reforms.

Ultimately this policy is counterproductive.