US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the day he testifies before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on President Donald Trump’s FY2027 budget request for the Department of State, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced a sweeping effort to weaken the International Criminal Court (ICC), arguing on Monday that the tribunal has exceeded its mandate by targeting American personnel and Israeli leaders while undermining the sovereignty of democratic nations.

In a video address and an accompanying opinion essay in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio said the administration would pursue a comprehensive strategy to diminish the court’s influence, including urging allied nations to reject the ICC’s jurisdiction and considering additional sanctions against individuals or governments that assist investigations involving the US or its allies.

Rubio accused the court of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but with “the force of so-called international law,” and vowed to “dismantle” the entity.

The initiative marks one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive moves to date against the court, which is based in The Hague.

The US State Department said the campaign would feature a “whole-of-government response” to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate. Rubio rejected the notion that the court possesses any legal authority over nations that have not consented to its jurisdiction and urged other countries to ignore its rulings.

The department also warned that nations which “refuse to reject the ICC’s false authority” while relying on US assistance could face increased scrutiny, calling on countries that partner with American law enforcement, host a US military presence, or benefit from the broader US security umbrella to repudiate the court’s “purported authority to prosecute American officials and servicemen.”

“Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary,” Rubio wrote in his op-ed.

The top US diplomat also cast doubt on the court’s ideological neutrality, describing it 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 US.”

The ICC has faced intense scrutiny over claims that it harbors a particular bias against Israel. Many countries, including the US, have accused the court of unfairly singling out the Jewish state, a democratic ally confronting persistent security threats from terrorist organizations, while applying inconsistent standards to other conflicts around the world.

In Nov. 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the now-deceased Hamas terror commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, better known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The court said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has facilitated significant humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave throughout the war.

US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The US has never ratified the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the ICC, and successive administrations from both parties have objected to the court exercising jurisdiction over US citizens. The Trump administration has expanded that position, arguing that the tribunal’s investigations of American and Israeli officials represent an unacceptable intrusion into the sovereignty of democratic nations capable of holding their own officials accountable.

US President Donald Trump issued an executive order in Feb. 2025 imposing travel and economic sanctions on those who assist with ICC investigations, lambasting the court for setting “a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest.”

Since then, 11 court officials — eight judges, two deputy prosecutors, and the chief prosecutor — have been sanctioned under the order, facing US travel bans, frozen assets, and the loss of access to online services such as Amazon and Google accounts.

Supporters of the ICC criticized the administration’s announcement, arguing that the court serves as an essential mechanism for prosecuting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity when national judicial systems fail to do so.

“We stand firm in our support for the International Criminal Court. Attacks or threats against the court, elected officials, personnel, or those cooperating with the court are simply not acceptable,” European Union spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said on Tuesday, rejecting the assertion that the tribunal poses a threat to national sovereignty.

The spokesperson added that the ICC “does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty.”