American actions in the extended wake of 11 September are increasingly perplexing Europeans, the Administration’s spurning of the International Criminal Court (ICC) being only the latest in a string of disagreements that have beset transatlantic relations over recent months. Indeed, the sight of an American administration threatening not just to withdraw from UN peacekeeping missions but to veto them unless its forces are exempted from the court’s jurisdiction has perplexed even the closest of America’s allies, not least because the US had defined the mission and method of the court. Clearly, the ICC was not the actual cause of Washington’s irritation. Rather, it was the nature of what constitutes legitimate constraint upon a superpower with global responsibilities
