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Cloth Text,
150 pages
978-0-8157-0325-9,
$24.95
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been a political third rail in the United States. Long opposed by senior military leadership, it was signed onto only with grave reservations by the Clinton administration, and ceremoniously unsigned by the Bush administration. But recent developments in Washington, New York, and the Hague suggest that a policy of formal U.S. government opposition to the Court may yield to a policy of de facto acceptance and active U.S. cooperation with the Court in its important mission.
The time is at hand for a major reassessment of the relationship between the United States, the International Criminal Court, and the broader issue of U.S. policy toward international justice. Lee Feinstein and Tod Lindberg provide that assessment in Means to an End.
Means to an End reframes the discussion on the ICC by broadening the focus to address not simply the Court but the broader issue of United States policy toward international justice. Feinstein and Lindberg argue that the U.S. should actively support the ICC—not as an act of international charity, nor as a project of “global governance,” and not even
principally to send a strong message of international cooperation, but rather, because it serves U.S. interests and is consistent with the values to which America has aspired. Means to an End also focuses on the foreign policy, national security, and moral case for shifting U.S. policy toward the Court. A sovereign power that fails to protect the essential right to live is failing its most basic obligation.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Lee Feinstein
Lee Feinstein is a visiting fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. He was Hillary Clinton’s national security director during her presidential campaign, has held senior positions at the State and Defense Departments, and was deputy director of studies and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities (Council on Foreign Relations, 2007).
Tod Lindberg
Tod Lindberg is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor of the journal Policy Review. He is author of The Political Teachings of Jesus (HarperOne, 2007), editor of Beyond Paradise and Power: Europe, America and the Future of a Troubled Partnership (Routledge, 2004), and coeditor with Derek Chollet and David Shorr of Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide (Routledge, 2007).
Selected Reviews
With this volume, the authors make an important contribution to the ongoing debate over U.S. involvement with the International Criminal Court. As our country continues to seek ways in which to hold perpetrators of atrocities to account, their analysis and argument will play a key role in the thinking in this area.
Senator John McCain,
R-Arizona
Means to an End is a well-researched and timely contribution to the debate over America’s proper relationship to the International Criminal Court. Rigorous in its arguments and humane in its conclusions, the volume is an indispensable guide for scholars and policymakers alike.
Madeline K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State