Trump is right: The ICC deserves to burn

President Donald Trump has declared war on the International Criminal Court. On Aug. 18, the United States imposed sanctions on ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye for attempting to prosecute government officials outside the court’s jurisdiction. Building on his vow last month to dismantle the ICC “brick-by-brick,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the court of being “corrupt and fatally politicized” and condemned it for abusing its supranational authority.The U.S.’s ire toward the ICC is not new. While former President Bill Clinton signed the 2000 Rome Statute that catalyzed the court’s establishment, the Senate never deliberated on ICC membership, and the U.S. renounced its signature in 2002. Although former President Joe Biden cheered on the ICC’s pursuit of justice against Russia’s illegal war with Ukraine and state-sponsored abduction of scores of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories, the U.S. was soon at loggerheads with the ICC over indictments that created a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas.After the ICC further sharpened its focus on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza war and investigated alleged war crimes perpetrated by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Trump administration has taken drastic steps to undermine its operational remit. Although few allies have publicly joined Rubio’s crusade against the ICC or responded to U.S. threats of economic consequences for continuing to engage with the body, the facts are on Rubio’s side. Frustrations abound globally about the extensive delays and ambiguous mandates that accompany ICC cases. The U.S., India, China, and Russia remain outside the ICC’s jurisdiction, and its prosecutions are marred by selective pursuits of justice and double standards.Due to its overwhelming and often exclusionary focus on cases emanating from African conflicts, the ICC has been criticized across the continent for being a tool of Western neocolonialism. Burundi, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have either withdrawn or initiated exits from the Rome Statute. Ghana’s insertion of the ICC into its bilateral dispute with South Africa over attacks on undocumented migrants has fuelled concerns that the court is being used as a vehicle to settle scores.The ICC’s refusal to investigate China’s alleged genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs also reeks of double standards. China’s nonmembership rationale is dubious, as the U.S. has faced investigations while not being a party. The ICC has ignored the deportation of Uyghurs through member states, Tajikistan and Cambodia, to face retribution at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. This is not an isolated exemption of China from accountability. The ICC has also declined to investigate credible allegations of forced cultural assimilation and repression of Buddhism in Tibet by the Chinese government.While the ICC’s institutional mechanics and jurisdictional contradictions are problematic, the conduct of its prosecutorial top brass is equally worthy of reproach. This is a problem that runs much deeper and predates ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s removal last July for alleged sexual misconduct.Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was the ICC’s inaugural prosecutor from 2003 to 2012, was hailed across the globe for his instrumental role in Argentina’s transition to democracy. These legitimate grounds for praise belie a darker story. Since becoming the ICC chief prosecutor, Ocampo has been persistently criticized for flawed judgments and untoward political interference. These accusations possess robust empirical support and strengthen the already compelling case for harsh action against the ICC.After 1,100 people were killed in the chaotic violence that accompanied Kenya’s disputed 2007-2008 presidential elections, Ocampo publicly assigned responsibility to six prominent Kenyan officials. Listed among them were Kenya’s current President William Ruto and his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta. The ICC’s prosecution of the so-called Ocampo Six ended in abysmal failure. None of the indicted individuals were convicted, and the ICC’s already-fragile credibility was further eroded in Africa. To make matters worse, Ocampo was accused of being inappropriately contacted by foreign NGOs during the proceedings and extending his authoritarian governance style to post-tenure interference in the ICC’s deliberations on Kenya.Ocampo’s unsolicited insertion into the still-fragile peace process in the South Caucasus raises further alarm bells. Ahead of the June 2026 Armenian presidential elections, video materials circulated that showed Ocampo leveraging connections within the European Parliament to undermine Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s reelection prospects. Ocampo enlisted a member of the European Parliament who provided legal counsel to Josep Borrell, former EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, as a plausible partner. Ocampo’s son, Tomas, joined his father in seeking to capitalize on alleged “major unrest in Armenia” and facilitating Pashiyan’s ouster from power.DON’T BLAME TRUMP FOR THE COLLAPSE OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE. BLAME JACK SMITHThese video materials should not be viewed in isolation. In December 2023, Ocampo published a brief decrying Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor as an act of genocide that systematically deprived ethnic Armenians of food, medicine, and electricity. Ocampo’s memo was fiercely contested by prominent legal scholars for ignoring alternative supply routes offered by the Azerbaijani government and fomenting tensions during a phase of active peace talks. Given the ICC’s pursuit of accountability for senior Russian officials involved in aggression against Ukraine, it is a tragic irony that its founding prosecutor is involved in furthering Russia’s destabilizing plans for the South Caucasus.While the ICC was founded with the high-minded aspiration of holding war criminals to account and punishing perpetrators of genocide, it has now become the archetype of a supranational organization rendered ineffective by politicization and misconduct. As persistent critiques have not led to fundamental reforms, Trump’s hard-edged campaign to dismantle the ICC might be the only viable strategy to force it into changing course.Samuel Ramani taught politics and international relations at the University of Oxford. The author of Russia in Africa, published by Hurst, and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, he contributes regularly to Foreign Policy, the BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, and CNN.