WORLD NEEDS GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS

ST. LOUIS -- Mass rape, genocide and child slavery occur daily around the world. It is time for individual perpetrators of such gross human-rights violations (Pol Pot, Hussein and Milosevic) to be held accountable.

We currently have ad hoc tribunals, but these politicized, temporary bodies do not deter atrocities nor effectively address the hundreds of cases around the world. If the United States similarly had to recruit cops, hire prosecutors and create a court for every murder case, we would never be able to fairly and effectively execute justice.

The current global system is only a little better than vigilantism. Since World War I, wise leaders have realized the need for global institutions to address these crises. In the last few years, they have gotten serious and developed an institution, called the International Criminal Court, to do exactly that: deter atrocities and hold perpetrators accountable. The world, and the United States as its leader and superpower, needs the ICC.

Nonetheless, the influential U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms has been outspoken against this movement and has introduced a bill, the misnamed "U.S. Service Members Protection Act." Helms is worried that U.S. soldiers could be dragged before what he calls a kangaroo court on trumped-up charges. There simply is no substance behind his rhetoric.

First, this is no kangaroo court at all, but rather an august body of the foremost jurists in the world. Moreover, the court has been developing ever since the Nuremberg trials following World War II. The idea has been promoted and refined by some of the most respected statesmen in the world and is endorsed by almost every other respectable state in the world. Only the United States, Israel and rogue states oppose it.

Second, the ICC treaty already gives priority to national courts. The ICC only comes into play once a state's judicial system fails to provide a fair court hearing on a case. So when a U.S. soldier is someday accused of some heinous human-rights violation, he will be tried for his alleged crimes right here in the United States before a U.S. court. The ICC exists only for those cases that arise in countries that do not have an independent judiciary as we have in the United States.

So Helms' bill tries to solve a non-problem. Unfortunately, Helms' bill is also dangerously isolationist and dishonorable in that it wants American soldiers to be held to lower ethical standards than those of Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, we must hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold others to. Even though Americans will never come before this court (because they usually act honorably, and we have an independent judiciary to try them in case they do not), we cannot except American servicemen from the ICC.

If every state acted as Helms wants the United States to act, there would be no ICC (which is, after all, what Helms hopes for). This bill really is not about protecting American servicemen at all, as it prevents the United States and its allies from assisting the ICC in prosecuting other violators. Helms simply hates the idea of global institutions.

But we all know that we cannot stop globalization. The United States participates in this world and profits from it. Thus, we must create institutions such as the ICC to civilize it. Helm's head-in-the-sand isolationism simply is not an option. History proves that isolation leads to more dead American servicemen, just as allowing Hitler to do his evil work for years and years led to the thousands of dead American servicemen on the beaches of Normandy.

We need global institutions such as the ICC to deter and stop such evil before it draws the United States into even more horrible scenarios. The only real way to protect American servicemen is through institutions for global justice.

Christopher Robertson is a Cape Girardeau native and a graduate fellow at Washington University.