Since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, the United States always had supported -- and invariably laid the foundation for -- international military tribunals. But the Bush administration made an abrupt change in 2002, even as a United Nations war crimes tribunal pressed ahead with the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The Bush administration denounced such courts as wasteful and mismanaged, and it urged their abolition by 2008.

State Department official Pierre-Richard Prosper claimed that there were problems “that challenge the integrity of the process” and raise questions about “the professionalism of the personnel.” He said the tribunals should “aggressively focus on the endgame and conclude their work by 2007-2008.” (Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2002)

But the true reason why Bush hoped to terminate war tribunals presumably lay in the American conduct in the war in Afghanistan where the United States was the recipient of a plethora of criticism by various global powers. Bush administration officials feared that such courts could infringe on United States sovereignty. Specifically, the White House was concerned that American military officials might one day be tried for alleged crimes committed during overseas deployments. The administration argument appeared lame at best. Officials contended that such tribunals created a dangerous dependency on international institutions and that defendants should be tried in courts in their own countries. (New York Times, March 1, 2002)

Furthermore, Bush administration officials contended that the United Nations war crimes tribunals spent millions of dollars needlessly. They claimed that international tribunals had been poorly supervised and abused by some of the lawyers and defendants for their own enrichment.

The tribunals set up in the Netherlands and Tanzania had each cost about $100 million a year. In both, there had been allegations that some defense lawyers inflated their bills and divided the proceeds with their clients. American officials also had suggested that Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at The Hague, should not have proceeded with her plans to indict dozens more Balkans war figures, because doing so would have caused the trials to drag on too long. They believed lower-level defendants should have been tried in national courts. (Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2002)

The State Department’s Prosper, who had prosecuted crimes from the Rwanda war, said that the process “at times has been too costly, has lacked efficiency, has been too slow and has been too removed from the everyday experience of the people and the victims.”

As suspected, the Bush administration once again was admonished by some of the world community. Defenders of the United Nations tribunals criticized the administration for taking on the courts at the moment they had achieved what was arguably their greatest success: the first war crimes trial of a head of state. The United States challenge, they said, could strengthen Milosevic’s claims that the United Nations trials were a highly politicized tool. (Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2002)

William Pace, who headed a group that supported the permanent International Criminal Court, said the timing of the Bush administration’s attack suggested that officials were laying the groundwork for a campaign to discredit the new international forum. Citing America’s sponsorship of several past war crimes trials, he said that American officials “know better than anyone that in failed states and rogue states, the only alternative to no justice is international justice. …After 45 or 50 years of supporting tribunals, this is a policy in favor of impunity” for the world’s Hitlers and Pol Pots. (Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2002)