Differing strategic priorities are only the beginning of the dispute over the International Criminal Court. Americans will not abandon their traditional constitution, as submission to the ICC would require. European states have already subordinated their national constitutions to a German-dominated federation. Americans do not accept international monitors in fighting against evil. Europeans are drawn to relativizing abstractions. For Germans, the ICC promises to “overcome the past,” by licensing German judges to try Americans and Israelis for war crimes. Europeans may feel obliged to fall in step with this latest German project. The US still has the moral self-confidence to resist it.