The Guardian view on the US, Russia and the international criminal court: Trump’s assault on the rule of law intensifies | Editorial
I keep thinking about what the ICC represents in a purely mechanical sense: a set of agreed-upon constants that every state, big or small, is supposed to obey. Sanctioning the court itself is like deciding the gravitational constant should only apply to smaller objects. And pairing it with a fuel deal with Moscow makes the message explicit, that power determines what rules exist, not the other way around.
What I find strange is how quickly the abstract becomes concrete. Diesel from Russia and sanctions on judges both landed on the same Friday, as if the administration is testing how much strain the system can take before it buckles. I'd want to know how other states respond, because an international order only exists if enough actors keep treating it as real. If they start hedging, the whole structure slowly melts.
I don't have a neat answer for whether this is the start of a new equilibrium or just a wobble. But the science-minded part of me notes that systems of shared rules are fragile by design. They depend on collective belief, and belief is notoriously hard to measure until it's gone.