MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Russian President Vladimir Putin just paid a visit to Mongolia, where he was warmly received, which is interesting because his trip could have gone very differently, with his being arrested the moment that he set foot on Mongolian soil. That is because the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin last year. He's accused of war crimes of abducting and deporting Ukrainian children. Well, joining me to talk about this nonarrest is David Bosco, professor at Indiana University and author of the book, "Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court In A World Of Power Politics." Professor Bosco, welcome.
DAVID BOSCO: Thanks so much.
KELLY: To sum up, Mongolia is a member of the ICC. And the ICC, as I mentioned, has an outstanding arrest warrant for Putin. So why was he not arrested?
BOSCO: Yeah, it's a good question. Mongolia joined the ICC back in 2002. So it's been a member for quite a while now. The view of the court is that Mongolia, as a member state, has an obligation to conduct an arrest warrant - or to honor an arrest warrant.
KELLY: Yeah. It's not optional, right? It's required.
BOSCO: It's not optional from the court's standpoint. But Mongolia is also situated right between Russia and China - two countries that it has enormous economic linkages with. And neither of those countries is a member of the ICC. Neither of them are friendly to the ICC. And Mongolia clearly decided that its economic and diplomatic interests outweighed its legal obligations as a court member.
KELLY: Were you surprised as you watched all this play out - both that Putin would choose to travel to Mongolia and that he appears to have suffered no setbacks from doing so?
BOSCO: Well, I think Putin's team would have very carefully laid the groundwork and made sure that there was not going to be any nasty surprises before he traveled, obviously. There's plenty of precedent for foreign leaders who are - have an ICC arrest warrant traveling to ICC member states. The former president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, traveled to several countries in Africa that were ICC member states. And one of those countries - South Africa - actually got chastised by the court for allowing Bashir onto their territory. So this is the latest iteration in kind of a long-running game of - how much weight are the ICC's arrest warrants going to have?
KELLY: Yeah. I remember South Africa, when Putin, more recently, was planning a visit there, saying, oh no, no. We've done that. Let's not let that play out here again.
BOSCO: That's right. I mean, that was kind of a victory for the ICC recently, when Putin decided not to go to South Africa. This is obviously a setback for the court.
KELLY: So will there be repercussions for Mongolia? What happens?
BOSCO: There's not likely to be serious repercussions. What would happen, probably, is that the judges of the ICC would ultimately issue a finding of noncompliance. And then you might have the member states of the ICC essentially pass a resolution criticizing Mongolia. But none of this has any teeth. It doesn't impose sanctions. It certainly doesn't mean anybody from Mongolia is going to jail or is going to pay any kind of real price.
I think the bigger question is whether Mongolia will face blowback in terms of its economic and diplomatic relationships with European countries, Latin American countries, other parts of the world where the ICC, you know, is well respected and where most countries are member states.
KELLY: Well, and another even bigger question would seem to be - does this suggest an ICC warrant has no teeth? I mean, what's the point of issuing one if member nations can just choose to ignore them?
BOSCO: Yeah. It is very clear that, in some situations, an ICC arrest warrant is not going to have teeth. It's going to depend heavily on the diplomatic and political environment. I mean, there is no chance that Vladimir Putin would be traveling to Western Europe, for example. So, you know, there it does have teeth. But in some places, particularly places with strong economic and diplomatic connections to Russia, it's clear that that is going to prevail over legal obligations.
KELLY: David Bosco of Indiana University, thanks so much.
BOSCO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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