These high-minded treaties don't actually mean anything - there's no enforcement mechanism and countries with a much worse human-rights record than the USA have signed them without consequences. IMO it's better not to sign them than it is to pretend that signing does any good and lend unearned legitimacy to those other countries.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Ah yes the oft-used American Exceptionalist attitude of "we're too good to bind ourselves to treaties like this".
Tale as old as time. It's why the US isn't a member of the ICJ and many other international treaties. King's don't follow rules - they make them!
The US is a member of the International Court of Justice - every country in the United Nations is. Are you thinking of the International Criminal Court?
Other than that, my answer is "yes but that's not a bad thing".
Why is it a good thing?
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The actions of an international court will inevitably be political.
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The countries that are the worst human rights violators will never voluntary accept the authority of the court.
In that context, why should the USA give other, potentially hostile countries power over itself? It might have been worthwhile if it meant everyone had to follow the rules but in practice it would just give countries opposed to US foreign policy a tool for interfering without giving the US anything useful.
(My general view is that the US has made many very harmful mistakes but the era of American hegemony has still been one of remarkable global peace and prosperity. Like democracy, it's the worst system except for everything else that has been tried. Now we're seeing serious challenges to this hegemony and if they succeed, the world will get worse for almost everyone, not just for Americans. So if you think the US does more harm than good, we're unlikely to come to an agreement.)
Edit: accidentally deleted, reposting.
The problem is that we need to for many reasons transition to an international order of democratic cooperation instead of economic and military domination. And if the US can never accept this kind of shared and cooperative approach foreign policy of everyone is going to be forever dragged towards this kind of zero sum bullshit we have at the moment. Even though it's obvious that foreign policy doesn't have to be zero sum.
Even if other countries are potentially less honest with their implementation of global treaties, even a relatively slow movement there and maybe a more thorough movement in the US makes everyone better off.
The only way to actually foster a cooperative relationship is to make yourself vulnerable, otherwise it's just coercion and power not cooperation. And yes if you get hurt too much maybe you'll have to leave again, but this pessimistic outlook from the get go is certainly never going to lead to the changes we obviously need.
How do we solve things that require global attentio and accountability, like climate change, with an increasingly hostile and isolationist country calling the shots on decisions about global economic matters.
Simply put if I want to live in a world somewhat resembling the current one in 60 years, American collapse or integration into global democracy is a necessity.
Also calling a country that has been at war for 80+% of it's history a protector of global peace seems a bit questionable. Similarly I don't think anyone can conclusively say that the US has done more or less harm than good. But by that same nebulous metric shouldn't China hold that same title, as well as the Soviets, the British empire, the Spanish empire,the Romans ?
I would expect almost everyone to feel more ambiguously about the later list than the US, but both the US and empires of the past are exactly what they've always been, a tool for those inside, especially the ones in power to increase their quality of life, while everyone outside gets to be exploited, integrated, subjected to rules that do harm, and be attacked, regime changed and so on. It's not actually the US that is a problem it's the US being a modern empire that's the problem.
That the US tries to be a liberal democracy doesn't really lessen it's status as an empire, especially if the powers at be largely prevent it's people to decide against the status quo of domination.
Almost by necessity the most powerful are the most harmful if there are no systems to prevent their harm, diffuse their power etc.