It's interesting to note this is specifically about ordering attacks on power plants, deciding that such attacks are unjustified attacks on civilian infrastructure.
The Putin arrest warrant came earlier because it was related to something Russia was doing even more openly and very obviously against international law, the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children to Russian families.
It's complicated. Dual use infrastructure can become valid military targets. It's also easier to make claim military justification for a limited strike meant to aide a specific operation. But repeated strikes broadly on civilian infrastructure is terror bombing and pretty indefensible.
A major part of WW2 strategy was Allied raids targeting Axis power plants, since electricity was a critical component for military factories (i.e., energy-intensive steelmaking). There was a mini-arms race around hydroelectric dam tactics—defensive nets to entangle bombs, vs. "bouncing bombs" that skipped across the surface of the water, circumventing the nets.
The dam bombings in Norway, at Telemark, were extra special: that was a critical component of Hitler's semi-serious nuclear weapons program. Vast amounts of electricity were being secretly used to separate deuterium from water, on the understanding that was necessary to produce working nuclear fission reactors for the purpose of creating plutonium. (This was an error; the US correctly figured out that ordinary graphite was sufficient, for this type of nuclear reactor).
There's actually an ICC investigation into Afghanistan, not sure what they're looking into but I don't remember bombing of civilian infrastructure being a big part of that war?
As for Iraq, seems like there really were attacks on power distribution (not generation) that don't seem to be all that remembered. But it's still significantly different from what is happening in Ukraine.
> There's actually an ICC investigation into Afghanistan, not sure what they're looking into but I don't remember bombing of civilian infrastructure being a big part of that war?
There wasn't much infrastructure in Afghanistan to begin with, my point (as well as with the other examples I named) is rather that there haven't been many consequences for the war crimes that did happen - quite a few of which have been exposed by WikiLeaks and others, and quite a few of the perpetrators got pardoned by Trump or not prosecuted at all like the Australian units [1].
The ICC in theory is an awesome progress in the history of humankind, but it's ... a bit pointless to have when it's just ignored by those in power.
It's not that simple. It's not the ICC's role to investigate and prosecute every single instance of a possible war crime, as that would be impractical and beyond the means of even a massive staff. Instead, what they're looking for are cases of larger scale and sustained abuses, especially at the direction of senior leadership.
Also importantly, the ICC is a 'court of last resort' meaning it complements existing national judicial systems rather than replacing them. So in cases like the Brereton Report there's no need for the ICC to step in because the Australian judiciary is already handling the situation adequately. It's not a court in the traditional national sense.
Afghanistan for instance requested deferrals in the ICC's investigation of actions on its territory, with the ICC resuming the investigation only in 2022 after determining that the Afghan judiciary was neither pursuing its own investigations nor interested in requesting an extension of the deferral.
The ICC's jurisdiction is also dependent on various factors such as whether the alleged crimes happened either on the territory of a state party or were committed by or against one, and that's not always the case. For instance it only has jurisdiction over actions committed after 1 May 2003 in Afghanistan, as that was when Afghanistan became a formal state party to the ICC Treaty.
Interesting to note that power plants were specifically mentioned. Part of the US bombing campaign against the Serbian genocide carried out by ICC-indicted Milosevic was .. bombing Serbian civilian power grid. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans...
As the ICC statement makes clear, the bombing of power plants and other energy infrastructure in and of itself is not a crime. It only reaches that level if the strikes are committed with the intent to cause civilian harm and suffering and are not justified by a military advantage.
The NATO bombing of power infrastructure in Serbia was investigated by the United Nations
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY prosecutors were satisfied with the evidence presented by NATO that the targeting was narrowly aimed only at infrastructure which specifically fed into key parts of the military air defence and command and control network, and that it had hit transformers and other easily replaceable elements rather than the main plants. [0]
So it was proportional, fulfilled a military purpose, and wasn't aimed at causing undue suffering of the civilian population.
“I’m afraid electricity also drives command and control systems. If President Milošević really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO’s five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he doesn’t do so we will continue to attack those targets which provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it’s for him to deal with … [so] that water, that electricity is turned back on for the people of Serbia.”
-- NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea during NATO aggression against the SRY. (He's also the person who coined the propaganda term "collateral damage" against civilian casualties.)
It can be said that pretty much everything NATO did in 1999. in SRY, Putin is now doing in Ukraine.
> It can be said that pretty much everything NATO did in 1999. in SRY, Putin is now doing in Ukraine.
That doesn't say much, everything I did in 1999 (as an uninteresting secondary school student) is also being done by people under Putin's control in Ukraine.
Well, almost anything. Can believe none are reading up on Wicca.
(Similarly, I didn't care much for the claim that Iraq had chemical weapons that could reach Iran, what with them sharing a border and thus a water rocket filled with chlorine gas would have filled this description).
> (Similarly, I didn't care much for the claim that Iraq had chemical weapons that could reach Iran, what with them sharing a border and thus a water rocket filled with chlorine gas would have filled this description).
The evidence that Iraq had chemical weapons and used them against Iranian forces is extensively documented. The Wikipedia page has a list of good resources. [0]
However, that programme was dismantled as a result of international inspections and pressure after the 1991 Gulf War, and it was not restarted by 2003 as claimed by the US government as part of their justification for the invasion that year. US troops did find a number of chemical weapons elements, but all it seemed dated from the previous programme.
How is that remotely interesting to note? Surely you recognize that there’s a difference in culpability between the actions of an illegal invading force and an international peacekeeping mission aiming to stop a genocide?
As a matter of fact no, it really does not. This is quite exactly the reason it was set up in the first place
If your court system set up exclusively to investigate egregious cases of war crimes has something better to do than issuing arrest warrants against the perpetrators of particularly egregious war crimes then it probably has some skewed priorities
So your idea is that the ICC should not waste its time issuing arrest warrants in cases which have been extensively documented over the course of years because yesterday a beach was bombed?
That seems a bit backwards, but in any case I'm sure if russia wants they can request the ICC to investigate the attack
Just wait. There are 1000x if not x1B ants in the world than bears, ants rule the world in this context. It's just a matter of time until any bear succumbs to ants' rules.
And for the record, Putin is no bear, he's a yet another street coward who can only bully the weaker ones. If ICC means shit and he's such a bear, why doesn't he travel to any country which adheres to ICC rulling? A coward murderer and he knows it, that's why.
> Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and First Deputy Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation at the time of the alleged conduct
So why not Putin? The evidence seems to be about the same for him.
The Putin arrest warrant came earlier because it was related to something Russia was doing even more openly and very obviously against international law, the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children to Russian families.