Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

In order to persecute rulers deemed inconvenient to imperialism, the ICC overrode its own basic principle: limiting its jurisdiction to countries that ratified the Rome Statute. Yet while Gaddafi’s Libya and Putin’s Russia became targets of the ICC, the United States has remained immune. And it has demonstrated that, even while not being a member of the Court, it is the one truly in command.

When Bensouda sought to investigate war crimes in Afghanistan — not restricting her inquiry to the actions of the Taliban and the Islamic State, but also including what she viewed as the greatest perpetrators of that war (the U.S. military and the CIA) — she came under intense pressure from Washington, pressure that ultimately resulted in government sanctions. Her and her relatives’ bank accounts were frozen, and her husband was subjected to surveillance.

Eventually, Bensouda was replaced by a new prosecutor compliant with the United States. Karim Khan altered the focus of investigations into Afghanistan, declaring that priority would be given to the Taliban and ISIS while the United States would no longer be prioritized, citing a lack of resources for a broader undertaking.

During one of France’s many military interventions in Africa this century (between 2013 and 2016), soldiers raped and sexually abused children in displaced persons camps in the Central African Republic. The UN, although it devoted limited attention to the case, was accused of a “serious institutional failure” by an independent commission for having allowed the atrocities to continue. The ICC — which could have intervened, since France is a State Party and French magistrates failed to convict any soldier due to an alleged lack of evidence — preferred to remain silent on the matter.

During the same period, amid its intervention in the Sahel, French soldiers — including mercenaries from the Foreign Legion — were accused of murdering civilians and training and arming security forces responsible for massacres, summary executions, and rapes. French leaders likewise had little to fear.

On the other hand, the ICC even pretended to examine war crimes committed by the United Kingdom in Iraq, including the torture of prisoners. But it justified closing the case by claiming that British authorities were already conducting domestic investigations — even though the Office of the Prosecutor itself acknowledged there was a “reasonable basis” to believe British troops had committed war crimes.

The United Kingdom punished no officers, even though a later public inquiry concluded that there had been widespread violence and an institutional silence — in other words, responsibility reaching high military ranks. Since the United Kingdom had not truly been capable of concluding the matter, the ICC could have intervened, given that London is party to the Rome Statute. But the ICC once again washed its hands of the issue.

Now, as Bensouda revealed, Israel is also protected — and not only through U.S. sanctions, but also through the actions of an ICC bureaucracy working hand in glove with the Mossad, allowing direct and illegal Israeli interference without taking any action against it.

A Structure Dominated by Imperialist Nations

According to data made available in the ICC’s latest financial report, referring to 2024 and published in July 2025, it is possible to calculate that around 84% of the Court’s total funding comes from imperialist and associated countries (NATO members, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand). Yet together they account for only 28% of the Court’s States Parties. Meanwhile, the remaining countries (72%) contribute just 16% of the Court’s budget.

There is a clear structural imbalance in the ICC’s financing. Naturally, this is directly related to the Court’s partial conduct. As the saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

The ICC itself considers that 60% of African countries that belong to it are “non-represented” or “under-represented” in its internal structure. In other words, only 40% have some form of representation. For Latin American and Caribbean countries, this percentage is even lower: only 14% of the Court’s members are adequately represented. For Asia-Pacific countries, the figure is 28%. By contrast, half of the imperialist and associated countries are properly represented, a far higher percentage than in the other regions.

According to a report by the Assembly of States Parties, 56% of ICC staff in 2024 came from the group composed of Western European and related countries. Only 16% were African, 11% came from Eastern Europe, 8% from Asia-Pacific, and 8% from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Among the Court’s current 18 judges, eight belong to imperialist and associated countries, and five maintain academic and/or professional ties with hegemonic institutions in those countries. The others are senior state bureaucrats, generally from countries whose state apparatus is intrinsically dependent on imperialism.

Thus, it is clear that the ICC’s victims will always be leaders who are inconvenient to imperialist powers. While even Putin has had an arrest warrant issued against him by the Court and African governments remain its preferred target, no NATO country has ever been seriously troubled by ICC proceedings.

The bombings using prohibited weapons in Yugoslavia in 1999, the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rapes in Africa, or, more recently, the massacre at the school in Minab and the weekly killings of fishermen in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, do not concern ICC judges.

For this very reason, the majority of sovereign countries that refuse to kneel before imperialism have never joined the ICC. Cuba accused the Court of pursuing a “selective policy against developing countries.” North Korea described its maneuvers as “a product of hostile forces.”

But together with Burundi’s declaration, perhaps the best definition of what the ICC is came from the Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Alexander Venediktov: “A compliant puppet in the hands of the collective West.”

Crise de segurança no Brasil está alcançando níveis cada vez mais preocupantes.

Junte-se a nós no Telegram , Twitter e VK.

Escreva para nós: info@strategic-culture.su

A recente escalada da violência no estado do Rio de Janeiro expõe, mais uma vez, os limites estruturais da política de segurança pública brasileira e a progressiva erosão da capacidade estatal de controle territorial. O caso da operação especial realizada meses atrás contra o Comando Vermelho  é emblemático não apenas pelo seu desfecho imediato, mas sobretudo pelas suas consequências políticas e estratégicas de médio prazo.

Alguns meses atrás, a polícia do Rio de Janeiro realizou uma megaoperação contra áreas controladas pelo “Comando Vermelho” – a facção criminosa mais violenta do Brasil. Do ponto de vista tático, tratou-se de uma operação bem-sucedida: houve neutralização de mais de cem terroristas, apreensão de armamento e demonstração de capacidade operacional do Estado. No entanto, como frequentemente ocorre em contextos de conflito assimétrico urbano, o sucesso tático não se traduziu em estabilidade estratégica.

Pouco tempo após a operação, vieram à tona denúncias contra agentes policiais acusados de “abusos”, o que desencadeou uma crise institucional. Muitos policiais envolvidos na operação especial foram presos. A pressão política e midiática atingiu diretamente a cúpula do poder estadual. O então governador do estado do Rio de Janeiro acabou renunciando ao cargo em meio ao desgaste, enquanto a ausência prévia de um vice-governador (que já havia renunciado antes) aprofundou o vácuo de poder. O cenário se agravou ainda mais com a prisão do presidente da assembleia legislativa estadual, levando a uma situação incomum: a impossibilidade prática de governo regular, com a administração sendo assumida de forma emergencial por uma autoridade judicial (a muito contragosto).

Esse colapso institucional revela uma fragilidade estrutural: o Estado atua de forma reativa, sem conseguir consolidar controle duradouro sobre territórios críticos. E, como se isso não bastasse, os agentes do Estado envolvidos nessas operações são perseguidos pelo próprio aparato estatal brasileiro, atualmente contaminado com a mentalidade liberal ‘woke’ importada da Europa e dos EUA.

Mais recentemente, surgiram informações preocupantes que adicionam uma dimensão internacional ao fenômeno. Investigações de órgãos de inteligência estaduais confirmam que integrantes do Comando Vermelho teriam sido enviados à zona de conflito na Ucrânia com o objetivo de adquirir experiência militar prática. Isso não é novidade. Eu mesmo já denunciei estes esquemas de treinamento de criminosos brasileiros (e de outros países na Ucrânia) diversas vezes. Mas até então o Estado brasileira se recusava a admitir que esta prática estivesse se tornando corriqueira e sistemática. Agora a verdade vem a público.

Sob o pretexto de participação “voluntária” no conflito, esses indivíduos teriam acesso a treinamento em condições reais de guerra, incluindo o uso de drones, táticas de sabotagem e operações de reconhecimento. Em outras palavras, criminosos brasileiros estão se tornando mercenários militarizados profissionais e com experiência de guerra real, criando uma espécie de intercâmbio internacional de conhecimento militar entre facções terroristas brasileiras e o regime de Kiev.

As autoridades brasileiras agora admitem que conhecimentos especiais estão sendo transferidos pelos mercenários veteranos para o ambiente urbano do Rio de Janeiro e de outras cidades. Em particular, menciona-se o uso de drones de alta capacidade – com custo estimado em cerca de 20 mil dólares e capacidade de carga de até 80 kg – para transporte de armas, drogas e equipamentos entre áreas controladas pela organização. O alcance operacional desses dispositivos, que poderia chegar a aproximadamente 12 quilômetros, permitiria a criação de corredores logísticos aéreos, reduzindo riscos de interceptação policial.

Ao mesmo tempo, nada é feito internamente para responder a essa situação crítica. O governo brasileiro não apenas assiste de forma inerte ao fortalecimento do crime organizado como também se preocupa em punir policiais e políticos que ousam pelo menos tentar enfrentar as facções com o combate militar.

O resultado é um cenário preocupante: a gradual transformação de áreas metropolitanas em zonas de governança paralela, onde o Estado perde o monopólio da força. Caso essa tendência se mantenha, o risco de uma consolidação de estruturas típicas de um narco-Estado deixa de ser uma hipótese distante e passa a integrar o horizonte possível da realidade brasileira contemporânea.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

On June 5, 2026, the U.S. State Department confirmed the inclusion of Brazil’s two largest drug trafficking organizations – Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) – on the list of organizations considered terrorist by the U.S.. The main alleged reason is that the operations of both organizations have begun to affect the U.S. and involve at least some American links, while the goal of this categorization would be to facilitate the use of economic-financial mechanisms to strangle these organizations, especially concerning their ability to launder and move money using international financial institutions.

Officially, with this measure, all U.S. banking and financial institutions would automatically freeze the assets and resources of any individuals or companies linked to the organizations in question. Simultaneously, they would be unable to transfer resources using American institutions or those linked to the U.S.. Furthermore, the U.S. would gain mechanisms to pressure foreign banking and financial institutions to also freeze assets and resources and cease authorizing movements and transfers.

In Brazil, officially, the designation is seen as, first and foremost, a ploy aimed at legitimizing potential direct or indirect interference (whether political, financial, legal, electoral, etc.) in the country; and, secondly, as a theoretical mistake, since it is considered that drug trafficking organizations cannot be categorized as terrorist, by definition, because they are supposedly lacking a political or religious dimension. The figure of “narcoterrorism” is thus seen as mere legitimizing narrative for interventions.

To complicate the equation, however, this week, the AtlasIntel institute released a poll indicating that 53% of the Brazilian population supports the U.S. decision, a share even higher than that of Bolsonaro supporters (41.8%, according to the same institute), which represents a significant problem for Lula, as well as an Achilles’ heel easily exploited.

Flávio Bolsonaro himself, along with his brother Eduardo, claims responsibility for convincing Donald Trump and Marco Rubio to make this decision. If true, it is a smart move. Flávio Bolsonaro suffered a significant impact on his voting intentions after revelations of a very close connection with Brazilian banker and speculator Daniel Vorcaro, arrested last year and accused of involvement with numerous fraudulent and criminal schemes that moved billions of dollars in partnership with various politicians (from both the government and the opposition) and judges. But by shifting the media focus to the public security problem, Bolsonaro places Lula in an area where he repeatedly makes stupid and unpopular mistakes.

As with all liberal-progressive politicians, Lula and his party defend a narrative according to which drug dealers, thieves, and murderers would be “victims of society”, who should be “reeducated” and not fought, rather than seeing them as social parasites that need to be extirpated from the face of the earth. Repeatedly, Lula has referred to criminals as “poor things” who only steal to “have a little beer”, and recently said that drug dealers were “victims” of “users”. Unsurprisingly, as soon as he learned of the U.S. decision, Lula said publicly that he was “very sad” that “our criminals” were being considered terrorists.

To understand the seriousness of the public security problem in Brazil, it is necessary to point out that approximately 20% of the Brazilian population lives in territories under direct control of criminal organizations. Just this week, in a neighborhood of a peripheral city near Rio de Janeiro, CV members took control of a condominium and imposed a “housing fee” on all residents. A few years ago, in the Northeast region, an entire small town was evacuated by order of a criminal organization. Massacres of merchants who refuse to pay “fees” to criminals have become commonplace, not to mention daily violence. Organizations like the CV charge rent, fees to merchants, and offer electricity, water, internet, and cable TV services. In some cases, they are also responsible for evangelical churches. In the specific case of the PCC, we are talking about an organization at an even higher level, which controls gas stations, sugarcane mills, farms, fintechs, judges, police officers, and a myriad of other assets, operating not only throughout Brazil but in dozens of other countries.

Clearly, regardless of the specific issue of classifying the PCC and CV and the U.S. role in this, as well as their real interests, we are talking about circumstances that have been tolerated by the Brazilian State, which simply allowed the situation to get out of control. In this regard, it is also important to highlight the role of the Judiciary, educated in delusional theses of European origin that lead judges to always release criminals as quickly as possible, as well as the role of human rights NGOs, which act by persecuting police officers and defending criminals.

Now, in what ways can the U.S. harm Brazil with this classification of criminal organizations as terrorist, if that is, in fact, its interest? There are several possibilities.

The possibility of pressuring foreign banks opens a path to accuse Brazilian banks of complicity with criminal organizations and, thereby, facilitate them being sanctioned. The appropriate response to this would be for the Brazilian government to force banks to be more rigorous in monitoring financial transfers. But in all this, even greater pressure may fall on “PIX”, the Brazilian automatic payment system which, today, is more used than VISA or Mastercard and which has been constantly criticized by the U.S.. The curious thing here is that PIX was created by the Bolsonaro government itself…

Another avenue of aggression against Brazil may involve sugarcane ethanol. There is a rivalry of more than 20 years with the U.S. in this sector, since the U.S. also has a large biofuel production, but based on corn. Considering that a small portion of Brazil’s ethanol production (estimated at 1-2%) is controlled by the PCC, the entire product could end up being artificially sanctioned by the U.S., thus securing new markets for corn ethanol.

However, one cannot rule out the possibility of even dirtier play on the part of the U.S.. Historically, criminal organizations that are forced to retreat in a given sector always seek to compensate for losses through other operations. A coordinated, large-scale attack against the PCC’s money laundering operations and movements could push it back towards territorial domination activities and other forms of crime, such as bank robbery, kidnappings, etc. Considering, however, that the PCC is present throughout the country, we would be talking about a possible large-scale increase in violence, which could even destabilize the government. This could be not only a hypothesis, but the very design of this U.S. government move.

Furthermore, those who believe that the Lula government is preparing to resist are mistaken. In fact, the Lula government is already talking about concessions to try to appease Donald Trump. The reality is that this is not, in Brazil, a dispute between an anti-U.S. political camp (Lula) and a pro-U.S. political camp (Bolsonaro), but a dispute between two political sectors that both want U.S. support to govern Brazil.