WillowRun 6 -3
No doubt you highlight an interesting side aspect of the ongoing discussion. However, you obviously do it with "national law focussed " glasses.
I believe your statement:
ICAO is, after all, just ICAO, a UN agency with a sort of concocted jurisdictional scope.
is simply not covering the facts.
Those experts inside ICAO, developing and evaluating the Standards and Recommended Practices, are a multi national task force, many members of which are US Americans. All the signatory states of that Convention of Chicago - USA is one of many - have agreed upon the procedure to implement these Standards and Recommended Practices into their national laws. At the same time the rule applies that deviations from that standard have to be reported to ICAO, so it can be published in Amendments to the relevant Documents.
What puzzles the international community is not the fact that deviation in R/T communications happen , but that the responsible administration - FAA - apparently misses to catch and correct the departures from international agreed procedures in the field of R/T communications.
The last chapter of your post describing the situation in ORD APP sectors is a fine example of how it should be. Obviously no controller get into his mind to apply homemade separation minima or issue undue instructions. At the same time none of those pilots involved not a moment get into their mind not to follow those instructions.
Apparently these Standards and Recommended Practices coming forth from a - concocted jurisdictional scope - wholly or partial transferred into National Rules and Regulations work very well.
Question: Why should that not be possible in R/T Communications as well ?
Jo