America’s war on international justice

There is something revealing about the way Washington talks about international law. When the law moves against an adversary, it becomes the language of civilisation. When the same law approaches the United States or Israel, it suddenly becomes an assault on sovereignty.

That hypocrisy is no longer subtle. The Trump administration has now launched a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing what Washington calls a response to a threat against American sovereignty.

The measures reportedly include travel bans, visa revocations, sanctions and diplomatic pressure on countries that continue to support the court. In plain language, the United States is not merely refusing to cooperate with the ICC. It is trying to punish the court for existing too close to American and Israeli power.

That distinction matters. Disagreement with a legal institution is one thing. A campaign to disable it is another. Washington is not arguing calmly about jurisdiction, procedure or reform. It is using the tools of power — banking restrictions, visa threats, sanctions and pressure on allies — to make international justice more expensive for anyone who tries to apply it without American permission.

This is imperial immunity dressed up as constitutional principle.

The timing is not accidental. The ICC issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant after rejecting Israel’s jurisdictional challenges in the Palestine situation. Since then, Washington’s hostility towards the court has moved from anger to coercion. Judges and officials have been sanctioned, and some ICC judges have sued the Trump administration, arguing that the sanctions were designed to punish and pressure them for carrying out judicial duties.

The message is hard to miss: investigate alleged crimes by enemies, and Washington may applaud. Investigate alleged crimes by Israel, or leave open the possibility that American personnel could face scrutiny, and Washington reaches for economic warfare.

This is not a defence of sovereignty. It is a demand for hierarchy. The United States wants a world in which law flows downward, never upward. It wants courts that can frighten weaker states, isolate rival leaders and decorate speeches about a rules-based order, but not institutions that can ask uncomfortable questions about Gaza, Afghanistan or American military operations abroad. That is not the rule of law. It is the management of impunity.

The legal argument from Washington often rests on the fact that the United States and Israel are not parties to the Rome Statute. But the matter is not as simple as political slogans make it sound. The ICC’s Palestine investigation rests on jurisdiction accepted by the State of Palestine, and the court’s member system includes 125 states. Even legal critics of the court know that jurisdiction is a legal question, not a veto held by the most powerful state involved. Washington’s real objection is less technical. It is that the law is moving without asking for American clearance.

That is why Rubio’s campaign is so dangerous. It is not only aimed at one prosecutor, one chamber or one set of warrants. It tries to warn the world that support for the ICC may carry a cost.

The administration is effectively telling states: choose between the court and the comfort of American favour. For smaller countries, that is not a legal debate. It is pressure. For allies dependent on American security or trade, it is a threat wrapped in diplomatic language.

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This should alarm anyone who claims to care about war crimes, civilian protection or the future of international law. The ICC is not perfect. It has been uneven, slow and vulnerable to political pressure. Many victims have waited too long for justice. But weakening the court does not repair those failures. It makes them worse. It tells powerful states and their allies that the answer to legal scrutiny is not accountability, but retaliation.

For Palestinians, that lesson is especially bitter. They have watched international institutions move slowly while destruction, displacement and hunger have continued. The ICC process, however limited, represents one of the few remaining channels through which alleged crimes by senior Israeli officials can be examined outside the protection of US veto power. That is exactly why Washington wants to shut the door.

The anti-war stakes are larger than one court. Accountability is not a luxury added after war ends. It is one of the few restraints that can make future wars harder to wage with complete confidence. If commanders and political leaders know that no serious legal consequence will follow, the threshold for violence falls. If powerful states can sanction judges before judges can examine evidence, then international law becomes performance: spoken at summits, ignored in rubble.

America’s campaign against the ICC also exposes the emptiness of its moral vocabulary. Washington speaks of democracy, human rights and rules when those words serve its foreign policy. Yet when the legal system threatens to examine American conduct or Israeli conduct, the same government calls the system illegitimate. The principle is not justice. The principle is control.

This is why the phrase “threat to sovereignty” is so misleading. The real threat is not that an international court might one day ask whether grave crimes were committed. The real threat, for Washington, is that such a question might be asked without Washington deciding the answer in advance. Sovereignty is being used here not to protect democratic self-government, but to shield military power from legal consequence.

A serious supporter of international justice would want the ICC to be fairer, stronger and less selective. It would demand due process, better investigations and protection from political influence. It would not try to starve the court of cooperation, frighten judges, punish officials and pressure member states into retreat. Reform strengthens institutions. Coercion breaks them.

The United States now faces a choice that is more moral than legal. It can live in a world where rules apply even when they are inconvenient, or it can continue building an exception for itself and Israel. The first path is difficult, because it requires humility from power. The second path is familiar, because empire has always preferred immunity to equality.

If Washington succeeds, the damage will not stop at The Hague. Every government accused of grave crimes will learn the lesson: attack the court, threaten its supporters, call accountability an assault on sovereignty, and wait for the language of justice to collapse. That would not make the world more stable. It would make war safer for those who wage it.

The question is therefore simple. Is international law a shield for civilians, or a weapon reserved for the powerful? Washington’s answer is becoming clearer by the day. It wants justice for others and immunity for itself. That is not a rules-based order. It is empire with a legal department.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.