The Huntsman has launched a full-blooded attack upon my remarks on Charles Tannock's interesting piece about the International Criminal Court. He variously describes my position as "arrant nonsense", "poppycock", and "rubbish", says my view is "of a piece with the [Conservative Party’s] muddled position on the European Convention on Human Rights" and declares the Conservative Party's opposition to participation in the ICC as "muddled" and incompatible with having an image as a "serious and responsible governing party". There's no need to beat around the bush, Huntsman! If you've got something to say, just say it!
Huntsman quotes various precedents going back to the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. As I have remarked before, I am opposed to all international war crimes trials. I don't believe that Hitler was any more guilty of crimes than Saddam Hussein or President al-Bashir. But just because we have in the past participated in genocide and other war crimes trials does not make that right.
Huntsman asks the following
Is Mr. Lillico suggesting that we are somehow not bound by customary international law and if so, what is his authority for such a fantastic proposition?
It is true that we sign treaties and enter into other things to which something we call "international law" applies, including relating to matters such as private crimes. But international law has traditionally been regarded as a matter of custom, politeness. International law tells us about the promises sovereign states have made to each other. But states can break their promises if they so choose. International law is not "law" in the sense of the Laws of England. It is not something that, by virtue of our involvement in society, we take on ourselves a moral duty to obey.
If we accept the idea of international criminal law, then we are accepting the notion that there are laws universal to humanity (or perhaps universal to the world). So then if I do something that is legal in Britain, but illegal according to the laws of humanity, have I acted illegally or not? If I am someone that accepts a moral duty to try to obey the law, am I morally obliged to obey this law or not? Suppose that under international law it became illegal to cane a prisoner. If I were in charge of corporal punishment, and I were instructed to cane a prisoner, would I be acting legally or illegally?
Now the answer that international crimes are not like this, and relate only to crimes such as systematic genocide or the use of rape as a war strategy is not adequate, for the problem is not that I reject the idea that the specific international criminal offences are bad, but, rather, that I reject the notion that any power other than Britain should make the laws that apply in and to Britain. For example, take the question of the invasion of Iraq. Many people contend that this act violated international law. I couldn't care less whether it did or not, for to me all that it would mean to say that we had violated international law was that we had broken some norm of behaviour between states that we had at some stage signed up to. Well, if we didn't want to keep with it, then we stopped. Again, we have signed many treaties with our EU partners. But if as Britain we chose to cease acting in accordance with those treaties, that would be entirely an act of our sovereign will. It is hubris of the Lisbon treaty to have set out ways we might withdraw from the EU - whether we continue to abide by treaties we have signed is, in the final analysis, a matter for us alone.
Again, the United States presumes to make laws that apply to British citizens acting on British soil if those acts affect US citizens. I consider this an affront.
The principle is the same in all cases: Britain should make and enforce the laws that apply in Britain. Not the EU. Not the US. Not the ICC.
This does not mean that we should ignore all those norms of behaviour that regulate conduct between states - the apparatus of International Law. It is obviously better usually to be polite and usually to abide by our undertakings. But it does mean that we should recognise a strict distinction between such "law" and the true laws that we impose upon our citizens and expect and require them to obey.
Now in order to make the argument above, I do want to respect the sovereignty of other nations to the extent that I do not presume to make laws that apply on their soil any more than I accept their making laws that apply on mine. But this does not mean that I must respect their borders. If I want us to invade Serbia to protect the Kosovans, I do not need to say that the Serbians have done anything illegal - either broken my laws or "international law". It would be sufficient for me to believe that the Serbians have been acting in an oppressive way, were unlikely to cease to do so without intervention, that I had tried other sorts of intervention and they had proved fruitless, and that I believed military intervention could be conducted proportionately and would improve matters rather than making them worse.
The situation is rather like this: I do not need to believe that you are ill or deranged in order to intervene to stop you from beating your wife. I respect your moral autonomy (like I respect the sovereignty of other nations). But I intervene because I believe you are being wicked. That is not in conflict with respecting your moral autonomy. It merely means that I am not going to allow you to exercise that autonomy. It is precisely because I respect you that I can condemn you as wicked. In much the same way, I want us to respect the sovereignty of other nations in the sense that we grant that they make the laws that apply to them. But if the exercise of their autonomy/sovereignty is wicked, then I want us to intervene.
I hope that is clear.
