Cuba vs Trump

[Syt]

Yeah, checks and balances only work if people want to check and balance. If the key actors in the system decide to collectively abdicate their responsibilities then what is there to do?

I believe the Midterms will be the ultimate test how far this will go and how much they can get away with. Yes, in terms of votes, but also in terms of trying to affect the outcome. If they are able to use the results in a way that empowers them and there is still no meaningful pushback from key actors then I'm not sure anything short of violence can break through this.

[crazy canuck]

The USA would never extradite its own officials carrying out long-standing national policy.  Thus we wouldn't have extradited Kissinger for Vietnam because that would have implicated multiple presidents and Congressional leaders.  For the same reason, we would never extradite anyone over Cuba.

But if hearings resulted in Hegseth being directly implicated for the Caribbean murders or other similar acts he may carry out?  That only impacts him and Trump and it contradicts existing national policy. If hypothetically Trump gave him a last minute pardon in 29 to immunize him from prosecution in the US, could I see a hypothetical post-Trump president clearing an extradition?  Yes that would present circumstances we've never seen before and I think that is within the realm of possible outcomes.  And it doesn't require making any assumptions about the state of the domestic legal system at all.  Just what will may exist to impose consequences after 3 more years of Trump and the past experience of the Merrick Garland fiasco.

Wishful thinking at best

This isn't the first time the United States has carried out atrocities.  And this won't be the first time the United States doesn't protect its own.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think we are completely talking past each other.

The question is whether there is any "it's own" anymore. Whether there is still a sense of a united America such that the "ruling elites" - Congress, Executive, the Courts will continue the past practice of covering backs regardless of partisanship, or whether the country has irrevocable devolved into Red and Blue teams in a zero sum political conflict.

My thinking is not wishful in slightest.  I am not conceiving of a near future "balls of light" America that comes together to punish Hegseth to vindicate abstract principle.  I am conceiving of a near future America on the cusp of civil strife where a vengeful Blue team comes in and extradites Hegseth as a way of nailing him to the wall without undercutting their own use of the pardon power.

[viper37]

Presidential pardons do not immunize the recipient from prosecution for violations of the laws of war where the venue is outside the United States. Nor does it prevent extradition.

This IMO is a very live issue for Pete Hegseth, who is implicated in several war crimes already.

While you are technically correct, it would be near impossible to extradite someone like him from the United States. A US court would need to order that extradition.  How much faith do you have such an order would actually be made?

I realize how tempting it is to fall back on the before times legal norms. But all evidence is to the contrary in your country.

He could be kidnapped.  He could slipped from a boat on a cruise. Fall of a tarmac on a plane trip.

[Syt]

Trump let a tanker pass despite oil embargo. A sanctioned tanker from Russia, of course.

https://apnews.com/article/cuba-trump-russia-oil-shipment-9f6005bdfe7d20e07d290c7e23aeda69

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Not even Benedict Arnold was this loathsome

[The Minsky Moment]

Not even Benedict Arnold was this loathsome

it's not even close.  Before he betrayed the country, Arnold was a good general and a patriot wounded in battle. Trump's toughest battle for America was pushing his foot arches down in a 1968 doctor visit.

[Sheilbh]

It would be wonderful to see those Americans who've committed crimes against humanity be held accountable for their actions, but I think it is very unlikely to happen.

And I'm sure there's a lot of bad actors around the world who are perking up to see if this becomes normalized now.

I don't think it matters. Of all the people the ICC has charged, over half are African - I'm not sure that reflects the distribution of what we'd consider crimes against humanity. I'd argue it reflects the relative weakness of those states and their historic desire/need to accommodate the West (with all its hypocrisies). It's a slight aside but I think our image of international justice is Nuremberg - an utterly defeated and totally occupied state with victor's justice and buy in from all the (victorious) world powers. But I think it's worth bearing in mind even at that point there are the Tokyo trials which are far less satisfying. And in the system and the ideas we've built we've possibly learned from the successes of Nuremberg and not considered the challenges and inadequacies of Tokyo - Gary Bass's Judgement at Tokyo is really really good on that trial (and Julian Jackson's France on Trial on the Petain trial which is very different but has some similarities is also very good and thought provoking).

FWIW I think as China builds a world order of its own, it will be one safe for autocrats. It will be hugely focused on the importance of national sovereignty whatever is going on within that state - that's a consistent Chinese (and Russian) position. My suspicion is the high point of international "justice" has been and gone. I'm not entirely sure it'll be much mourned.

I don't necessarily agree with that worldview but there is a bit of me that wonders if actually the idea of the trial to punish for crimes against humanity is a mistake. On the one hand I don't think it delivers the justice we hope, or expect, or imagine that it might (and perhaps that's because it is simply impossible). But also I think there is actually evidence now that the risk of ending up in the Hague makes certain leaders cling on, they become more brutal because staying impugn becomes more important. It is a moral compromise but it might be worth sending the message that actually there is a route out. You don't need to fight to the bitter end, because you can - like Mubarak or Ben Ali or Assad or the Shah - end your days with some stolen wealth in a villa or a dacha.

[The Minsky Moment]

And in the system and the ideas we've built we've possibly learned from the successes of Nuremberg and not considered the challenges and inadequacies of Tokyo - Gary Bass's Judgement at Tokyo is really really good on that trial (and Julian Jackson's France on Trial on the Petain trial which is very different but has some similarities is also very good and thought provoking).

Gary Bass' book was excellent, but IMO a bit harsh on the Tokyo tribunal. It's never going to look pretty when you get into deep into the sausage making process.  Tokyo did have the problem that the USA was really the unquestionably dominant power there - in a way it wasn't at Nuremburg - and yet sent a weak judge and an even weaker prosecutor to Tokyo, as opposed to the stronger team sent to Europe for the IMT. The American defense lawyers in Tokyo were stronger than the US lead prosecutor, and although that should be a feather in the Tokyo cap as a legal proceeding, it also meant that the verdicts occurred against a backdrop of strong defense arguments vs. some less skilled prosecution advocates. 

But the bottom line is that the key legal rulings IMO were justifiable.  There were some unfair results, namely Shigenori Tōgo and Bass covers that.  But the key thrust of Bass' book are the debates over defining and punishing the crime of waging aggressive war, including the importation of distinctively American concepts of criminal conspiracy. Those same issues were debated at Nuremberg and as with Tokyo ended with judgments of conviction of many defendants on those charges.  The Nuremberg judges were somewhat more successful papering over the differences, and wrapped things up while the war was still very fresh in people's minds. But in a sense that strengthens the Tokyo judgments because they had the solid precedent of Nuremberg to rely on.

Bass tries to treat Radhabinod Pal and his dissent with even handed fairness, but to me it veered too much into devil's advocacy.  I don't think Pal acted in good faith and his accusations against the other judges of acting on political motives was the height of hyprocrisy.

The world we grew up in was a world shaped by WW2 and its aftermath.  For once, leaders and peoples did learn some hard lessons of history and really tried to build institutions that could contain conflict and prevent the more obvious mistakes of the past. It didn't work perfectly, not even close, but it worked better than if those efforts hadn't been made.  Establishing the legal and moral norm that waging aggressive war is terrible crime was an important aspect of that effort.  Even W Bush etc. understood that you had to make a case that the exceptions for waging pre-emptive war applied.  It didn't stop all bad wars but it put a brake on things and forced some thought.

Contrast that with the present where an American President is openly and flagrantly engaging in the same conduct for which we executed people at Nuremberg and Tokyo, to the point of even publicly embracing the comparison to Pearl Harbor. Pal got the last laugh - we are back in the world of states acting according to their own unrestrained conceptions of raison d'etat, and with any reference to international norms greeted with derision. For all its faults, I think we would have been better to adhere to the vision of Webb or Bernard.

[Sheilbh]

Gary Bass' book was excellent, but IMO a bit harsh on the Tokyo tribunal. It's never going to look pretty when you get into deep into the sausage making process.  Tokyo did have the problem that the USA was really the unquestionably dominant power there - in a way it wasn't at Nuremburg - and yet sent a weak judge and an even weaker prosecutor to Tokyo, as opposed to the stronger team sent to Europe for the IMT. The American defense lawyers in Tokyo were stronger than the US lead prosecutor, and although that should be a feather in the Tokyo cap as a legal proceeding, it also meant that the verdicts occurred against a backdrop of strong defense arguments vs. some less skilled prosecution advocates. 

But the bottom line is that the key legal rulings IMO were justifiable.  There were some unfair results, namely Shigenori Tōgo and Bass covers that.  But the key thrust of Bass' book are the debates over defining and punishing the crime of waging aggressive war, including the importation of distinctively American concepts of criminal conspiracy. Those same issues were debated at Nuremberg and as with Tokyo ended with judgments of conviction of many defendants on those charges.  The Nuremberg judges were somewhat more successful papering over the differences, and wrapped things up while the war was still very fresh in people's minds. But in a sense that strengthens the Tokyo judgments because they had the solid precedent of Nuremberg to rely on.

Bass tries to treat Radhabinod Pal and his dissent with even handed fairness, but to me it veered too much into devil's advocacy.  I don't think Pal acted in good faith and his accusations against the other judges of acting on political motives was the height of hyprocrisy.

I agree. I can only assume it's a testament to British legal education that despite all the issues with the UK and the British empire that the book, rightly, raises - I fundamentally think Lord Patrick's judgemnt was right. As was his assessment of Pal. If you don't accept the legitimacy of a court, don't accept an appointment to it - and I think Nehru and Menon's slight despair over Pal's dissent is understandable.

I think Rolling's opinion seems more interesting but even there, from the description in the book, it strikes me as implausibly idealistic/theoretical.

The world we grew up in was a world shaped by WW2 and its aftermath.  For once, leaders and peoples did learn some hard lessons of history and really tried to build institutions that could contain conflict and prevent the more obvious mistakes of the past. It didn't work perfectly, not even close, but it worked better than if those efforts hadn't been made.  Establishing the legal and moral norm that waging aggressive war is terrible crime was an important aspect of that effort.  Even W Bush etc. understood that you had to make a case that the exceptions for waging pre-emptive war applied.  It didn't stop all bad wars but it put a brake on things and forced some thought.

I think there's a lot to this. I'd add a couple of complications.

One is that the immediate post-war order was still a colonial order and there were aggressive wars fought to re-impose imperial power. Particularly in Indonesia and Vietnam (a former Vietnamese Foreign Minister famously noted that Vietnam did not put much trust in international institutions because, in the previous forty years, it had been attacked by four of the five members of the Security Council). What I think is remarkable is the relative stability of borders - despite some internal conflicts and challenges of multi-ethnic states with straight borders - of the post-decolonisation world. There has been awful conflict in Africa and in Asia but I think if you look at Europe's recent past, I think it's astonishing that so little blood has been spilled either making people match those borders or making those borders match people. I'm not sure the extent to which that reflects the post-war institutional architecture and the lessons from the world learned post-WW2 or the extent to which it reflects active choices by post-colonial leaders (learning perhaps slightly different lessons from, not just WW2 but European imperialism). I don't know how far I'd go or how I'd wait it but I think there is a post-war and then a post-imperial order from, say, the mid-sixties.

The other complication I'd add is Kosovo which is a war I think about a lot because I think it was absolutely justified, it was effective and it was the correct thing to do - but I also think it massively undermined any attempt at building genuine, meaningful international institutions. It was a war based on the principles of crimes against humanity and the need to prevent a genocide but without a UN mandate, in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition and on the assessment of Western powers alone that an international crime was taking place that justified Western powers alone intervening (I'd add that my understanding is the Chinese to this day do not believe the bombing of their Embassy in Belgrade was accidental). In the post-Cold War world I think it's really important because in many ways it pre-figures Iraq but it's good and right and works which makes it, I think, a more useful and challenging example to work through.

I think the thing both of these and the examples of Nuremberg and Tokyo (in both their successful and unsuccessful aspects) raise are around legitimacy. I totally agree that the Tokyo judgements were legally justifiable - they were not metabolised by Japanese society as legitimate in the same way as Nuremberg was in Germany. They've not become cornerstones of the post-war understanding of the world in the same way. And I think the questions of why and the issues raised in that process are important parts of that. In part because I think one of the big problems for international law is that people speak of it and set expectations for it, I think infuenced by Nuremberg, that it is not capable of fulfilling - and it is then delegitimised when it fails at an impossible task (even aside from the fundamental questions of justice of how you prosecute these types of crimes). Not for nothing but the most cynical person I know on international law and its futility as a "criminal" law is someone who has made a career in it and worked for the prosecution in Bosnia and Cambodia. It doesn't mean it's not worth it but I think if we go in with expectations structured by power and politics and the coercive force to effectively enforce it, then we may have lower hopes for it but ones that can be achieved and built on.

Contrast that with the present where an American President is openly and flagrantly engaging in the same conduct for which we executed people at Nuremberg and Tokyo, to the point of even publicly embracing the comparison to Pearl Harbor. Pal got the last laugh - we are back in the world of states acting according to their own unrestrained conceptions of raison d'etat, and with any reference to international norms greeted with derision. For all its faults, I think we would have been better to adhere to the vision of Webb or Bernard.

Yeah. I agree.

I would say I don't think Trump is actually where American or Western credibility has been seriously challenged in the world - or where Pal's vision clarified. I think there is a tendency to overcentre Trump or read everything through him. In my view that credibility lies under the ruins of Gaza.That's not to excuse Trump doing bad things but I think that is a common global perspective of what international law means for the West - something that applies to Ukrainians and not Palestinians (to which, as you say, we can add Cubans - or Iranians given bomb strikes on universities etc). I don't think there is anyone in the world who is not already in the West who has any interest in listening to the West about international law, institutions, values or order - I think to many Trump is not so much outrageous as that he's made subtext text (I disagree I think as you say previously leaders' behaviour was shaped by those institutions, but I think it's a challenging argument in recent years).

[The Minsky Moment]

I think there is a tendency to overcentre Trump or read everything through him. In my view that credibility lies under the ruins of Gaza.

And before that under the ruins of Mariupol, Bucha et al.

Still I think there is a rationalization that puts the Israelis in a separate box and even for an arguable major power like Russia, a "what do you expect from the Russians" exception.  A legal norm can survive even when there are instances that go unpunished, and perhaps even when the constable turns a blind eye to certain perps, but when the constable himself is a leading perpetrator, it just can't be sustained. 

[Sheilbh]

And before that under the ruins of Mariupol, Bucha et al.

Still I think there is a rationalization that puts the Israelis in a separate box and even for an arguable major power like Russia, a "what do you expect from the Russians" exception.  A legal norm can survive even when there are instances that go unpunished, and perhaps even when the constable turns a blind eye to certain perps, but when the constable himself is a leading perpetrator, it just can't be sustained. 

Yeah. I agree. I suppose the difference is the West was very comfortable calling Mariupol and Bucha what it was.

In that framing I think there's two sides. The behaviour of the "constable" may still be shaped by a sense of legal norms even if they're turning a blind eye. But I'm not sure for the legitimacy of a legal system for all the other participants that legal norms can survive hypocrisy or the constable turning a blind eye. I think that's actually pretty profoundly corrosive. I think the sense one rule for some and another for others is one that's difficult to recover from - or takes a lot of rebuilding. And if a legal system doesn't have the consent or legitimacy it binds then I think it will come under huge pressure. I think this is partly where Kosovo is interesting.

But in the case of Gaza specifically I'm not sure it is simply just turning a blind eye v actively arming and in some countries repressing protests against that policy.

[Josephus]

So I wonder if Trump is going to turn his attention to Cuba next

I have a love relationship with Cuba and its people spending lots of time there in my 30s and 40s, and not just at the resorts

Like with Iran, I have no love for Cuba's government, and I'm all for a transition to a democratic government. But I'm not sure if I want Trump anywhere near this.

[Caliga]

Not even Benedict Arnold was this loathsome

it's not even close.  Before he betrayed the country, Arnold was a good general and a patriot wounded in battle. Trump's toughest battle for America was pushing his foot arches down in a 1968 doctor visit.

He once told Howard Stern in an interview that avoiding getting STDs was "his Vietnam".

[Norgy]

If he invades Cuba, I hope he goes to Dallas in November.