Why does the US want to ‘dismantle’ the international criminal court? | Kenneth Roth

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

49% : It is essential for prosecuting officials from the United Arab Emirates, also not an ICC member, for sending arms and mercenaries to the genocidal Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, where the ICC has jurisdiction by virtue of a UN security council resolution.But what worries Trump officials most is the prospect that territorial jurisdiction could be used to prosecute them.
42% : 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.
35% : Their domestic atrocities can be reached only by resolution of the UN security council, where the US government has a veto.Behind its overblown rhetoric, the Trump administration’s real objection is to the court’s power to prosecute war crimes and other mass atrocities committed on the territory of its member states when the perpetrator is a national of a non-member state.
35% : When in November 2024 the ICC charged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, the Israel exception to international law kicked in and the Biden administration was outraged.
34% : But the court had used the same territorial jurisdiction as for Putin – Israel had not joined the court, but Palestine, the locus of Israeli crimes (in Gaza), had.
27% : 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.
11% : Trump (as well as Biden) officials could be prosecuted for aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza by continuing to provide arms and military aid as it unfolded.

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