Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new push by the Trump administration against the International Criminal Court (ICC), including efforts to weaken and ultimately dismantle the global tribunal.
On Monday, Rubio (R-Fla.) warned that “powerful people in faraway places” are trying to control the lives of Americans, in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal and a video message shared on X.
“The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message — sovereign states over globalism,” Rubio wrote in the opinion piece. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary.”
America’s diplomatic toolkit features travel bans, canceled visas, harsher sanctions on the ICC and its affiliates and pressure on allied nations to leave the court, a State Department official told Reuters.
In 1998, the foundational treaty for the court known as the Rome Statute was adopted with operations officially beginning in 2002. The court is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands. Although 125 countries are members, the United States has never officially joined.
“They believe that they should be in charge of your laws, of your country, your life, and they don’t care whether or not you agree,” Rubio said in the X clip.
“When the ICC was born 24 years ago, they told us that it was nearly a narrow backstop: a global court that would step in to prosecute only the gravest offense — things like genocide and war crimes — and only when a nation’s courts were unable to prosecute them on their own,” he continued. “But the truth is, it was something far more radical and extreme: it was a global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited.”
Because the U.S. is not a member of the court, its relationship with the ICC has shifted depending on which administration is in power. Generally, Democrat presidents have been more open to cooperation, while Republican administrations have taken a more critical approach.
“If we stand idle, all of them would be at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away facing the constant risk of prosecution and even imprisonment for the so-called ‘crime’ of defending their own country.”
“The American people never agreed to any of this. And they never will,” Rubio declared.
Hellbound and Down 