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principle. 298 Efforts by certain States to undertake prosecutions on the basis of this principlehave been controversial. 299 Such prosecutions have generally not been successful unless theState concerned has consented. 30018.21.2 Tu Quoque. The international law doctrine tu quoque may be understood as anargument that a State does not have standing to complain about a practice in which it itselfengages. 301For example, it would seem unfair for a State to punish members of opposing militaryforces for committing acts that it considered lawful for members of its armed forces to298 See Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives Report No. 104-698, 8 (Jul. 24, 1996) (“TheCommittee decided that the expansion of H.R. 3680 to include universal jurisdiction would be an unwise [sic] atpresent. Domestic prosecution based on universal jurisdiction could draw the United States into conflicts in whichthis country has no place and where our national interests are slight. In addition, problems involving witnesses andevidence would likely be daunting. This does not mean that war criminals should go unpunished. There are amplealternative venues available which are more appropriate. Prosecutions can be handled by the nations involved or byinternational tribunal. If a war criminal is discovered in the United States, the federal government can extradite theindividual upon request in order to facilitate prosecution overseas. The Committee is not presently aware that thesealternative venues are inadequate to meet the task.”).299 See, e.g., Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Belgium), Judgment, 2002I.C.J. 35, 43 (15) (Separate Opinion of President Guillaume) (“International criminal law has itself undergoneconsiderable development and constitutes today an impressive legal corpus. It recognizes in many situations thepossibility, or indeed the obligation, for a State other than that on whose territory the offence was committed toconfer jurisdiction on its courts to prosecute the authors of certain crimes where they are present on its territory.International criminal courts have been created. But at no time has it been envisaged that jurisdiction should beconferred upon the courts of every State in the world to prosecute such crimes, whoever their authors and victimsand irrespective of the place where the offender is to be found. To do this would, moreover, risk creating totaljudicial chaos. It would also be to encourage the arbitrary, for the benefit of the powerful, purportedly acting asagent for an ill-defined ‘international community.’ Contrary to what is advocated by certain publicists, such adevelopment would represent not an advance in the law but a step backward.”).300 Roman Anatolevich Kolodkin, Special Rapporteur, U.N. International Law Commission, Second report onimmunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction, U.N. Doc A/CN.4/631, 16 (Jun. 10, 2010) (“It isnoted that until now attempts to exercise universal jurisdiction that have been successful have just taken place incases where the State concerned consented. In other cases, States usually react negatively to attempts to exerciseforeign criminal jurisdiction even over their former Heads of State and Government, as they also do, however, inrespect of other high-ranking officials. In the absence of cooperation with the State whose official a case concerns,the proper and legally correct criminal prosecution of such a person is practically impossible. On the whole,therefore, such attempts end up merely complicating relations between States.”).301 Department of Defense, Office of the General Counsel, An Assessment of International Legal Issues inInformation Operations 46 (May 1999) (“The lack of strong international legal sanctions for peacetime espionagemay also constitute an implicit application of the international law doctrine called “tu quoque” (roughly, a nation hasno standing to complain about a practice in which it itself engages). Whatever the reasons, the international legalsystem generally imposes no sanctions upon nations for acts of espionage except for the political costs of publicdenunciation, which don’t seem very onerous.”). See also FRITS KALSHOVEN, BELLIGERENT REPRISALS 364 (“Thereis, however, another possible view of tu quoque, according to which this does not so much constitute a substantivejustificatory ground as an argument of a procedural order, to the effect that a belligerent cannot charge his enemywith a particular form of illegal warfare if he has himself violated the same rule or rules, without this being justifiedas a reprisal. For this argument, it is not important whether the belligerent was the first to commit that violation, noreven whether he was aware that the enemy was guilty of the same illegal conduct: the contention is that the merefact of his having infringed the identical norm precludes him from charging that particular illegality against theenemy.”).1116