As a well-known adage holds: “To the victor go the spoils.” But it might well add: “Meanwhile, the losers go to the gallows.”

This is the logic of victor’s justice. It is the logic of the Treaty of Versailles, which demanded unpayable reparations from the vanquished German nation. It is the logic of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, where perpetrators of war crimes pronounced judgment on the war crimes of the defeated. It is the logic of Abu Ghraib, where the US military tortured and killed its enemy captives.

Throughout human history, victorious nations have gone too far in exacting revenge from their defeated foes. The entire notion of “international law”—from the Geneva Conventions to the International Law Commission to the International Criminal Court—has been sold to the public as a check against this unfortunate tendency to impose victor’s justice on the fallen. But just as history is written by the winners, so, too, is justice decided by the victors, and the International Criminal Court is the prime example of that.

Think of international war crimes in the recent era and what comes to mind? America’s wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan based on premeditated lies about weapons of mass destruction and 9/11? The indefinite detention of captives at Camp X-ray, Guantanamo, or other military prisons? Israel’s use of white phosphorous in its 2009 massacre of civilians in Gaza? Saudi Arabia’s campaign of genocide in Yemen (made possible by Uncle Sam’s unwavering support)?

Well, let’s compare that list of violations of international law to the list of “situations” that the International Criminal Court has investigated since its formation in 2003. Notice anything?

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