[legalrights]

For the first time in the history of treaty-making a signatory unsigned a treaty. That was the United States in March 2002 when President George Bush gave the order for the U.S. to pull out of the International Criminal Court, an institution that would probably have never got off the ground if his predecessor, Bill Clinton, together with American legal experts and non-governmental human rights activists hadn't been so behind it. It seemed to many that the U.S. was shooting itself in the foot. Not only does the U.S. have a vested interest in making sure that the reach of a world institution with the legal right to detain and try war criminals is as robust as possible, but it alienated important political forces, particularly in Europe but also elsewhere, that has left a bad mark at the back of their minds. It makes for one more good reason why they don't rally to America's side in its plans for war with Iraq. The UN and the institutions and conventions it maintains or midwifes, as diverse as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the peacekeeping secretariat, the human rights commission, the Conventions on the Rights of the Child and on Women, don't just spring back like a rubber band after they have been stretched out of shape by Washington. They hang rather limp and are a poor replica of the bodies with high tensile strength that they could be if the U.S. were four square behind them.