The Rome statute, a treaty
that went into effect in 2002, established the International Criminal Court
(ICC) in order to bring accountability even to high officials of governments
who flaunt international law by committing war crimes and crimes against
humanity. As of July 14, 2026, when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the
American high representative on foreign policy and diplomacy, announced the
intent of the Trump administration to stop at nothing less than dismantling the
ICC, the U.S. had not ratified the treaty and thus was not subject to the court’s
jurisdiction. However, Americans on the soil of countries that had ratified the
treaty could be arrested there and sent to the ICC in the Hague if charged with
having violated international law abroad. Back on U.S. territory, any such culprits
would be beyond the reach of the ICC and any of the governments that were
obliged by treaty to make arrests on their respective soils to implement
warrants issued by the ICC. I contend that U.S. sovereignty was neither
diminished or threatened by the existence of the court and the governments obliged
to implement the warrants. In fact, the Trump administration may have been
acting as a proxy for a foreign regime, two high government officials (at
least) had been charged by the ICC and yet were still flaunting their immunity
in Israel and the United States. Protecting the accused in another country of
such horrendous crimes as a holocaustic genocide and falsely claiming that the
ICC was an existential threat to American sovereignty as Rubio claimed on
social media are not in the best interests of the U.S. even just in terms of
reputational (and political) capital in international relations. Political
expediency geared to protecting culprits of such a severe crime is at the very
least short-sighted. In steering a large ship, a captain should look beyond the
bow, as per the fateful example of the Titanic in 1912 attests. Enlightened
self-interest goes a long way, whereas a narrow, contractual self-interest is
apt to be hit head-on at some point. In July of 2026, the E.U. warned the world
of the reckless American steering, but like a drunk driver, full of hubris
liquor, the warning would go unheeded in the Hobbesian ideological belief that
there is no such thing as international law in the state of nature. The
bigger picture considers whether international law itself would survive the
collapse of the post-World-War-II world order, which includes the ICC as well
as the enforcement-impotent United Nations even concerning its own rulings and
votes! Such self-inflicted impotence evinces Nietzsche’s conception of weakness,
which is epitomized by celibate priests who yet seek to dominate even the
strong. Netanyahu and Putin could easily flaunt the U.N. and be confident in remaining
untouched by the ICC and even the feckless governments that were obliged to enforce
the court’s arrest warrants. The global order was backsliding ironically as progress
in technology was revolutionizing daily life in the twenty-first century.
The full essay is at "The U.S. Dismantling the International Criminal Court."
