The international criminal court (ICC) would be the first standing tribunal with jurisdiction to try individuals on charges of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. It would be a permanent version of the ad hoc tribunals set up at Nuremberg in 1946, to try Nazi war criminals, and more recently in the Netherlands and Tanzania to hear cases involving human rights abuses in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda respectively.

While countries as diverse as Chile, Argentina, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone were quick to sign the treaty, the Clinton administration has opposed it ever since it was negotiated in Rome in 1998. In doing so, it lined itself up against some of its chief allies in Europe and alongside some of the world's most notorious torture states, including China. On Sunday, the news that the US had abruptly changed its mind prompted a similar change of heart in Israel; the Israeli announcement overturned an earlier vote against signature by the Israeli cabinet, confirming the enormous influence the United States continues to exert on its embattled ally in the Middle East.

So that's the good news. The bad news is that Clinton's decision stops a long way short of ratifying the treaty, a step that must be taken by 60 countries before the court can be set up in the Netherlands. (To date, 27 nations have done so, clearing almost half the hurdles in what often seems a painfully slow and bureaucratic process.) Even worse is the fact that his decision is not legally binding without Senate approval. The incoming Republican administration is firmly opposed, with George W Bush's nominee for defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warning only last month that "American leadership in the world could be the first casualty" of the court.

The likely response of the Senate was revealed on Sunday when Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the rightwing Republican who chairs the foreign relations committee, called Clinton's action "as outrageous as it is inexplicable". He claimed it was "a blatant attempt by a lame-duck president to tie the hands of his successor", adding ominously: "Well, I have a message for the outgoing president. This decision will not stand."

Clinton knows this perfectly well, and took the unusual step of declaring that he would neither submit the treaty for Senate approval nor recommend that his successor do so. And while Bush's hands are tied to some extent - he cannot reverse Clinton's action - he can declare that the US will never ratify the treaty. He can also encourage the Senate to reject it, leaving Democratic members - including the outgoing president's wife - to defend it in an atmosphere of overwhelming hostility and growing American isolationism.

In that sense, Helms's accusation about Clinton's motives contains some truth. Indeed it does not go far enough, for it is clear that the 42nd president is casting about for grand gestures that will stand as his memorial. With peace in the Middle East as far away as ever, it seems likely that his abrupt volte-face on the ICC is more about looking good than a genuine conversion to what the president described at the weekend as a reaffirmation of "our strong support for international accountability".

That support might look a bit more convincing if Clinton had signed the treaty two years ago, along with the 73 world leaders who did so in the six months after the Rome conference, instead of caving in to pressure from the Pentagon. Until last weekend, his public position was not easy to distinguish from that of his Republican opponents, who distrust the ICC because they have not been able to secure a promise that no American will ever have to appear before it. Helms announced some time ago that the treaty would be "dead on arrival" in Congress if it failed to exclude the future indictment of a single American soldier.

For a country whose troops perpetrated the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and which is currently supplying money, weapons and military advisers to an army with a dismal record of human rights abuses in Colombia, this is a real anxiety. While the most obvious targets of the ICC would be generals and former heads of state, it would also have a duty to examine the conduct of less well-known individuals. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that this might one day include American soldiers serving with the Colombian armed forces or under the aegis of the UN in one of the world's trouble spots.

Such a prospect has, until now, worried the outgoing president just as much as it does Helms or Rumsfeld. Like them, Clinton is committed to a policy that treats his fellow-citizens as hugely more valuable, and correspondingly less accountable, than those of other nations. One of the results has been ineffectual interventions in countries such as Rwanda - where Clinton turned up in 1998 and belatedly apologised for failing to prevent genocide four years earlier - and a preference for hi-tech air wars. In Kosovo, it became clear that this policy protects American forces at the cost of unacceptable civilian casualties on the ground.

Clinton's Nato allies have put up with this situation to keep the US on side in a whole string of peace-keeping operations. (Privately, supporters of the Blair government even go so far as to admit that Britain's acquiescence in the bombing of Iraq is a quid pro quo for American support elsewhere, particularly in the Balkans.) This means that Clinton has got away with what is really a form of American neo-imperialism, and has now turned his mind to ensuring that things stay that way in the future. He could scarcely have enjoyed a greater stroke of luck than the incoming Bush administration, which can be relied upon to enhance his thoroughly undeserved liberal reputation.

Clinton has not even left office and the nostalgic profiles are already being written, a process that can only be accelerated by the conduct of his Republican opponents. That the creation of an international system of justice is too important to be a pawn in this unsavoury game hardly matters; Clinton has had eight years to do great things and failed in almost every respect, from reforming health care to the redistribution of wealth. In the dying days of his administration, what else should we expect from this most unscrupulous of politicians but showy and essentially empty gestures?

Moralities: Sex, Money and Power in the 21st Century by Joan Smith will be published by Allen Lane in May.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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