the nuremberg legacy

The recent capture of Ratko Mladic in Serbia is, as Geoffrey Robertson writes in The Age, also part of the Nuremberg legacy: that no one can escape their responsibility for a crime, particularly those against humanity. Robertson, whose book “Crimes Against Humanity” is a must-read on international criminal justice goes on to observe:

Focus on this war crime will discomfort those who might have prevented it – especially the UN, which refused to authorise the air strikes that would have stopped Mladic’s advance, and the Dutch government, which insisted on vetoing them to protect its cowardly battalion that was meant to be protecting the town but which immediately surrendered to Mladic and handed over to him the thousands of Muslims who had sought refuge in the UN compound. The moral nadir of UN/NATO ”peacekeeping” where there is no peace to keep is the photograph of Mladic blowing his cigar smoke in the face of the spineless Dutch colonel while in the background those his battalion should have protected were taken off to the killing fields.