President Trump’s administration is continuing to sever relations with meddling international organizations, most of which are based on the nanny continent of Europe, because they continue to insist on running the United States when they’ve no mandate to do so. And it’s about time, frankly.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court itself — not individual judges, not particular prosecutors, but the institution. Transactions banned. Access to American companies and the American financial system cut off. The stated aim, in his words, is to cripple the court’s ability to operate against us.
This has been building for two years, and the escalation is proportionate to what the court has been attempting.
Start with the thing Rubio is right about and that almost nobody disputes: the United States never ratified the Rome Statute. We are not a party to the ICC. Bill Clinton signed it and never sent it to the Senate; George W. Bush unsigned it; Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act in 2002 specifically to shield U.S. personnel from this body. That is a bipartisan position spanning five administrations, and Rubio named it as such. Democrats and Republicans alike have rejected the proposition that an ‘international’ court in The Hague may prosecute American citizens.
The ICC has decided it doesn’t matter. Its theory of jurisdiction reaches citizens of non-member states whenever the alleged conduct occurs on the territory of a member, its officials insist. Oh, really? A tribunal no American ever voted for, staffed by judges no Americans confirmed, claims authority over American soldiers, agents, and elected officials? I don’t think so, Tim.
That is not a hypothetical concern, by the way. Rubio laid out where it’s heading: Border Patrol agents enforcing American immigration law, and elected leaders making American national security decisions. The politically motivated warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued by the ICC last year was the proof of concept — a democratic ally’s head of government, with a functioning independent judiciary of its own, charged by a court whose own founding principles were supposed to make that impossible.
The ICC was sold as a backstop for places with no functioning legal system — failed states, regimes that would never prosecute their own, and so forth. The United States has courts-martial, inspectors general, federal prosecutors, and a Supreme Court. Israel has an independent judiciary that has jailed a prime minister in the past. Neither requires a backstop. When a tribunal designed for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia starts issuing warrants for the leaders of functioning democracies while the actual atrocity regimes go untouched, it has stopped being a court and become an instrument of left-wing political persecution.
Then came the part aimed at Europe. Rubio told allies plainly that Washington expects them to rein the court in, and that if they won’t, the United States will dismantle it piece by piece. Those governments have spent two decades treating ICC membership as a moral credential while relying on American power for their defense. He’s informing them the two positions are no longer compatible.
The court issued a statement condemning the sanctions and promising to continue its work. With what money, exactly?
