Dismantling the ICC Doesn’t Serve U.S. Interests

Trump Dismantling the ICC Doesn’t Serve U.S. Interests

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Argument:

Dismantling the ICC Doesn’t Serve U.S. Interests

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Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

Dismantling the ICC Doesn’t Serve U.S. Interests

The Trump administration’s campaign against the court is transparently cynical.

By **Janine di Giovanni**, the CEO of the Reckoning Project and a senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, and **Christopher “Kip” Hale**, the chief of staff of the Reckoning Project.

!The outside of the International Criminal Court is seen before an appeal ruling on the provisional release of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague on Nov. 28, 2025.

*The outside of the International Criminal Court is seen before an appeal ruling on the provisional release of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague on Nov. 28, 2025.*

The outside of the International Criminal Court is seen before an appeal ruling on the provisional release of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in The Hague on Nov. 28, 2025. Lina Selg/ANP/AFP via Getty Images

*

August 10, 2026, 6:00 AM

Trump’s Second Term

Ongoing reports and analysis

When we spoke in April with a woman who had survived a Rapid Support Forces (RSF) massacre on the border of Sudan, she did not ask for revenge. For more than two years, the RSF has carried out attacks in the country that amount to crimes against humanity. But instead, the woman asked whether anyone would write down what had happened to her—whether it would be believed, and whether it would matter.

That question, repeated to both of us for decades across war zones, is the reason for the International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the Rome Statute in 2002. It is also the reason that our organization, the Reckoning Project, trains citizens to turn what they have survived into evidence that a court can use. And it is precisely the thing that the United States under President Donald Trump has set out to dismantle.

When we spoke in April with a woman who had survived a Rapid Support Forces (RSF) massacre on the border of Sudan, she did not ask for revenge. For more than two years, the RSF has carried out attacks in the country that amount to crimes against humanity. But instead, the woman asked whether anyone would write down what had happened to her—whether it would be believed, and whether it would matter.

That question, repeated to both of us for decades across war zones, is the reason for the International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the Rome Statute in 2002. It is also the reason that our organization, the Reckoning Project, trains citizens to turn what they have survived into evidence that a court can use. And it is precisely the thing that the United States under President Donald Trump has set out to dismantle.

A few days before International Criminal Justice Day on July 17, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign to “systematically disable” the ICC. In Rubio’s words, this is the Trump administration’s attempt to demolish the court “brick by brick,” supposedly seeking to stop the court from “threatening U.S. sovereignty or targeting Americans.”

The Trump administration’s plan promises expanded sanctions against the ICC and any organization or people affiliated with it; visa revocations and travel bans on court staff, which could extend to perceived supporters; and a diplomatic push to pressure other countries to stop cooperating with the court. What is new about this campaign is its stated ambition. The White House’s goal is no longer to shield particular defendants—it is to end the institution unless it cows to U.S. demands.

This is not a first strike but an escalation: Last year, after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, the Trump administration sanctioned ICC judges and prosecutors outright. The United States also sanctioned the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, for expressing her opinion in support of the ICC’s work in Palestine.

During Trump’s first term, his administration also leveled sanctions against ICC personnel, most acutely the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. (Bensouda sits on the board of the Reckoning Project.)

The latest campaign arrives at a genuinely difficult moment for the ICC. On July 24, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan was ousted after an overwhelming majority of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP)—the body of 125 member states that oversees the court—voted to remove him after a two-year investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. (He had been formally suspended in June by an ASP executive committee.)

However, the Rome Statute system is larger than its prosecutor; it is underpinned by 125 states and a quarter-century of hard-won jurisprudence. That distinction matters, because Washington is deliberately blurring it—seizing on a moment of institutional strain to advance a project that has nothing to do with legitimate concerns or calls for reform. There should be no illusion about the fact that Israel is working with the United States on this campaign, using this unfortunate episode at the ICC to cast the institution as compromised.

Netanyahu’s government did not wait for the ASP session or the outcome of any investigation before declaring the court irredeemable, yet it’s clear that the leadership of a country facing an