Secretary Rubio’s Campaign to Dismantle the ICC

In a powerful and long-overdue move, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the Trump administration will launch a full-scale diplomatic campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC) “brick by brick, if necessary.”

Using every tool at America’s disposal—sanctions, travel restrictions, pressure on allies to withdraw from the court, and threats to withdraw U.S. security assistance from states that support it—Rubio made clear that the United States will no longer tolerate this rogue court, which he described as a grave threat to U.S. sovereignty.

This is the kind of decisive action I called for in a November 2024 Newsmax op-ed after the ICC issued politically motivated arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Those warrants resulted from growing hostility toward Israel, antisemitism in the UN and other international organizations, and years of efforts by some prior U.S. administrations to legitimize a court the United States never joined and has long viewed as a threat.

In response to the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, the late Senator Lindsey Graham called the ICC a “rogue and politically motivated organization” and threatened to sanction states that cooperated with the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants “into economic oblivion.”