The US will launch a diplomatic campaign aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said announced Monday.
In an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio wrote that the U.S. would work with allied governments to dismantle the court “brick by brick, if necessary,” using all the tools at the government’s disposal. He said the campaign’s message to other governments was that sovereign states would choose globalism over globalism, and promised that the administration would protect American military personnel from the ICC’s jurisdiction.
Because the court is a treaty body that can only be dissolved by its member states, the United States lacks the authority to “dissolve” it. The comment does not list specific measures, but a State Department official said so Reuters Options being considered include travel bans, visa suspensions, expanded sanctions against the court and affiliated organizations, and diplomatic pressure on member states to withdraw. The official said countries that rely on U.S. security assistance and refuse to reject the court’s authority over Americans will likely face increased scrutiny.
Rubio cited the court’s 2020 ruling permit an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan that included possible crimes by U.S. forces, as well as more recent calls from activists and a former ICC prosecutor to treat deportations and military strikes by the Trump administration as international crimes. According to Reuters, the court has not taken any recent action against U.S. personnel, and since 2021, prosecutors have downgraded the U.S. role in the Afghanistan investigation in favor of alleged Taliban and Afghan government crimes.
The ICC was founded in 2002 under the Rome Statute and is based in The Hague. It has 125 contracting states, including almost all US treaty allies in Europe as well as Great Britain, Japan, South Korea and Australia. The USA is not a member. President Bill Clinton signed The Rome Statute was passed in 2000, but declined to be submitted to the Senate and Congress passed it in 2002 legislation Authorization of the President to use all necessary means to release Americans imprisoned by the court.
The announced campaign departs from the approach of previous administrations of both parties, which maintained U.S. non-membership while supporting international criminal justice in certain cases. The USA helped with the founding Yugoslavia And Rwanda in the courts in the 1990s (under Democrat Bill Clinton) and accepted the Security Council’s referral of Darfur to the ICC in 2005 (under Republican George W. Bush). Washington supported the Security Council reference to Libya in 2011 and expanded it War Crimes Reward Program to cover ICC refugees in 2012 (under Democrat Barack Obama) and allegedly shared evidence with the court’s investigation into Russian behavior in Ukraine after it issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin (under Democrat Joe Biden) in 2023. In 2008, John Bellinger, legal adviser to the US State Department, said said It is “not the policy of the United States to try to kill the ICC.”
An ICC spokesman said the court would not comment at this time. Last month, three International Criminal Court judges sued Trump administration officials over sanctions imposed on them, saying the measures were unlawful.
