Club of Impunity
Renewing a grand tradition of holding dictators to account
(A June 8th, 2026 welcome ceremony on Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang, North Korea for Chairman Xi Jinping of China)
Beyond repression at home and aggression abroad, few things unite dictators, except one — a shared obsession with avoiding accountability for their crimes.
Impunity is a powerful incentive to consolidate and never to relinquish power. After decades of unbridled rule, judicial immunity curdles into a fierce addiction.
It drove Assad in Syria and Orbán in Hungary. Assad still expects to be shielded from justice by Moscow, where he now lives. Orbán, still in Hungary, counts on latent Fidesz support to prevent new investigative committees in parliament or a proposed new office for national asset recovery and protection from triggering confiscation of family assets or other legal proceedings. If his expectations are are wrong, as we hope they are, he is likely to move to a more forgiving Trumpian or Russian jurisdiction.
For today’s major dictatorships, impunity is a spur to armed conflict. Pakistan embraced the US deal with the Taliban during Trump’s first term as a prelude to reasserting full control over Afghanistan. By ending two decades of UN-sanctioned NATO and international presence in Kabul, Pakistan sought to duck scrutiny of its five decades of relentless proxy war and state sponsorship of terrorism.
With the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of October 7th, 2023, Iran unleashed a war it hoped would engulf Israel — removing the main obstacle to Iranian aggression.
China works through the World Health Organization, UN Human Rights Council and other international bodies to ensure the true story of the global COVID outbreak, PRC transnational repression, genocide in Tibet, forced labour in Xinjiang and the systematic repression of China’s Muslim populations is never told.
Russia is equally devoted to undermining effective accountability mechanisms across the UN system. Through Trump, Moscow has weakened US oversight and aims to do the same across Europe, including in the UK.
When the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Putin and other Russian leaders for war crimes, Moscow quietly sought indictments for Netanyahu and other Israelis, knowing this would undermine ICC credibility. They were right.
Impunity can be a bridge binding dictators to unscrupulous democratic leaders. Netanyahu is motivated to make common cause with Russia and other autocrats partly because he was charged in November 2019 with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which his desperate efforts have so far failed to quash.
