A network of leftist advocacy groups and globalists hostile to American interests is what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says lies behind the International Criminal Court, an institution the Trump administration now aims to break apart through coordinated diplomatic pressure abroad.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Rubio framed the court as an adversary operating through legal channels rather than conventional weapons. He charged that the ICC has been “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but instead with “the force of so-called international law.” In that same piece, he described the court as “backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.”
The effort marks a sharp turn toward direct pressure on foreign governments, according to CNN. A State Department official said the campaign relies on tools including travel bans, visa revocations, and expanded sanctions to push nations away from the court. Diplomats at the highest levels, among them the secretary and deputy secretary along with US ambassadors, have been placing calls to governments in what one official described as an attempt to isolate the ICC diplomatically and shield Americans from prosecution.
Those conversations target countries belonging to the court, pressing them to pull out and “cut off any financial support to the court,” the official said. Governments outside the court’s jurisdiction, including the US itself, are being asked to “leverage their diplomatic networks to take similar action alongside us.”
The official signaled consequences for governments that decline. Countries relying on American support while refusing to reject the court’s authority could face closer examination, and those hosting a US military presence or sheltered by American security guarantees are being urged to deny the ICC’s claim to prosecute US officials and service members. Rubio himself pledged in his op-ed to “dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”
Friction between Washington and the court predates the current push. During Trump’s first term, the administration moved against the ICC after it pursued an inquiry into alleged war crimes by US forces in Afghanistan, and the second Trump administration has layered sanctions on court officials investigating the US and Israel.
Rubio also pushed back against outside groups alleging that US deportations to El Salvador and lethal strikes on suspected narco-terrorists breached international law. He dismissed a request from Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, for the court to look into alleged US war crimes in Iran, while suggesting such conduct could expose the US to scrutiny.
Omar Shakir, who leads DAWN, told CNN that Rubio distorted the group’s position. He said the organization had called for investigation into all possible war crimes committed during the conflict, and that Rubio’s framing “begs the question: does Secretary Rubio believe US personnel should be investigated for war crimes in Iran?” Shakir argued the real target of the campaign is not the court but the postwar system of international rules, warning that “History will judge governments on whether they defended the institutions designed to safeguard international law.”
