WASHINGTON: As the international criminal court quietly became a reality in the Hague, European diplomats tried to stay optimistic that the Americans would eventually stop sulking and join in its operation. But the US’s absence is seen by analysts in Washington as something far deeper than an aberration by the Bush administration, but instead reflects a strand in American political philosophy that can be traced back to George Washington.

As an issue, the court is not even on the radar screen in US politics, and it barely rates a mention except in the elite newspapers. “If you asked anyone 10 miles outside Washington about the ICC, they’d think it was the latest boy pop band,” said James Lindsay of the Brookings Institution.

But distaste for it runs deep among those who care. President Bush’s instincts are against international bodies of this kind, and current politics ensure there is little reason for him to contemplate changing his mind. This is an issue on which there is no institutional split between the two traditional bureaucratic antagonists: the departments of state and defence.

Inside the administration, the intellectual leader of opposition to the ICC is believed to be John Bolton, the under-secretary of state, who in January last year — barely a fortnight before the Bush administration took office — launched a public attack on President Clinton’s decision to sign the treaty creating the court. He said the move was “injurious as well as disingenuous”, and that the court would be “an object of international ridicule and politicised futility”.

He added: “The ICC’s supporters have an unstated agenda, resting, at bottom, on the desire to assert the primacy of international institutions over nation states.”

In the Pentagon, dislike of the court is both more widespread and more visceral. The Boltonesque instincts of political appointees, from Donald Rumsfeld down, are matched by the military’s understandable desire to avoid any threat to their own servicemen.

Even Clinton, being pushed by the Republicans, said he would not recommend ratification but argued — in a tactic akin to traditional British relations with European institutions — that signing it would allow the US to influence the court’s development. Now congressional Democrats, sensing no mileage in the issue, are almost silent when rightwingers trumpet their opposition.

In May Tom DeLay, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, persuaded the appropriations committee to authorise the president to rescue any American held by the court. One lone Democrat did ask if DeLay understood that he was proposing an invasion of the Netherlands.

“There is a deep-seated and deeply held belief in the Republican party that American security depends on minimizing constraints on American freedom,” Lindsay said.

“This is a world view that can certainly be traced back to Theodore Roosevelt, and arguably to George Washington’s warning that the country should avoid foreign entanglements. This strain in political thought was largely dormant for 40 years because of the cold war. It has become dominant again now.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.