I agree with Mr. Goldstone that the emerging doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) represents a key opportunity for the ICC to maximize its crime prevention capabilities. However, its usefulness seems limited by the recently defined crime of aggression, which allows for force only in the traditional cases of self-defense or U.N.S.C. authorization. While the U.N.S.C. is to be applauded for utilizing an R2P rationale for the first time following the limited adoption of the doctrine at the 2005 World Summit, the recent veto of the resolution on Syria and the past threatened vetoes on Sudan highlighted by Mr. Goldstone demonstrates exactly why the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty originally put forth a framework allowing R2P to be invoked absent U.N.S.C. authorization. Despite the difficulties associated with relying on U.N.S.C. authorization in situations involving a humanitarian crisis, suggestions from the U.S. delegation to the Kampala conference that the crime of aggression exempt legitimate humanitarian actions were rejected.

This leaves me with a question that I would like to pose to Mr. Goldstone and other Forum participants: Though the crime of aggression does not come into effect for years and will be constrained by a variety of jurisdictional limitations, will it nonetheless have a chilling effect on nations considering the use of force to avert humanitarian catastrophe? In a related question, will the crime prevention capabilities of the ICC be hamstrung by the new crime if nations are even less likely to use force against rights-violating regimes?