The Trump administration launched a campaign Monday to “dismantle the threat” that the International Criminal Court poses to U.S. sovereignty.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the initiative, which will be led by the State Department and include diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the court, particularly nations that receive U.S. military protection, security cooperation or other assistance.
“A wide range of options are available to ensure the ICC is completely and utterly incapable of threatening the U.S. and our people,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott stated. “No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans.”
A State Department official added that the department “will watch with interest which nations join ranks with us against this threat to Americans who are willing to risk their lives to protect others.”
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the Hague-based court. The ICC prosecutes individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
The administration’s campaign follows years of U.S. opposition to ICC efforts to assert jurisdiction over American personnel. During U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, the court opened an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan that included U.S. forces, although prosecutors later shifted their focus primarily to alleged crimes committed by the Taliban and ISIS-K.
The ICC also issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, despite Israel not being an ICC signatory either.
“The United States does not recognize the authority of international bureaucrats an ocean away who seek to upend America’s 250-year history of self-governance and impose an illegitimate legal order on our sovereign nation,” Pigott stated. “America’s sovereignty is and always will be non-negotiable.”
According to the State Department, options under consideration include a diplomatic outreach campaign, visa revocations and travel bans for ICC personnel, expanded sanctions on the court and affiliated organizations, and increased scrutiny of countries that continue to support the ICC while relying on U.S. security assistance.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion article published on Monday, Rubio called the ICC “backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.,” and pledged to “dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”
