by Miceál O’Hurley
THE HAGUE ― The confrontation between Washington and the International Criminal Court (ICC) is more than a dispute over jurisdiction. America’s ideological objection to the ICC predates the isolationist Trump and has long been sustained by both Republican and Democratic administrations. It has been the stated position of the US to object to the ICC on the grounds of national sovereignty and exceptionalism. All US Presidents have manifested this policy through a framework of state-centric realism and assertion of legal independence to shield American politicians, military personnel and intelligence agents from the jurisdiction of the Court.
Last Friday’s deep sanctions regime announced by US Secretary of State Marco Rubion respresents a renewed confrontational test for the international community. At risk is the international commitment to the independence of international institutions of justice and the foundational principle that accountability should not depend upon political power but should serve the universal principles of peace undergirded by the rule of law, justice and indescriminate accountability.
International reaction has been one of uniform outrage. According to Germany’s Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, Trump’s sanction package agains the ICC is, “Utterly staggering”. Hubig, a respected former prosecutor and judge, argues convincingly that the Americans are now trying to dismantle the very principles of justice the US pioneered and helped to establish.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has applauded Trump’s sanctioning of the ICC, saying: “The ICC is not a court. It is a political body that poses a mortal threat to law abiding democracies worldwide and to the very idea of national sovereignty”.
The relationship between the United States and the ICC has always been a fraught one. Washington has consistently rejected the Rome Statute out of concerns that extending competent international judicial authority to a body outside of American control is antithetical to US interests. Consecutive American administrations have expressed a fear that acknowledging the legitimacy of the ICC could result in Americans being tried by an international Court contrary to any US foreign policy prerogative and without US consent. However, the imposition of sanctions against ICC personnel in February 2025, followed by successive extensions to judges and senior officials, represents a significant escalation of the ideological conflict.
According to Rubio, the US seeks to fundamentally undermine the ICC’s ability to operate notoriously threatending to “end the ICC”. What began as a disagreement over jurisdiction has developed into a wider confrontation over the independence of international justice.
President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14203 authorised asset freezes, financial restrictions and travel prohibitions against individuals associated with ICC investigations involving American nationals and those of allied countries, particularly Israel. By extending the sanctions to Israelis, Trump has rendered Israeli’s tantamount to Americans in terms of his scope of interest.
The administration maintains that the ICC repeatedly exceeds its legitimate jurisdiction and this threatens American sovereignty and judicial autonomy. In seeking exception to the Court the American position raises questions that deserve serious diplomatic consideration.
Judicial independence is at the core of any domestic or international understanding of a functional court where the rule of law prevails over governmental intrusion or petty, personal pursuasion. The resort to brtue economic coercion would be anathema to the Constitutional precepts of the separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
While refraining from signing the Rome Statute that would make the US subject to the ICC may be a legitimate policy act the interference and punishment of international jurists and judical officials creates a troubling precedent. If allowed to succeed, the Trump administration would create a paradigm by which those being investigated by the Court get to exercise a veto over the it thus destroying the fundamental basis of its legitimacy in equally applying the rule of law.
In both his first and second adminsitrations, Trump has be unique in American history by using Executive Orders to significantly interfere with those entrusted with administering international justice as opposed to simply implementing a policy objection to the Court. In 2019, Trump’s then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced visa restrictions against ICC personnel involved in investigations concerning American nationals. In 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13928, authorising asset freezes and other economic sanctions. Again, in September 2020, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior official Phakiso Mochochoko were formally sanctioned by Trump.
As a repreive, US President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14022, on 1 April 2021 thereby terminating the national emergency declared by Trump and revoking his 2020 sanctions orders. Following this, the Treasury Department removed Bensouda and Mochochoko from its sanctions list. It is important to note that despite reversing Trump’s interference with and ICC judge and official, Biden maintained the US policy of opposing ICC exercising jurisdiction over US nationals.
Upon returning to office in for a second time, Trump renewed his campaign to harass and intimidate the ICC, its judges and personnel. Trump reinstated the sanctions regime on 6 February 2025 through Executive Order 14203. In February 2025, Trump caused the US to sanction ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan. In June of that same year, Trump sanctioned 4-judges of the ICC for pursuing cases against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as well as an earlies decision to investigate US forces in Afghanistan for possible war crimes. In August 2025, Trump order sanctions for 2-more judges and 2-Deputy Prosecutors. In Decmeber 2025, Trump expanded the sanctions regime against Judges Gocha Lordkipanidze and Erdenebalsuren Damdin for authorising the investigation of alleged war crimes against Israelis following the October 7th Hamas attacks in Israel.
Trump’s latest and most expansive sanctions regime targets not only ICC judges and officials but seeks to destroy the ICC’s ability to operate and function normally. New American sanctions not only include prohibitions of certain banking transfers related to Court operations but extends sanctions to companies and individuals providing goods and services to the Court. The use of sanctions to punish financial institutions, software and internet services, insurance providers and civil society actors to disrupt the ICC is meant to disable the Court altogether. Pitting these providers against meeting their contractual obligations governed by European law and facing punishing sanctions by the US raises significant conerns about the sovereignty of Europe, the ICC and related institutions.
Individuals or commercial entities subject to American sanctions now risk incuring punishing costs or loss of contract because of Trump’s sanction regime. It is already having a chilling effect. Some smaller Statesare expressing a reluctance and fear of continuing to provide assistance to the ICC for fear of US retaliation. According to one senior European diplomat interviewed on the condition of anonimity by the European Diploma sounded a familiar alarm and damning assessment across Europe of both Trump and America in the age of descent into a near dictatorial state:
“We witness how Trump withdrew intelligence cooperation from Ukraine over the rejection of his demand President Zelenskii calls a cease to destroying Russian refineries, ports and bot centres. What was the result? The withdrawl of American intelligence cooperation results in Ukrainian civilians no longer get air raid warnings while Russia continues in war crimes by targetting housing and critical civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian civilians are now being killed in their homes for the basic lack of early warnings because of Trump only knows force when he can’t pursuade someone of his point. Sadly, and I say this with regret, the American President is demosntrating America’s willingness to be deadly and ruthless to anyone who oppose him. Europeans can no longer disagree with an American President the way we could have legitimately done before. Now, disagreements incur retribution like a scene from ‘The Godfather’ and it is lowering the world’s opinion of Trump, America and their once valued commitment to justice. I think the Nuremberg prosecutors would be horrified as to what America’s sense of justice and fair play has become under Trump”.
Legal bodies the likes of the International Bar Association (IBA), International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), International Bar Association Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), Law Society of England and Wales, International Criminal Bar Association (ICBA) and local law associations across Europe and the world have condemned Trump’s sanction regime against the ICC.
The political response to these latest US sanctions against the Court has been uniformly resolute in its rejection of this coercive instrument.
President of the European Council, António Costa, summed up the danger of allowing the US to evicerate the ICC: “International justice is the only alternative to revenge.”
Trump’s sanctions regime against the ICC is scheduled to take effect in 6-months time. Political and civil society leaders worldwide are asking the Trump Administration to the interim to withdraw the ICC sanctions against its jurists, officials and contractors and refrain from pressuring State signatories of the Rome Statute from supporting the Court and Rome Statute. Further guarantees against the US interfering in the operational and judicial independence of the ICC are being sought from US diplomatic missions in all European capitals.
