The headlines screamed about Rodrigo Duterte stepping foot at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the very first time. Media outlets treated it like the climax of a cinematic thriller, a historic day where the long arm of global justice finally caught up with a populist strongman. Analysts on television debated whether he would show remorse, posture for the cameras, or stage a defiant walkout.
They are missing the entire plot.
Focusing on the physical presence of a former head of state inside a glass-and-steel courtroom in Europe is political voyeurism masquerading as accountability. It flatters our collective appetite for poetic justice while blinding us to the structural impotence of international law. I have spent years watching institutions in Geneva and The Hague stage high-profile spectacles that soothe the conscience of diplomatic boards while changing zero ground realities in the nations they purport to save.
The lazy consensus says this appearance represents the triumph of global norms over national sovereignty. The reality is far more cynical and far more boring.
The Sovereignty Trap Everyone Ignores
Let us dismantle the core premise of international criminal tribunals right out of the gate. The foundational myth of institutions like the International Criminal Court is that they stand above domestic politics as neutral arbiters of human rights. They do not. They are political bodies operating under the thin disguise of jurisprudence, dependent entirely on state cooperation, geopolitical convenience, and selective outrage.
When a former president of a developing nation flies to Europe to face an international bench, the western commentariat cheers because it validates their preferred hierarchy of power. It tells a comforting story: local strongmen rule through violence, but western-backed legal frameworks eventually restore order.
This framing ignores how domestic power actually works in places like Manila. Duterte did not wake up one morning and decide to surrender to foreign judges out of sudden legal contrition. His appearance is a chess piece in an ongoing, brutal succession struggle within Philippine domestic politics. The current administration in Manila uses the threat of The Hague to weaken rival factions, consolidate its own security apparatus, and signal to western investors that the country remains open for business under a veneer of reformed rule-of-law.
Meanwhile, ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire of the drug war get no structural relief from a courtroom thousands of miles away. No amount of legal posturing in a Dutch courtroom brings back a murdered breadwinner or fixes a corrupt, backlogged municipal police precinct in Tondo.
Why Global Legal Theater Fails Every Time
We need to look at the mechanics of deterrence. The entire justification for prosecuting aging dictators and populist firebrands on an international stage is deterrence—the idea that future leaders will think twice before authorizing extrajudicial violence.
The data tells a completely different story. Dictators and authoritarians do not watch trials in The Hague and tremble. They watch them and take meticulous notes on what mistakes to avoid. They learn that international tribunals lack enforcement arms, take a decade to reach a verdict, and depend entirely on the goodwill of local regimes that can revoke cooperation at the first sign of political inconvenience.
Imagine a scenario where a sitting autocrat watches a predecessor stand trial abroad. Does it deter them? No. It teaches them to never cede power voluntarily, to weaponize nationalism against foreign interference, and to ensure their domestic successor protects them with absolute immunity. By turning accountability into a reality-show trial thousands of miles away from the crime scenes, the international community actually incentivizes incumbents to cling to power by any means necessary.
The critics of my position call this cynicism. I call it looking at a balance sheet of results.
The Cost of Outsourcing Justice
Outsourcing justice to international bodies creates a moral hazard for domestic populations. When civil society groups and local activists pin all their hopes on foreign judges, they disinvest from the grueling, unglamorous work of building independent domestic institutions at home.
You cannot import the rule of law in a shipping container from Europe. It has to be forged in local courts, through local labor disputes, investigative journalism, and municipal elections where votes actually count against patronage networks. Every dollar spent on international legal bureaucracy, luxury holding facilities, and high-priced defense teams for former tyrants is money stolen from building functional forensics departments, witness protection programs, and uncorrupted internal affairs units in the countries where the blood was actually spilled.
Duterte knows this. His supporters know this. When he stands before international judges, he is not cowering in fear. He is playing a familiar political script, casting himself as the defiant nationalist martyr standing up to foreign meddlers. And western media outlets walk right into the trap, amplifying his rhetoric and keeping him relevant on the global stage long after his domestic mandate has expired.
Stop Falling for the Spectacle
The obsession with international criminal tribunals is a coping mechanism for a globalized elite that feels helpless against the rise of domestic authoritarianism. Instead of addressing the economic inequality, state failure, and institutional rot that produce populist strongmen in the first place, western institutions prefer a theatrical trial that costs millions and changes nothing.
Next time you see a breaking news alert about a former leader arriving at a foreign court, ignore the punditry. Look past the flashing cameras and the pontificating legal scholars. Ask a simple question: does this courtroom in Europe put food on the table of a grieving family, or does it just help well-heeled bureaucrats sleep better at night?
The answer is obvious. Stop buying the ticket for the circus. Focus your energy on strengthening the local watchdogs who cannot catch a flight to The Hague when things go wrong.
