The U.S. Wants to Tear Down the ICC

America is “dismantling” the International Criminal Court (ICC), U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday.

While the ICC has conducted some legitimate investigations, its history and the malign potential of this globalist organization far outweighs any good it has and could bring about.

“America never agreed to a world tribunal that can override our own courts and the Constitution,” Rubio rightly says in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The ICC was created in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands. The United States, however, never ratified the main treaty establishing the institution. By then, globalists had been trying to create an international court to subvert national sovereignty for half a century.

The ICC’s purported purpose is to investigate and prosecute war crimes, genocides, and other crimes. But, as we said back in January 2025, “the ICC is not a defender of justice, but a weaponized institution hell-bent on advancing globalist power by undermining national sovereignty and trampling the rule of law.”

No Consent, no Control

Rubio says the ICC wants to drag U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents, and elected leaders into its court to find them “guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.”

In 2020, the ICC opened an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan by U.S. forces and CIA personnel between 2003 and 2004 and beyond. Some of the alleged crimes happened at CIA “black sites” in ICC member states such as Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. Rubio frames it this way:

In 2020 the ICC launched an investigation into what chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia described as “war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” in Afghanistan, declaring that the U.S. government hadn’t prosecuted enough American soldiers to satisfy the court. In effect, Ms. Bensouda was anointing herself the final judge of U.S. military policy and the entire U.S. justice system.

The United States conducted its own investigations and issued some prosecutions. The U.S. military looked into incidents at facilities in Afghanistan. Some lower-level soldiers faced courts-martial and a handful were convicted on various charges.

In 2014, a Senate Intelligence Committee Report concluded that the United States engaged in “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation that were indeed torture. But that report yielded no prosecutions.

According to Rubio, “the Afghanistan investigation was only the opening move in the assault against American self-government.” This only leads to one place. Rubio again:

The ICC’s interfering with American military and law enforcement operations isn’t only a grave overreach of its purported authorities. It would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation. Our decision and our people would be at the mercy of the ICC and its collaborators in the “international community.” To accept the ICC is to surrender control of our national destiny.

Biased Record

There is credible evidence to support the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers and CIA operators. Accusations of war crimes leveled against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin may also be aligned with objective principles of justice. But the ICC has traditionally been biased and unjust. It cannot be counted on to be objective. Its ire has historically been saved for leaders and nations who resist the globalist system. As Joe Wolverton, II, J.D., pointed out in 2025:

The ICC’s record is riddled with blatant bias. Its prosecutions overwhelmingly target leaders from nations that resist globalist influence — most notably in Africa — while ignoring the crimes of Western-aligned regimes. Its selective outrage is not a coincidence — it is a strategy. Consider the statistics: Nearly every major prosecution the ICC has undertaken involves African leaders. This disproportionate focus has not gone unnoticed. The African Union has rightly accused the ICC of neocolonialism. Meanwhile, war crimes by NATO in Libya and Kosovo go untouched. Western-backed tyrants? Untouched. Globalist regimes? Untouched. This is not justice, it is geopolitical warfare disguised in judicial robes.

So, how is the United States exactly dismantling the ICC?

Pressure Tactics

Firstly, Rubio says the United States will apply pressure on allies to turn on the ICC:

The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message — sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted. This is only the beginning. 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.

An official State Department statement includes further details on how the United States plans to tear down the ICC. The State Department will inform other nations about the ICC’s abuses and ask those who are part of the Court to withdraw.

The United States will also lean on other nations to reject the ICC. And it plans on canceling Visas and implementing travel bans for ICC personnel.

Moreover, the U.S. government is planning more sanctions against the ICC.

Sanctions

President Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office imposing sanctions on the ICC. The order appears to be as much a response to the ICC for its actions against U.S. interests as those against Israel. “The ICC has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant,” says the order. “The United States unequivocally opposes and expects our allies to oppose any ICC actions against the United States, Israel, or any other ally of the United States that has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.”

The order imposes consequences, “some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our Nation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The fact that the ICC wants to impede deportations of people who have no right to be within U.S. borders only hints at destructive agenda and potential of this organization. The potential for good by the ICC is far overshadowed by the harm it could impose on the world should it have the enforcement power it seeks. Governments commit crimes, but an all-encompassing authority with no one to counterbalance or challenge it, especially one led by international collectivists, could do anything it wants without anyone or anything to challenge it. Centralized power has a history of the gravest crimes against humanity. And the pinnacle of centralized power would be a world court system that cannot be questioned, challenged, or defied.