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View all search resultsThe US is betting against international law
Recent US behavior, acting as if the ICC can be trusted against an enemy, but never against a friend, ignores that the Rome Statute rests on complementarity.
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Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan (left) talks to registrar Osvaldo Zavala Giler (right) on March 14, 2025, prior to the first appearance of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charge of crimes against humanity over his deadly crackdown on narcotics, in The Hague, the Netherlands. (AFP/Pool/Peter Dejong)
I
n 2023, then-United States President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to share evidence of Russian war crimes with the International Criminal Court, with the goal of indicting Russian President Vladimir Putin. This marked a sharp break from precedent, as the US had long insisted that the ICC could not exercise jurisdiction over citizens from countries that had not ratified the Rome Statute establishing the Court - a group that includes Russia and the US.
But Biden changed his tune in November 2024, when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. According to Biden, the decision was “outrageous,” and the US would always stand by its ally Israel, which is also not a signatory of the Rome Statute.
Donald Trump, Biden’s successor, went a step further by imposing sanctions on ICC officials, including freezing their assets. In August 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the Court of being “an instrument of lawfare.” By December, 11 ICC judges and prosecutors had been placed under US sanctions. Then, in mid-July, the State Department launched a campaign to dismantle the Court.
Recent US behavior - acting as if the ICC can be trusted against an enemy, but never against a friend - ignores that the Rome Statute rests on complementarity. The ICC is a court of last resort that steps in only when a national government fails to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in good faith. Israel’s jurisdictional objection that Palestine is not a state obscures the sensible way out: a genuine investigation into the crimes alleged by the ICC prosecutor.
Instead, Israel and the US took aim at ICC officials. But contempt is not particularly effective. The ICC’s goal in issuing warrants is not detention - it lacks the police power to make arrests. Rather, its influence lies in making it costly for indictees to be seen with certain figures. Putin, for example, cannot enter any of the 125 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute without risking detention, which is why he chose to attend the 2023 BRICS summit in South Africa by video. Netanyahu’s arrest warrant similarly forces him to consider whether other governments might feel compelled to act were he to visit. US sanctions have not alleviated this concern.
Some may argue that law simply reflects political power: the ICC targets Putin rather than US officials because Russia, unlike America, lacks allies. Seen from this perspective, consequences are for the weak.
In fact, power is transient. Despite being granted legal immunity as a former president of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, who presided over a 17-year reign of terror, was arrested in 1998 at a London hospital while recovering from surgery. A Spanish judge had invoked the United Nations Convention against Torture to pursue Pinochet’s extradition.
