Troubled Ideas: A Nuremberg Tribunal for Putin
Worth reading in its entirety, but a snippet:
"Had these people consulted their history on this troubled subject, they would be aware that the tyrant-in-the-dock motif is a precarious one. The original suggestion of a tribunal to try leaders for war crimes, specifically Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, was opposed by President Woodrow Wilson for one fundamental reason: US presidents might find themselves facing a prosecutor’s brief at some point in the future. The motive was selfish but at least showed an awareness that such a course of action risked having a boomerang effect.
The issue did not go away during the Second World War. As discussions about a proposed war crimes process at war’s end began to take place, George Orwell penned a characteristically devastating and clear-eyed piece on its weaknesses in an October 1943 issue of the Tribune. In reviewing a work advocating Benito Mussolini’s trial, Orwell was firm. “In power politics there are no crimes, because there are no laws.”"