On Wednesday, acting on an ICC arrest warrant, Filipino President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. ordered the arrest of his predecessor and arch-nemesis.
Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is now in the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands following his dramatic arrest in Manila the day before over a brutal, years-long anti-drugs crackdown that left thousands of his citizens dead.
(CNN, March 12, 2025)
I’ve argued for years that ICC prosecutions only reinforce a two-tiered justice system. Exhibit A? Africans make up the overwhelming majority of defendants tried in The Hague. Even the prosecution of Serbs, including former President Slobodan Milosevic, proved one thing: only the relatively powerless face trial.
Meanwhile, despite outstanding arrest warrants, the powerful — like Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu — will never set foot in The Hague. And why would they? The notorious war crimes Putin is committing in Ukraine and Netanyahu in Gaza make those Duterte committed in the Philippines look genteel by comparison.
Of course, the ICC never even bothered to indict the likes of George W. Bush and Tony Blair — despite their clear war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But imagine if, like the Philippines, the ICC had jurisdiction over the United States. And like Marcos, Biden encouraged and facilitated the arrest of his predecessor, Trump. No doubt, Trump never launched a genocidal war. But Lord knows he has committed enough crimes to warrant arrest and trial in The Hague.
Here, for example, are some of the charges the ICC could have filed against Trump:
Crimes Against Humanity
- Separating children from their parents, inflicting severe mental and physical suffering on migrant families.
- Accelerating COVID-19 deaths by downplaying the pandemic and withholding aid, disproportionately harming vulnerable communities.
- Encouraging political violence by inciting police brutality, white nationalist attacks, and targeting protesters.
- Inciting the Jan 6 insurrection and enabling an attack on the democratic process.
War Crimes
- Targeting civilians in drone strikes, causing mass civilian casualties.
- Supporting and arming Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen indiscriminately, despite clear evidence of war crimes.
- Conspiring with Israel to exact collective punishment of Palestinians by cutting humanitarian aid and backing settlement expansion in violation of international law.
Crimes of Aggression
- Launching military strikes on Iran and assassinating Qasem Soleimani without legal justification.
- Threatening total war against North Korea, recklessly making nuclear threats in violation of international norms.
In any case, I fully expect Duterte to meet the same fate as Milosevic — rotting away in The Hague until his dying day.