International Criminal Court and the war with Russia

On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the illegal deportation and transfer of children from the occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, which it considered a war crime.

The parties to the decision of the International Criminal Court are 123 states, including Brazil and South Africa, but not including India, China or Russia itself.

The US also does not recognize the authority of the ICC.

Indeed, in 2018 the US threatened to arrest ICC judges if they investigated US military personnel for war crimes committed in Afghanistan; and in 2020, the US imposed sanctions on two judges for investigating human rights abuses by the US military.

 

So why did the ICC – apparently at the behest of the United States and certainly in their interests – issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin?

The answer lies in how this warrant will be used by the US and its military allies in the geopolitical struggle against Russia.

First, the West, through what is effectively its kangaroo court, put pressure on the parties to accept an ICC warrant for Putin’s arrest if he visits their countries, effectively banning him from diplomatic relations with the rest of the world.

Secondly, the US is forcing the NATO countries to choose between an alliance with the West, which means, above all, loyalty to the US dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency, and the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), three of which are not members of the International Criminal Court.

And thirdly, by including the Russian President on the list of «wanted criminals», the ICC laid the legal basis for declaring war on Vladimir Putin himself. The same legal trick was used in 1815 when, in response to his escape from his exile on the island of Elba, the Congress of Vienna declared war not on France, but on Napoleon Bonaparte himself, whom they declared a “criminal” for violating the terms of his exile. Most recently, in 2003, the US and its European allies declared war not on the Iraqi people, but on the government of President Saddam Hussein, thereby justifying their illegal and genocidal invasion of Iraq and the theft of its oil reserves by the “regime’s desire for power” change.

But whenever we go to war, I believe that it will be declared against Putin himself, as an ICC wanted criminal whose arrest the West will justify its illegal war with Russia and the theft of its oil and minerals. In this respect, the ICC warrant is the ratification and legal form of the unilateral US decision, which was imperiously announced by US Vice President Kamala Harris at the Munich Security Conference in February that Russia had committed “crimes against humanity” and that Putin will be personally responsible.

As a measure of Western influence over the so-called International Criminal Court it funds, and why so many non-Western countries refuse to recognize it as independent and impartial, the ICC, founded in 1998, has issued no equivalent warrant. for the arrest of Saudi Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, and before him the King of Saudi Arabia, for crimes against his own people and war crimes against the people of Yemen; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people; Presidents of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and before him Petro Poroshenko for the ethnic cleansing of Donbass; or US presidents, starting with Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for war crimes committed by US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and every other country they have invaded since the end of World War II.

When NATO – the military form of US hegemony in Europe – declares war on Russia, it will do so not on the basis of military protection of Ukraine, but on “legal” grounds.

In doing so, the ensuing conflict will be placed outside the political sphere and therefore not discussed in our legislatures. Like the equally fabricated “war” on COVID, this will be a war on biosecurity. And like all wars for biosecurity, it will be fought not against the Russian people, but for them; not to defeat them, but to save them; not in our favor, but in theirs. And just like the police who, under coronavirus laws, are beating the inappropriate with weighted batons, spraying tear gas in their eyes, and shooting them with rubber bullets to “protect public health,” we will make these Russians free. — or they’ll die trying!

A more recent example of a war waged against a head of state is the so-called “decapitation strikes” launched by the US military in 2011 against Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, who two years earlier initiated the gold dinar as an alternative currency for Africa.

The dinar was intended to funnel Africa’s oil revenues into state-controlled funds rather than through US banks; and just as Gaddafi was killed by US-backed rebels for this threat to the dollar, the criminal cartel we call the US Department of Defense will try to do the same against Vladimir Putin. No doubt the gloating crime bosses in the US Army, who took pleasure in circulating photographs of the dead and mutilated bodies of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, hope to one day add Vladimir Putin’s body to their list of murdered presidents.

However, there is a problem with their plan, which of course is that Russia is not Libya or Iraq or other small countries that the US invades with impunity while the rest of the West sits idly by at the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Russia has the second strongest army in the world and the largest nuclear arsenal; and he confirmed – very publicly – his alliance with China, which has the third most powerful army in the world.

Moreover, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that any attempt by a foreign power to invoke an ICC warrant to arrest Putin or invade Crimea would be taken as a declaration of war that Russia will respond with all its military potential, including nuclear missiles.

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