War & Peace Quote by Warren Christopher

There’s a careful kind of bragging in Warren Christopher’s claim: the U.S. isn’t just cooperating with the war crimes tribunal, it’s leading it. The first sentence plants the flag in moral territory - “more… than any other country” isn’t a factual metric so much as a bid to own the narrative of international justice. Coming from a statesman, that’s not vanity; it’s leverage. If Washington can frame itself as indispensable to accountability, it gets to shape what “accountability” looks like.

The second sentence is where the real work happens. “We’re turning over all the information we have” sounds absolute, then immediately narrows into a controlled disclosure: “including intelligence information.” That qualifier functions like a pressure release valve. Intelligence is the currency of modern conflict - also the thing most governments guard, redact, or launder through allies. By emphasizing intelligence sharing, Christopher signals seriousness while also reassuring skeptics that the tribunal won’t be starved of proof. At the same time, it preemptively blunts accusations of selective transparency: if the U.S. is giving up its most sensitive material, who can call it half-hearted?

Context matters: post-Cold War humanitarian interventions and the rise of ad hoc tribunals (notably for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda) put U.S. power in a new role - less conqueror, more custodian of “rules-based order,” even as Washington remained wary of legal constraints on its own actions. The subtext is transactional: we’ll feed you evidence, and in return the tribunal’s legitimacy - and its targets - won’t drift beyond the boundaries of U.S. strategic comfort.