Radovan Karadzic

When he was in power I sincerely wished him dead, yet now he's on trial I feel uneasy.

Misrule is common, yet few of the culprits ever face trial, and those who do are tried only when they have ceased to be powerful, and even then only if they have no powerful state to protect them. It would be most unlikely for a former head of state of one of the great powers to be tried by the International Court. Nor do I think it desirable that that should be possible.

Many powerful governments are repressive and corrupt. An effective system of international justice would be likely to fall under the control of repressive rulers desirous of protecting themselves from criticism. One way of doing that could be to arrest rulers of any states that allowed the expression of dissident opinion.

Returning to Karadzic, a number of rulers have in my lifetime been responsible for many more deaths than he, and yet are still admired by many of their countrymen. I'm thinking not just of Stalin and Mao, but even our own Harold Macmillan who was at the end of the war involved in handing large numbers of prisoners of war over to the Yugoslav government to be massacred. Picking one or two scapegoats to bear the guilt for human cruelty, while most of the guilty are lionized seems just a ridiculous exercise in self righteous pomposity.

Meanwhile, I suspect Karadzic will make fools of the International court as Milosevic did a few years ago.