Getting my brain to this topic was one of those mazes that takes five minutes to explain. It started with a lawfare podcast on how they used evidence (or not used) obtained by torture from Guantanomo against people accused of terrorism. It led to me remembering something I heard from some general (probably on a podcast) where he said, “Every country has war criminals. It’s how you deal with them that determines [if you are good(?)]” The first sentence was the one that stuck out to me.
The United States does not participate in sending our soldiers to the International Criminals Court (ICC) when we are accused of war crimes. We are one of the countries which doesn’t follow the Rome Treaty (2000? 2001? It was in process awhile and this definitely is not my era of expertise). Russia used to be a signatory member, but in like 2019 they started ignoring it and in 2022 they officially withdrew (something, something stealing children from another country is a war crime….)
There are arguable reasons not to send our soldiers to be judged by others. Theoretically, because we are “in first place” (at least in military no one argues this), countries like Russia who would love to bring us down a few pegs could use something like the ICC to damage our reputation or even target specific leadership in our military to deny us key strategists or talents… I’m not saying it’s even likely (I have no clue how they would), but it is possible. Like being the front-runner in a race, everyone is gunning for the #1 person.
How did we get here? We have this stated value of “all men are created equal” but we don’t live up to the value. We don’t let our “peers” (other countries) hold us accountable.
Hmmm, well no country likes to let “outsiders” judge them. That’s just obvious. And Woodrow Wilson was the president that suggested the League of Nations – and then couldn’t get Congress to pass joining it. After World War II, I feel like there was a major paradigm shift. Before WWI, we were definitely not a world power and after WWII we were. That is barely a generation.
People like Joseph McCarthy (1908 – 1957) grew up during this shift. He was 6 at the beginning of WWI, he was 31 at the beginning of WWII. He was only forty-nine when he died. He definitely lived in “interesting times,” if you think about it. He was just 21 at the beginning of the Great Depression… I might need to go find more on people who were born in the first decade of the 20th century because daaaaamn they lived in interesting times.
I think McCarthy must have had some serious “fake it ’til you make it” vibes in his head. The whole country did. The first half of the twentieth century, there was a LOT of “we are growing up, uhhhh… wait what?” sort of attitude. How much of that continued into the 1950s? The 1960s? I think, just from talking to my parents and such by the 1980’s we were past that…
Did this make “the red scare” worse? We had just gotten that gig of “big boy on the block” finally and the other rising-star-intern, who also wanted the job and also might have some serious imposter syndrome was right there… and since there wasn’t a boss to keep them in line… how much of McCarthyism was insecurity about being a world power?
AND! AND! Let’s say that McCarthy hadn’t been terrified and obsessed (and possibly insecure). There wasn’t such a craze. There is absolutely evidence that there were communist/Stalinist sympathizers and/or plants. It’s not like McCarthy was the emperor with no clothes over here. In the 1950s and 1960s when things were so tense and we were truly so close to nuclear war (I can’t study this too much, it scares the shit out of me) – did the harsh-over-the-top level of McCarthyism/Red Scare/Loyalty Reviews either rat out dangers or force them so deep into hiding they couldn’t make the kind of infiltration or sabotage they might have otherwise?
Could McCarthy have prevented the nukes from falling in the 1960s? Probably not, but it’s an interesting notion….
Dream by Day 