Rubio: Why the Trump administration will ‘dismantle’ the ICC

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration is pursuing diplomatic and economic measures to weaken the International Criminal Court (ICC), arguing that it has evolved from a court with a limited mandate into an unaccountable institution asserting jurisdiction over Americans without U.S. consent.

In a July 13 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Why We’re Dismantling the ICC,” which the State Department also published on its Substack, Rubio warned that the court now claims the power to arrest and prosecute Americans under international laws that the U.S. never accepted.

“Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America,” Rubio wrote. “But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do.”

The U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC in 2002 to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Although former President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 2000, he recommended that his successor not submit it to the Senate for ratification until what he considered the treaty’s “fundamental concerns” had been addressed, according to Rubio. The U.S. later formally withdrew its signature under former President George W. Bush.

In 2002, Congress passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act with bipartisan support — a law authorizing the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to secure the release of certain U.S. or allied personnel detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the ICC.

The ICC nevertheless authorized an investigation in March 2020 into alleged crimes by the U.S. in Afghanistan, according to Rubio. The secretary accused then-chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian lawyer, of criticizing the U.S. justice system for bringing too few cases against American soldiers. He described the move as an attempt by the court to position itself as “the final judge of U.S. military policy and the entire U.S. justice system.”

He also alleged that the ICC is backed and operated by “a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.”

Rubio said demands for ICC action against the U.S. have increased since President Donald Trump returned to office. He pointed to calls for investigations into the administration’s deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador, efforts to characterize U.S. strikes against suspected narcoterrorists as “a crime against humanity,” and allegations that American personnel committed war crimes.

U.S. pushback has drawn further threats, Rubio said. When senators raised concerns in a letter, the prosecutor’s office accused them of crimes. Sanctions imposed by Trump prompted warnings from activists that ICC member states would have a duty to arrest him.

“It is only a matter of time before the ICC begins making good on these threats,” Rubio wrote. “Border Patrol agents working to remove violent criminals from our country, U.S. Marines risking their lives to restore order in the Western Hemisphere, federal prosecutors working to dismantle terror networks plotting attacks on the American homeland — all would face the constant risk of persecution for the ‘crime’ of defending our country.”

He argued that allowing such interference would undermine American sovereignty by subjecting U.S. decisions to a “self-appointed priesthood of ‘international law.’”

Rubio said the administration would use sanctions, diplomatic pressure, visa restrictions, and other government powers to “dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary."

“Perhaps more polite and compliant nations could make their peace with that arrangement. But this is America,” Rubio wrote. “Our forefathers fought a revolution against a foreign power ‘transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.’ Independence is our birthright.”