Why Powerful Countries Never Get Held Accountable

 

There's a question I keep coming back to whenever I read the news about international law.

Why is it that some people can be accused of the most serious crimes in the world and still carry on as if nothing has happened, while others end up in court, in prison, or fighting for their lives?

I've been thinking about it while following the stories about the ICC, the sanctions, the arrest warrants and the deals being made behind closed doors.

And the more I look at it, the harder it becomes to ignore an uncomfortable reality.

International law is supposed to apply to everyone. But the ability to enforce it often depends on how much power someone has to resist it.

I know that sounds cynical. And I don't want this to become one of those arguments where we shrug our shoulders and say the whole system is corrupt, so there's no point trying to fix it.

I don't believe that.

But I also don't think we should pretend that everyone is treated equally under a system where some countries have the power to decide which rules they will accept and which ones they will fight.

Just look at where this all began.

After the Second World War, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were presented as a turning point. Leaders and military officials were held accountable for atrocities committed during the war. The idea that people could be prosecuted for international crimes, even when acting on behalf of a state, was enormously important.

And it still is.

But there was an uncomfortable reality from the beginning. The people standing trial were from the defeated powers. The victorious countries were in a position to organise the trials, define the process and decide who would face justice.

That doesn't mean the crimes were imaginary or that the trials were meaningless. Far from it. But it does raise a question that has never really gone away.

What happens when the people accused of wrongdoing are powerful enough to make sure nobody can put them in the same position?

Over the decades, there have been other attempts to answer that question. The international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia prosecuted people responsible for horrific crimes. They secured convictions, sent perpetrators to prison and gave victims a formal recognition of what had happened to them.

That work mattered. It still matters.

But international justice has never operated on a level playing field.

Some people can be brought before a court because their governments have collapsed, they've lost political protection or the international community has decided that pursuing them is possible. Others have governments, military alliances and enormous economic influence standing between them and any serious attempt at prosecution.

And that difference can determine whether a case moves forward at all.

This is where the International Criminal Court comes in.

The ICC was created to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and, under specific conditions, the crime of aggression. It was meant to help close the gap between the crimes that shock the world and the crimes for which anyone actually faces justice.

But the court has limits. It doesn't have its own police force. It depends on countries to arrest suspects and cooperate with its investigations. Its jurisdiction is also restricted by the rules under which it operates.

And some of the most powerful countries in the world have never joined it.

The United States, Russia and China, for example, are not parties to the Rome Statute. That doesn't mean their citizens can never fall under ICC jurisdiction, but it does create significant legal and political limits.

Think about what that means in practice.

A court can issue an arrest warrant, but it cannot simply send officers into a country and arrest the person named in it. It needs cooperation. It needs governments to act. And when those governments have strong political reasons not to cooperate, the warrant can remain just that: a warrant.

The court may have made its decision. The world may have seen the announcement. But the person accused can still remain beyond its reach.

And that's where the gap between justice on paper and justice in real life becomes impossible to ignore.

There's another issue that deserves an honest discussion.

For years, the ICC's investigations were heavily concentrated in Africa. That led to accusations that the court was unfairly targeting African countries while powerful states escaped scrutiny.

It's important not to oversimplify the history. Several early investigations were referred to the court by African governments themselves, and the court has pursued cases outside Africa too. The pattern cannot be explained by one reason alone.

But the broader criticism remains difficult to dismiss: the court has often had a much easier time pursuing cases involving people with less political protection than those backed by powerful states.

That isn't proof that every case is politically motivated. It is a reminder that the law does not operate in a vacuum.

Power affects what gets investigated, who cooperates, which arrests happen and which cases struggle to move forward.

And once you understand that, some of the headlines that seem contradictory begin to make more sense.

When an international court pursues someone who has little protection, governments may cooperate. When it pursues someone politically important to a powerful country, the response can be very different.

Suddenly, there are sanctions, diplomatic pressure, arguments over jurisdiction and warnings about the court's legitimacy.

Some of those legal arguments may deserve to be heard. Courts should be questioned when they get things wrong. No institution should be immune from criticism.

But there's a difference between challenging a court's reasoning and trying to make it pay a price for investigating someone you want protected.

And that difference matters enormously.

Because if the message becomes that international justice is acceptable only when it doesn't inconvenience the powerful, then what exactly are we defending?

I think this is the part people often miss when they talk about international law.

The problem isn't necessarily that there are no rules. There are treaties, courts, conventions and legal principles developed over decades. There's a substantial body of international law, and it has made a real difference in many cases.

The problem is that enforcement is uneven.

Domestic governments have police, courts and prisons. International institutions don't have the same independent machinery. They depend heavily on states, including the very states whose interests may be threatened by the outcome.

The UN Security Council makes this imbalance even more obvious. Its five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France — have veto power over substantive council decisions.

That power can block action even when a large number of other countries support it.

So when people ask why international institutions seem unable to act against certain governments, the answer isn't always that nobody knows what's happening or that no laws exist.

Sometimes the problem is that the countries needed to enforce those laws have the power to prevent meaningful action.

And what do you do with that?

Honestly, I don't have an easy answer.

Part of me thinks we need to be more honest about what international law can and cannot do. We should stop speaking as though an arrest warrant automatically means an arrest will follow, or as though a court's decision carries the same weight regardless of who is involved.

But another part of me worries about where that kind of thinking leads.

If we decide the entire system is useless because it cannot treat everyone equally, we risk dismissing the cases where it has made a difference. We risk abandoning the very people who have the least power to protect themselves.

For victims of war crimes, even an imperfect court can matter. A prosecution can establish facts, preserve evidence, recognise suffering and make it harder for perpetrators to pretend nothing happened.

Justice delayed is not always justice denied. And justice that falls short of its ideals is not necessarily worthless.

But we shouldn't confuse the existence of a court with the existence of accountability.

Those are two different things.

I also think we need to stop treating this as a problem that can be solved simply by appointing better judges or giving institutions a little more money. Resources matter. Independence matters. Competent judges matter.

But none of those things, on their own, can solve the problem of powerful governments refusing to cooperate when the outcome threatens their interests.

That is a political problem as much as a legal one.

And it requires countries to accept that the rules they expect others to follow must also apply when the consequences become uncomfortable at home.

That's a much harder demand than issuing statements about justice.

So where does that leave us?

I go back and forth on this more than I'd like to admit.

Sometimes I think we should stop pretending international law is a system that can reliably hold everyone accountable. At its worst, it can look like a system in which the weak face consequences while the strong negotiate their way out of them.

Other times, I think giving up on it would make things even worse. Without international courts, legal standards and the possibility of prosecution, powerful governments would have even fewer reasons to explain or defend their actions.

I don't know how to resolve that tension.

But I do know that pretending the imbalance doesn't exist won't fix it.

Maybe the first step is simply to ask better questions whenever another international crisis makes the news.

Not just what crime has been alleged, or what the court has decided, but whether it has jurisdiction, who can enforce its decisions, which governments are willing to cooperate and who has the power to prevent any of it from happening.

Those questions can tell us a great deal about what is likely to happen next.

Because the uncomfortable truth is that having the law on your side and having the power to enforce it are not the same thing.

And until that gap becomes part of the conversation, we'll keep wondering why some people face justice while others seem untouchable.

The question isn't whether international law matters. It does.

The question is whether the world is willing to apply it when doing so comes at a political cost.

That's where the real test begins.

And, far too often, that's where the system starts to struggle.