 Hello and welcome to UseClicks International Roundup. Today we are going to be talking about the US administration's decision to sanction the International Criminal Court and its officials following the ICC's decision to conduct an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan. Now the US decision was taken on Thursday. It has been widely condemned by the international community and to talk more about this we have with us Prabir Prakash. Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So we do know that this issue has been going on for a while. In fact, we are looking at war crimes that took place from 2003 and it's a fairly long period. And the ICC did look into the issue last year. They initially said that they would not, they did not give a go ahead for a prosecution. This year in March they did and so the US has been building up this campaign against the ICC for quite some time. But this is also part of a larger issue considering that US never joined this court and has always questioned its legitimacy. Well as far as joining the court is concerned neither is Russia, China or India. So the US is not alone in that and of course Israel. But you know the bigger issue is that this threats against international organizations actually has been there for quite some time. If you remember John Bolton actually attracted in the ICC International Criminal Court precisely on this ground about three years back. And this threat was that they will sanction the individuals involved in the investigations and therefore not only they but even the families could suffer. So this is one track that they have been using that we're not going to only fight the institution concern but we're also going to make in some sense examples of the key officials. So you suffer for the rest of your life. Now and not only you but your family and Bolton if you remember had actually on the OPCW the organization looks after chemical weapons, the chemical weapons treaty and that I think it was Joseph Bustani who was the head of that who was a Brazilian. He not only was threatened but Bolton went so far further than that when in fact far enough to say your children studied the United States. So it was an implicit threat against his sons. Now this is the kind of politics that the United States has been playing sometimes openly but certainly behind the veil so to say. And this has now become far more clear on the issue of the sanctions against the ICC. Ben Souda the chief prosecutor of international criminal court and also her associates who are investigating this case but it is also not only the United States and Afghanistan case it's also the Israel's case. Israel has been also under investigations. I think it was announced in December last year and this has been building up and the US threats against the international criminal court predate. In fact it's opening investigations against Americans on the issue of Afghanistan essentially atrocities and they said they will investigate both Taliban, the Afghan government and the United States all three of them. So you can see clearly what the US is sending is a message that all international organizations have to accept US exceptionalism which of course was there by default and therefore if you don't accept that as a default state then of course we're going to come and use all the instruments that we can against you and it's not only the organizations but it is also the individuals. You can see also the Huawei case which of course is a very different case but you can see the target was not just Huawei but also the daughter of the largest shareholder in Huawei and when she was traveling on business and she was the chief financial officer of the CFO and she was arrested in Canada for violating the domestic laws of the United States. So the effective message that is being now passed and we had the earlier also the Noriega case. The US law runs all over the world but international law does not run in United States. This is the broad position that the US has. It is not sanctified shall we say but the sanctions are imposing on the people involved and of course international criminal court was really trying to rectify one glaring issue that has always plagued it that it went after African states leaders but it never went beyond that. It really except the Serbian case it really did not go beyond that and therefore this had been held that it was essentially a pawn in the hands of powerful western powers and that is what it was trying to get out of that no it can look at the issues of atrocities international human rights violations in places like Palestine and Afghanistan and of course that it does bring up the basic issue that is there in the world. Does the US writ run all over the world or is it that it is bound by international law and international treaties and the US position is that it doesn't and that's what comes out more brutally shall we say with the Bolton and the Trump than it does with more soft spoken persons earlier whether it be Barack Obama or it be Clinton. So when the Republicans of a certain stripe come into the administration it becomes more open. George Bush of course was as you know the architect of various wars but leaving that out he also had Bolton and it was under his presidency that Bolton had threatened the OPCW head Joseph Bustani. So you know those are the kinds of things which you normally associate with international thuggery. You don't associate with civil shall we say administration which claimed to be the global leaders but what we are seeing is really that and that is coming out in the absolutely shall we say without any veil in very naked form. Right and sort of take the aspect the international aspect a bit further. So we already talked about earlier how the US has continuously been withdrawing from treaties ready to disarmament and arms control. We also have a situation where an international body like the UN is increasingly or has been left almost toothless in the sense that although it has been passing resolutions against the blockade on Cuba for years they have basically had no effect. So how do and we also talked about this earlier but how do we see the idea of global governance itself at a time like this which also gains extra importance during the time of a pandemic. The WHO again is an organization which is either too respected but again the US has completely withdrawn from it and is leading a campaign against. Well I think you can see that there are three major fronts on which US at the moment is launching attacks on international organizations. I'm not talking about the treaties which you mentioned earlier. The three organizations right now on its radar crosshairs is essentially international court criminal court is not the international court of justice which the US is a party to international criminal court it wasn't ever a party to it's basically the IC international criminal court the World Trade Organization because it dares to also listen to complaints against the United States. So the US says as far as I am concerned I'm ruled by all my own laws you have to be ruled by my laws and international treaties is what it wants every other country to follow. So that was the World Trade Organization we have seen the trade organization virtually rendered toothless because the tribunal which is finally the body which allows the treaty to be implemented by passing judgments whether some what A has done is right or B has done is right that part of it has been completely rendered toothless because US has not accepted any new nominations in the tribunal so there is I think only one member left at the tribunal level and they need at least three to meet and pass judgment. So at the moment WTOs dispute the resolving mechanism has been rendered completely toothless. The third of course is in the pandemic we have seen the WHO because in spite of every warning that had been given the US decided it didn't have to listen to it it decided that knew much better it tried its own test kits not the WHO test kits and it failed miserably to stop the epidemic from entering the United States and having entered its huge spread that is taking place the US still is the largest number it is still the largest number of infected it's followed by Brazil and at the moment looks like the fourth highest is India Russia is the third highest but in terms of daily infections India is also the third highest so you have the United States, Brazil and India showing the largest number of infections per day and also the largest number of deaths per day at the moment so given all of this WHO would have been a central organization around which people could have coordinated their policies because you cannot fight a pandemic as an individual country you have to fight it globally now that means fight it globally with knowledge sharing knowledge of the not only knowledge but also equipment medicines vaccines that's how you fight the epidemic because you can't stamp the epidemic out at the global level then of course the epidemic continues in one part of the globe with the other and of course in respect to other countries again so given that this is the case where it is not the countries that are involved in terms of against each other it's not a zero some game I lose you lose it's not that if I lose you win so the pandemic the us and them is the virus versus us so in that condition a global collective action coordination is something that WHO was obviously the right platform to do it under and of course the United States decided that they needed a scapegoat so China was scapegoat number one and the scapegoat scapegoat number two was WHO mainly because China is able to control its epidemic therefore swamp the US in a very bad light so therefore it also needed further scapegoats what it calls accessories and therefore the WHO has become the shall we say the sacrificial goat in battle Trump's battle to win his second term absolutely right thank you so much for being talking to us that's all we have time for today keep watching news click