Beth Van Schaack appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2022.
Washington rarely misses an opportunity to gaslight the American public on the glaring double-standards that comprise US foreign policy, a repetition the Beltway’s think tank establishment has perfected over the years. This was on full display in early August when the Center for Strategic & International Studies sat down with Beth Van Schaack, the State Department's Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice.
The conversation, titled “Accountability in Syria,” was centered mainly on trying to figure out how to hold President Bashar al-Assad responsible for the crimes he’s committed, before shifting to a broader discussion about international accountability for various atrocities and war crimes.
Predictably, the US government’s 20-year bombing campaign in Afghanistan wasn’t mentioned. Our illegal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was left out. Nothing on Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos. Zilch on Yemen, Libya, or Somalia. During the discussion, the notion of accountability for atrocities committed by US forces wasn’t just ignored; it was outright dismissed. While it was very short, the interview offered a glimpse into the distorted worldview that the establishment’s narrative managers work so hard to sculpt for the public.
Van Schaack is committed to global criminal justice for all victims, except when it comes to all of the crimes committed by her bosses as well as their friends around the world.
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Investigating global atrocities on behalf of the US government isn’t a role that they’ll give to just anyone.
It takes a special breed of DC insider to ensure that only certain parties will ever be targeted and Beth Van Schaack fits that mold well.
Following a string of roles at organizations like the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Documentation Center of Cambodia, Van Schaack joined the State Department as a deputy, when the office she now holds was occupied by Stephen Rapp, a former Democratic state legislator from Iowa.
In recent years, Van Schaack had split her time in government with her position as Executive Editor at Just Security, a publication written by and curated for the Capitol Hill crowd as well as Washington’s national security elite. The outlet has published work by notoriously hawkish senators like Dianne Feinstein and Roger Wicker, as well as national security swamp creatures like Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy. Some of the organization’s former Advisory Board members include National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
The ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice role is housed within the US State Department, an institution that is committed to accountability for global atrocities much in the same way that an organization funded by the NRA is committed to decreasing gun ownership. It was created in 1997 by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who infamously stated during a 1996 60 Minutes interview that the estimated 576,000 child deaths which came as a result of the devastating sanctions on Iraq during the early 90s were “worth it” because they helped the US in accomplishing its foreign policy objectives. Of course, focusing on America’s foreign interventions isn’t on Van Schaack’s radar, in spite of the fact that the US government has been locked in a permanent state of war for more than 20 years.
According to statistics compiled by various organizations such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Yemen Data Project, the US and its allies have dropped more than 337,000 bombs and missiles on countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, as well as numerous others since 2001.
In Iraq, the US-led coalition has admitted to utilizing white phosphorus, a deadly substance capable of causing “horrific injuries, burning deep into the muscle and bone,” as noted by Amnesty International.
Our use of depleted uranium in Fallujah in 2004 resulted in “catastrophic” levels of birth defects, as documented by countless Iraqis, including Dr. Samira Alani. During a 2012 interview with Al Jazeera, Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, described a substantial rise in congenital abnormalities beginning in 2005.
“There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now,” Alani told the publication. “So when I describe it all I can do is describe the physical defects, but I’m unable to provide a medical term.”
According to that report, most of these babies died within 30 minutes of being born. The ones who survived endured a painful existence and were forced to live with cleft palates, overgrown limbs, and malformed spines, among a variety of other conditions.
Not too long before this article was published, Alani conducted a study with Dr. Christopher Busby, a British scientist, which concluded that “whilst caution must be exercised about ruling out other possibilities, because none of the elements found in excess are reported to cause congenital diseases and cancer except Uranium, these findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases. Questions are thus raised about the characteristics and composition of weapons now being deployed in modern battlefields.”
In July 2010, Busby published another study indicating a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Fallujah following the 2004 attacks.
From Afghanistan flowed an endless stream of reports about botched night raids and misguided drone strikes by US forces which took the lives of thousands over the course of the 20-year war. Shortly after President Joe Biden withdrew the last of our troops, he plunged the Afghan population into chaos by signing an executive order freezing $7 billion in assets belonging to Da Afghanistan Bank, the country’s central bank. According to numerous reports, the famine that this theft has caused could potentially kill more Afghans than the number that were killed during two decades of US occupation.
NATO forces left behind a failed state in Libya following its bombing campaign in 2011.
In 2015, it was reported that after more than a year of bombing, the US was quite literally running out of munitions to drop on Syria.
The devastation in Yemen – which remains locked in a civil war that’s now lasted some eight years – is cited by many experts as the most severe humanitarian crisis on earth and it’s being carried out with the help of the US government. There was a time when even Van Schaack took issue with our complicity in this conflict.
A few months prior to the 2020 presidential election, Van Schaack used her platform at Just Security to document her disgust with President Donald Trump, on the heels of the release of a report detailing his administration’s evasion of certain US laws that enabled the additional sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, further aiding its assault on Yemen.
Van Schaack begins the piece by noting that, according to the State Department’s Office of Inspector General report, the Trump administration “failed to fully and accurately assess the humanitarian impact of US support.”
As she notes further down, this was a particularly egregious act on account of the Saudi government’s barbaric record in Yemen.
Without a hint of irony about identical actions elsewhere in the world by the US military, Van Schaack notes that “since its initial involvement in 2015, the Saudi-led Coalition has repeatedly killed or injured civilians in attacks they claimed either targeted legitimate military objectives or were the result of “mistakes.” Yet, it is hard not to wonder how bombing hospitals, wedding parties, funeral processions, markets, schools, and school buses could possibly serve any legitimate military purpose and how such a seemingly sophisticated coalition could make so many mistakes that take such a consistent and flagrant toll on human life.”
She couples this with a reminder to readers that “individuals, armed groups, and states that deliberately or indiscriminately target civilians, or utilize disproportionate force in their operations, are in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), or the laws of war, and the prohibition on war crimes.”
It’s a solid article. Thoroughly researched and detailed, the piece – which Van Schaack co-authored with Diane Bernabei – meticulously documents all of the ways in which President Trump and Secretary of State/inevitable presidential candidate Mike Pompeo circumvented the law to arm their Saudi pals.
The intent behind the article is to elicit anger at the prior administration, but that’s a tough sell now that the reader knows which administration Van Schaack currently works for.
In her analysis, Van Schaack also makes clear that “given that the United States has knowledge of, and has provided substantial assistance to, its client states’ operations in Yemen, continued provision of lethal munitions and other forms of assistance may actually entail legal liability on the part of the United States, U.S. officials implementing the Yemen policy, and even corporate actors producing the munitions being deployed. If these attacks are indeed war crimes, there are at least three legal grounds, according to Oona Hathaway, under which the United States “would potentially be legally responsible for violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Saudi coalition in Yemen.””
The ambassador noted that candidate Biden – remember that this was written in August 2020 – had pledged to end US support for the war in Yemen. Of course, this never happened.
The new commander-in-chief reiterated this promise at a news conference not long after being sworn in but had no intention of keeping his word. Nine months following his promise that only “defensive” weapons would be sold – it was never made clear how this would differ from the offensive variety – the Biden administration announced a $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
The article also takes issues with the Trump administration’s amendment of the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy in April 2018, which was changed to include language that “narrows the scope of end-user risks to prohibiting only arms transfers in cases in which the United States has actual knowledge its arms exports will be used in attacks “intentionally” directed against civilians. The addition of the word “intentionally” means that arms sales would only be prohibited under a circumstance in which officials have actual knowledge of plans for an intentional civilian massacre, which could exclude instances of U.S. arms being used in indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks when civilians are collateral damage. The use of disproportionate force, even absent an intent to harm civilians, constitutes a war crime under IHL.”
Van Schaack is correct yet again but it’s unclear how her current boss – whose August 2021 drone strike in Kabul murdered a family of 10 – is anything but a war criminal given this logic. Under the legal reasoning Van Schaack references, each and every president of the post-9/11 era is as well.
If you’re waiting for Van Schaack to wake up one morning and suddenly launch an investigation into the president she currently serves, don’t hold your breath. It is, nevertheless, a hypocrisy worth noting.
The role of a party operative like Beth Van Schaack is to pretend that these contradictions don’t exist. And if there’s anyone who would never call her out on these inconsistencies, it’s the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), an organization paid to protect the power centers Van Schaack works for. According to the company’s 2018/2019 annual report, the last one available, it’s difficult to find an institution of influence that CSIS hasn’t taken money from.
Included in the firm’s roll of donors are Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup; oil giants like Exxon Mobil and BP; and powerful weapons manufacturers like Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, and L3Harris Technologies. The organization has also collectively raised millions from the governments of Japan, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, Italy, Norway, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, among numerous others.
Perhaps most important of all is the fact that CSIS has raised more than $500,000 directly from the US government. When CSIS members appear on television, when their work is featured in the op-ed pages of mainstream publications, or when it comes to interviews like this one, this is a conflict of interest that is rarely, if ever, disclosed. The institution’s primary responsibility is to act as a mouthpiece for power, which is why its members never dare to question it.
The conversation was led by Jon Alterman, a senior vice president, the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and the director of the Middle East Program at CSIS.
He began the discussion by asking Van Schaack what true accountability for victims of global atrocities means to her. The ambassador noted that this could mean “a number of things—including having truth available to victims as to what happened to them, their loved ones, why a particular repressive regime was put in place, how it operated, why they were chosen.”
A natural follow-up would’ve been for Alterman to make note of the fact that some of the most repressive regimes of the past half century or so were put in place with the help of the CIA. But this was a safe environment, not a confrontational one.
Instead of inquiring about all of the global atrocities that the Pentagon has funded, the pair discussed the importance of having a group at the White House that would specifically focus on atrocity prevention.
When the conversation progressed to the main topic of discussion, Van Schaack described the intricate web of conflicts comprising the Syrian civil war by noting that “we had the democratic opposition, but then we had the Islamic State Group (ISG) and a number of splinter groups connected with each side. Then, there is wholescale intervention and involvement by other states—like Russia in support of its client state, Syria. We now have Turkey engaging and threatening incursions in the north. The United States supports some elements of the democratic opposition.”
There was no mention (or pushback from Alterman) about the fact that during the Obama administration the US was essentially allied with elements of al-Qaeda in Syria, saturating the civil war with hundreds of millions of dollars in arms that flowed directly to our supposed enemies. The conversation never touched on the reality that the Pentagon was perfectly at ease with taking any action that could’ve potentially resulted in Bashar al-Assad being removed from power.
The event also included pondering whether there could ever be genuine accountability for the president of Syria.
As Van Schaack pointed out, this would be a challenge given that the government of Assad – who remains in power to this day – “is unlikely to put its own agents on trial for the many abuses for which they are responsible and have been documented as being responsible.”
The ambassador then noted the futility of attempting to utilize the international courts, lamenting that “when the Security Council was considering a referral of the situation in Syria to the ICC, Russia – with China in tow – blocked that referral through the exercise of a double veto.”
Of course, no nation on earth can match the US when it comes to avoiding responsibility for its actions on the international stage.
Created by the 1998 Rome Treaty, the ICC began operations in July 2002, and was tasked with investigating war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, committed in any of the 120 countries that had voted to adopt it four years earlier. As it currently stands, the ICC has 123 member states. The US – a government with the most expansive military presence on earth – isn’t one of them.
Even though the treaty was signed (but never sent to the Senate to be ratified) by the US during the Clinton administration, the signature was withdrawn by President George W. Bush, who claimed to have feared that Americans would be unfairly targeted for political reasons. John Bolton, then serving as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, described traveling to the UN in the early days of the Bush administration to ceremonially “unsign” the Rome Statute as his happiest day in government.
It’s important to note that although the US is not a member of the court, its citizens can still be charged with crimes committed in nations that are members. Just a month after the ICC began operations, President Bush made sure that this would be a technicality the US would never have to worry about, by signing the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002.
Aptly nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act,” section 2008 of the bill granted the president the authority to “use all means necessary and appropriate” to liberate any American or US ally being held by the court. The Bush administration was willing to invade the Netherlands to prevent American officials from being prosecuted. On the heels of one of the most rapid and radical reconfigurations of executive power in our nation’s history, the US government was determined to make it known that nobody was ever going to hold the US accountable for how it exercised that power. Nevertheless, some 15 years later, the ICC tried.
In November 2017, following several years of data collection, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that she was seeking authorization to investigate atrocities committed during the course of the war in Afghanistan. According to her findings, an estimated 17,000 civilians had been killed since 2009 by the Taliban as well as other insurgent groups. In addition to probing possible war crimes by these various groups as well as by Afghan forces, Bensouda declared that the court would also be investigating the US.
According to the prosecutor, a preliminary examination found that at least 61 individuals were tortured on Afghan soil by the US military between May 2003 and December 2014. The CIA, which spent years executing its own shadow war in Afghanistan running parallel to the military’s operations, also stood accused of torturing at least 27 additional individuals not only in Afghanistan, but also at black sites in Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. These abuses are alleged to have occurred between December 2002 and March 2008.
According to the court’s panel of judges, a portion of Bensouda’s case was based on the US government’s own findings, particularly the public portion of the so-called Senate Torture Report. In announcing her intention to uncover the truth about these charges and obtain justice for some of the war’s victims, Bensouda asked the court’s judges for authorization to pursue a formal investigation.
The following September, the Trump administration responded.
In a blistering rebuke of the court delivered the day before the 9/11 anniversary, Bolton, back in power as the president’s national security adviser, did not mince words. During his speech at the Federalist Society, Bolton threatened any ICC staff members who took any steps to further the investigation against the US with the possibility of financial sanctions, travel bans, and even prosecution. In his remarks, he noted that any countries or companies providing assistance to these individuals would also be subject to the same penalties. He made clear that any nations who may choose to cooperate with the ICC in investigating the US, or allies like Israel, would be putting their governments’ diplomatic, military, and intelligence ties with the US in jeopardy.
"The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton noted in his speech, adding that “for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”
Many people took issue with this rather blatant evasion of the rule of law. Van Schaack was again one of those people.
During the summer prior to the last election, Van Schaack also took the time to compile a comprehensive list of public reactions to Executive Order 13928 – issued by President Trump in June 2020 – enabling sanctions against ICC judges, as well as “officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members.”
Van Schaack’s article gathered an exhaustive collection of quotes by politicians, scholars, and legal experts in an attempt to “identify the most compelling arguments raised” in response to the Trump administration’s “colossally counter-productive” action.
As Van Schaack writes, “almost all agree that the threat of sanctions undermines the United States’ ability to be a voice for justice and accountability for mass atrocities around the world — a long-standing pillar of US foreign policy and a source of bipartisan US pride.”
It is once again important to note that this is an interesting stance for a member of the present administration to take. Less than three months after taking office, President Biden revoked the aforementioned Executive Order, ending the threat of economic sanctions and visa restrictions in connection with the Court. However, this reversal wasn’t an indication that the US government’s stance on the ICC had changed.
“We continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quoted as saying in a State Department press release following President Biden’s decision.
In the piece, Van Schaack highlights commentary by former ICC Appeals Counsel Ben Batros, who wondered if the “United States [can] find a way to maintain those objections [to the Court’s exercise of jurisdiction over US nationals] (where they are relevant) without eroding its commitment to accountability or undermining the Court’s activities in the majority of situations where they align with that US interest — not just in Darfur, but in Myanmar, DRC, CAR, Libya, Georgia, or Ukraine? Many suggest that it cannot do so with Pompeo in charge of US ICC policy.”
During her interview with the CSIS, Van Schaack chose not to comment on this obvious hypocrisy and Alterman pretended not to notice.
The ambassador proved that she was willing to play ball long before she was chosen for her current role and made sure to make this known during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January.
She was introduced by Senator Cory Booker, a long-time personal friend, who noted that Van Schaack’s past includes serving as an advisor to Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry “on ways the United States can prevent and respond to mass atrocities and war crimes.” The brief hearing progressed without any mention of any of the horrors committed by the US government during Clinton’s and Kerry’s stints leading the State Department.
In her opening statement, Van Schaack told the committee that she’d planned to utilize her role to “building upon this proud Nuremberg legacy within contemporary US foreign policy.”
This fuzzy commitment fizzled just a few minutes later.
“Miss van Schaack, what are your thoughts on the ICC?” Senator James Risch wondered.
“I think in an ideal world domestic courts would handle the bulk of these matters and there’s work to be done with respect to US foreign policy and programming to help develop domestic capacities that domestic courts can handle that,“ Van Schaack said. “But in situations in which those domestic courts are genuinely unwilling or unable to do so, there may be a role for international institutions to step in. The United States has a longstanding objection to the International Criminal Court exercising jurisdiction over the nationals of non-party states such as the United States and I would continue to advance that objection if confirmed, as I have done in the past. But I do think that there are situations around the globe where there is a role for the International Criminal Court to play when the state has accepted jurisdiction or the court has jurisdiction by virtue from a referral from the Security Council exercising its peace and security mandate under the UN charter.”
“I think that’s an excellent analysis, really,” Senator Risch replied, insisting that the US could never open itself to the same level of scrutiny it demands of others because it cannot risk subjecting itself to the “prejudice” of the international community.
Van Schaack was confirmed by a voice vote.
Since assuming the role, Van Schaack hasn’t said a word about Yemen, or any of the US government’s post-9/11 wars of aggression. She has however been quite vocal about the atrocities the West does have an interest in worrying about.
At a hearing of the US Helsinki Commission on May 4, Van Schaack detailed the war crimes being committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
“The State Department has assessed that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes across Ukraine based on a careful review of available evidence and information including open source information, but also classified sources,” Van Schaack said. “We saw credible reports of individuals killed execution style with their hands bound, as you mentioned. We saw bodies showing signs of torture, and we heard horrific accounts of sexual violence against women and girls.”
She also noted that the State Department had funded and deployed a team of investigators to aid Ukraine in looking into these crimes.
Later that same month, Van Schaack told EURACTIV that the West shouldn’t rule out prosecuting Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ambassador acknowledged that this would be difficult but not impossible if Putin ever travels outside of Russia.
“They think 10 years later, ‘I’m safe, I can leave now’, but the thing to remember is there’s no statute of limitations for war crimes. There will be prosecutors all over the world ready with indictments in hand,” Van Schaack noted.
To be clear, Putin is without a doubt guilty of war crimes in Ukraine. However, the US government’s desire to hold him accountable is centered on geopolitical concerns, not humanitarian ones.
That the United States government could demand accountability from other nations for war crimes or crimes against humanity is nothing short of insanity.
Van Schaack’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
