Why does the US want to ‘dismantle’ the international criminal court? Marco Rubio has offered nonsensical rationale in attacking the court. The Trump administration’s real goal is impunity

‘What worries Trump officials most is the prospect that territorial jurisdiction could be used to prosecute them.’ Photograph: Graeme Sloan/Pool/Graeme Sloan - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock

Kenneth Roth in The Guardian

Opinion   International criminal court 

Thu 16 Jul 2026 05.00 EDT

With the pointless war of choice in Iran going poorly, the Trump administration has declared a virtual war on the international criminal court (ICC). Secretary of state, Marco Rubio, vowed on Monday to “dismantle” the court as a supposed threat to US sovereignty. His rationale is laced with sophistry. The administration’s real goal is to secure impunity for war crimes, even those committed on the territory of ICC member states.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed and a video posted on X, Rubio conjures up a dystopia in which local American officials such as police officers or border patrol agents “could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America”.

This is utter fiction. The ICC has no jurisdiction over crimes committed in the United States. Unless Donald Trump were to start deploying police officers or border patrol agents abroad, the ICC would have no capacity to charge or prosecute them.

Nor can the US government claim not to have consented to the laws applied by the court. They are drawn from treaties such as the genocide convention and the Geneva conventions and protocols that the US government has either ratified or incorporated into its military manuals. Is it really un-American to outlaw genocide? ... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/16/international-criminal-court-marco-rubio

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