Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, by David Bosco

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David Bosco Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 312 pp. $29.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-19-984413-5The African Union's decision in early July 2014 to exclude sitting African heads of state from jurisdictional mandate of yet to be operationalized African Court of Justice and Human Rights epitomized backlash against International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet promise of a new world order in which state power is constrained by international legalism, embodied by operationalization in 2002 of this first permanent criminal court with global jurisdiction, has also been belied by its powerlessness in face of great power interests, and worse still, its confinement to dealing with state violence at periphery: on African continent. As underlined in David Bosco's Rough Justice, however, such logics of standard cannot be reduced to a clash between realities of politics and idealism of justice. On contrary: in this energetic, well-written, and genuinely informative volume, Bosco recounts a continuous process of mutual accommodation between court and major powers, foremost among United States. Based on elite interview strategy (9n20),! this volume narrates history of from genesis of war crimes institutions in aftermath of Second World War through to first years of present court's operation, focusing on its prosecutorial strategies.Bosco, a senior editor at Foreign Policy magazine and assistant professor of international politics at American University's School of International Service, traces geopolitical factors and evolutions at domestic level within powerful that account for the-in retrospect-startlingly swift opening of in 2002 as much as for uneven jurisdictional landscape that has curbed its operations since.1 2 The immediate end of Cold War provided a unique opportunity for court's creation. Yet this was dampened, in wake of 9/11 and US-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a gap opened between, on one hand, right to use force that major asserted within UN Security Council, and, on other, criminalization of war-making in weak African states. This enabled council to directly influence docket of court by referring cases, while maintaining de facto control over its limited resources.Thus, argues author, double standards are deeply rooted in existing global governance structures, and new court appears more likely to reflect those than to alter them (189). Tensions between diplomacy and global justice-the peace versus justice trade-off-transformed court into an instrument in toolkit of major responding to instability and violence in weaker states (187). Correlatively, these tensions feed into entrenched pattern of excluding court's operations from situations where major have deployed combat forces or where they have strong (123). The decision of Luis Moreno Ocampo, first prosecutor, to focus his seminal cases on situations where powers had few direct interests (91) is underlined as a direct accommodation to these constraints. These important checks have been, however, counterbalanced by subtle geopolitical shifts: 2004 Abu Ghraib scandals underscored inability of US to continue to induce other to marginalize court; furthermore, political changes at domestic level, with prominence of ICC glee club in 2008 Obama administration (154), led US to mellow its attitude toward court. While not producing broad major-power acceptance of institution (21), such evolutions could nonetheless indicate a tremor of optimism beyond dismal conclusion drawn by author. Indeed, diagnosis of a Bush pundit in 2005 that standard is the relatively small price to pay (111) for global accountability could progressively and subtly boomerang against major powers. …