Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [322]
Someone like General Franks, even After he retired from uniform, could be arrested and hauled into a Belgian court at any time. I realized something else as troubling: Any American on Belgian soil was vulnerable to criminal prosecutions—prosecutions that easily could be motivated by nothing more than opposition to U.S. government policy. Hundreds of U.S. military personnel were stationed at NATO headquarters, including the American supreme allied commander and his staff. Thousands more American servicemen and-women transit through Belgium every year, making them ripe candidates for those wishing to harass them with lawsuits and arrest warrants alleging war crimes.
It was one thing if the Belgian government wished to express opposition to the war; it was quite another for their judges to be able to haul American military personnel into their courts for what would amount to little more than political show trials. Belgium’s power to do this infringed on American democracy, by subordinating our government—our officials and our country’s policies—to a foreign government or organization that is unaccountable to the American people. The more I considered the Belgian law, the angrier I became.
At a NATO defense ministers meeting on June 12, 2003, I made my views known. I walked up to Belgium’s minister of defense, Andre Flahaut, and asked to see him in a side room.
“I need to speak with you for a moment,” I said.
Flahaut, a Socialist member of the Belgian parliament, and his left-leaning government were frequent critics of the United States. It was impossible to imagine them being overly concerned about grandstanding Belgian lawyers lodging suits against American military personnel and officials.
In language that diplomats might describe as a “frank and full exchange,” I raised my concerns about the Belgian law. I told Flahaut that I believed it would be used by judges to target U.S. intelligence and military personnel, not dictators guilty of actual war crimes. I didn’t recall the Belgians making any effort, for example, to arrest and try Saddam Hussein.
The urgency in my tone was unmistakable, especially when I made what seemed an obvious point. The Belgian government was justifiably proud of serving as the headquarters of NATO, the world’s oldest military alliance. But it was worth noting that the reason NATO was located in Brussels was because French President Charles De Gaulle had forced the alliance out of France in 1966. If Belgium was going to enforce a law that made its own territory similarly inhospitable to Americans, I asserted, there was no reason why we could not move NATO’s headquarters again.
“It’s perfectly possible to meet elsewhere,” I said to Flahaut and, later that day, to the press.23 There were plenty of other cities between Washington and Ankara.
Flahaut was counting on U.S. funding for a new NATO headquarters in Brussels. I added that American support would evaporate instantly absent a prompt shift in the Belgian government’s position.
The difference in style between a Chicago-born American and a member of the European diplomatic corps was on full display in that conversation. From his demeanor I could tell he fully understood my point. Within two months of that conversation, the Belgian government repealed their law.
Belgium was not alone in threatening American sovereignty with lawfare. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was proposed in the 1990s as a court for crimes against humanity, genocide, and systematic war