are so different that I am not the right person to debate. What follows is my personal opinion.

Let me make it clear that I do not favor the US in the roles you seem to suggest in prior posts:

It is a real opportunity for a legitimate "global law-enforcer" beyond the heavily-criticised "Team America and the Allies".
or as "police officer" (your last analogy); or as the primary sheepdog protector (to borrow an analogy from Dave Grossman) of other herds. I would adopt a much more limited geographic scope for US application of the "M" in DIME - unless attacked, where we still have to retain a solid global reach capability (the "compressed spring" concept).

The historical global strength of the US has been economic, and to some extent informational. We have not done a very good job in those areas recently; and have pursued a rather insane economic policy for decades.

In my list of what the US should be doing to correct its Worldview, the ICC would be in the bottom tier (if at all). End personal opinion.

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For those interested in the ICC, several Wikis provide some links and coverage of the starting points: International Criminal Court, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, United States and the International Criminal Court.

Here is a graphic (as of 10 Oct 2009) of ICC ratified members (green), signed but non-ratified nations (orange) and non-signed nations (gray):

ICC members 10-09.jpg

As of Oct 2009:

... the court has opened investigations into four situations: Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur.[14] The court has indicted fourteen people; seven of whom remain fugitives, two have died (or are believed to have died), four are in custody, and one is appearing voluntarily before the court.

14. International Criminal Court, 2007. Situations and Cases. Accessed 26 January 2009.
What the ICC might do with some "Small Wars" issues is a valid concern for those who fight them.

For example, let's take a difficult area as in this SWC thread recently updated, HVTs/Political Assassination. Some of the legal problems in this area are addressed by Kenneth Anderson, ‘Targeted Killing in U.S. Counterterrorism Law and Strategy’, A Working Paper on Counterterrorism and American Statutory Law, a Joint Project of the Brookings Institution, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Hoover Institution, 11 May 2009. In that article, Anderson cites the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) 22 times. Arguably, any violation of that somewhat murky convention would constitute a "war crime" - and notably, our (US) drone strikes and other direct actions have been claimed to violate that convention.

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I got to thinking about our US courts and prosecutors; briefly:

1. Michigan judges and prosecutors are elected - hence, the People have direct control over who those folks are (other checks and balances also exist).

2. Federal judges and prosecutors are appointed - by folks elected by the People (other checks and balances also exist there).

The ICC's judges and prosecutors are elected by the nation-state members. There, Cambodia and the US would have equal voting rights (one nation, one vote); not quite the US constitutional concept of one person, one vote.

Regards

Mike