On July 13, the U.S. State Department announced an aggressive, “whole-of-government†campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC) “brick by brick.†Spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the administration argues that the Hague-based tribunal threatens American sovereignty and could weaponize international law against U.S. personnel. While protecting American troops is an absolute priority, attempting to destroy the court is dangerous and counterproductive. In reality, supporting a stable international legal system is profoundly in the U.S. national interest.
The Trump administration's fear of rogue foreign prosecutors ignores the primary rule of the ICC's architecture: complementarity. Under Article 17 of the Rome Statute, the ICC is strictly a court of last resort. It is legally barred from taking a case unless a country is “unwilling or unable†to investigate atrocities itself. The court is empowered to try only four core international crimes: genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes that are grave violations of international conventions the United States itself has promoted; and the crime of aggression, which is the illegal use of military force by one state against another.
Because the United States has an advanced, transparent military justice system in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Washington holds the ultimate shield. As long as the U.S. investigates its own forces when credible allegations surface, the ICC has no legal authority to step in. The court does not override American sovereignty; it respects it.
Furthermore, the administration's hostility to the ICC actually makes American service members less safe. When terrorist networks, rogue militias, or hostile states commit brutal atrocities against American soldiers, how will the wrongdoers be held accountable? If the U.S. successfully destroys the ICC, it destroys the only global mechanism capable of hunting down these international criminals. When bad actors know they face no personal legal consequences from a global court, their sense of impunity grows.
A functioning ICC acts as a vital deterrent. Strip away that deterrent, and our troops become vulnerable targets in an entirely lawless world. The current administration seems to have forgotten the very legal framework America helped build. Benjamin Ferencz, the legendary chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, spent his life advocating for the ICC based on a simple, profound truth: “Law, not war.†Ferencz argued that because war inherently breeds unspeakable atrocities, the only way to protect humanity is to establish universal rules that apply equally to everyone. He famously noted that putting defeated enemies on trial at Nuremberg was “the greatest tribute that power has ever paid to reason.†He warned that insisting on a double standard, where international law applies only to weak nations but never to superpowers, is a recipe for global chaos.
If the ICC is vital to U.S. national interest, then what can possibly justify the Trump administration's heavy-handed offensive against the Court? Legal analysts suggest the administration may be motivated by self-preservation, fearing that its own highly controversial actions could expose officials to personal liability under international law. Critics point to several recent acts of dubious legality that fall within the subject matter jurisdiction of the ICC: the military abduction of foreign political figures, such as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; lethal naval strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific linked to drug-trafficking counter-operations, which resulted in heavy civilian casualties; mass deportations to El Salvador that human rights groups argue violate international non-refoulement laws; U.S. military actions in the Middle East involving air strikes on civilian infrastructure and the decapitation of a sovereign country's leadership; and potential complicity in war crimes in Gaza through the uncritical supply of weaponry and political cover for its allies.
Historically, the U.S. has used the ICC to advance its own foreign policy goals, backing the hunt for perpetrators of the Darfur genocide and sharing intelligence to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over war crimes in Ukraine. A world without the ICC is a world where dictators and terrorists operate with total impunity. By supporting, rather than destroying, the ICC, the U.S. secures a powerful tool to punish those who harm our citizens, honors our post-WWII legal legacy, and ensures our global leadership remains backed by moral legitimacy.
Leonidas Georgiou is a third-year student at the UND Law School in Grand Forks.
