Earlier this month, President Trump took aim at the International Criminal Court (ICC). An executive order dated Feb. 6, 2025, announced diplomatic and economic sanctions on ICC officials and partners – including the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan.
Why target the ICC? To understand Trump’s move to restrict court officials’ and partners’ travel and U.S. assets, it’s helpful to explore the U.S.’s complicated history with international law and international institutions, and then look at the particulars of the ICC and its current work.
Here are ten things you need to know.
1. The U.S. joins some international organizations and human rights treaties but not others
For more than a century, the United States has had an uneasy relationship with both international law and the institutions that strive to uphold it. U.S. leaders supported the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations, but never joined it. The U.S. government later helped found the United Nations but hesitated to sign and ratify many of its core agreements.
Indeed, the United States has taken years, sometimes decades, to join international treaties affirming civil and political rights as well as treaties prohibiting genocide, torture, and racial discrimination. Moreover, the United States has avoided some international agreements altogether; it is one of a few countries that hasn’t ratified U.N. treaties on the rights of women and people with disabilities, among others.
The United States is also the only Western democracy that hasn’t ratified the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, its rules, and jurisdiction.
2. The U.S. sees itself as exceptional – so it doesn’t always follow international rules
The U.S. government has historically championed human rights on the world stage, helped by a domestic public that supports human rights and that favors compliance with international law. But U.S. leaders don’t always share the same ideas of human rights as their peers, and frequently bristle against the supranational authority of international organizations that monitor and evaluate compliance.
Instead, the twin ideas of American exceptionalism and exemptionalism often guide U.S. policy: The U.S. government presents itself as an authority on human rights while not always participating in the international human rights regime or complying with its precepts.
3. The U.S. holds its allies and adversaries to different standards
Arguably, the U.S. tendency – of “law for thee and not for me” – is most clearly seen in the case of the ICC. U.S. leaders helped design the ICC, and have supported it on and off for years. To give a recent example, former President Joe Biden instructed his administration to assist the court’s investigation into reported Russian abuses in Ukraine, while condemning the ICC investigation into suspected atrocities in the Israel-Hamas war.
4. Republicans have opposed the ICC for decades
Republicans, who have consistently opposed the ICC since its inception, currently hold unified control of government. The White House, with support from Congress, is now pursuing sanctions against individuals and entities that support the ICC’s investigations into U.S. and allied personnel, notably Israelis.
Interestingly, Congress was already working on an ICC sanctions law, based on the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,” which passed the House on Jan. 9. But it appears that Trump didn’t want to wait for the bill to get to his desk (it’s been with the Senate for several weeks now), so he hastened sanctions with the executive order.
5. The ICC is investigating reported war crimes in Afghanistan, but isn’t focused on Americans
Trump says he’s protecting Americans, but Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor, isn’t investigating U.S. actions. ICC judges did authorize prosecutors to open a full investigation into the war in Afghanistan in 2020. But in 2021, Khan announced that he would focus on allegations against the Taliban and ISIS-K, not U.S. personnel or the U.S.’s Afghan allies.
6. The ICC is investigating reported war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Israel-Hamas war
ICC judges approved Khan’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders in November 2024. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are now wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including using starvation as a weapon of war. The judges also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, an architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel (though he was reportedly later killed).
7. Trump claims the ICC lacks jurisdiction over Americans and Israelis
Trump’s executive order targets ICC personnel and partners involved in the Afghanistan and Palestine probes as they relate to Americans and Israelis. His reasoning is that neither the United States nor Israel is an ICC member, so their nationals are immune from investigation and prosecution. But the law isn’t on his side.
8. Yes, the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over nonmembers
In general, the ICC only has jurisdiction over nationals of countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. Most countries (125 to date – including nearly all major U.S. allies) have done so. The United States, China, India, Iraq, Israel, Libya, and Russia are some of the countries that haven’t ratified the Rome Statute.
There are key exceptions to this rule, however, notably when: (1) nonmembers accept ICC jurisdiction through an Article 12 declaration; (2) the U.N. Security Council refers nonmembers to the court; (3) nonmembers are alleged to have committed crimes on the territory of a member (for example, Israel’s reported abuses in Palestine); or (4) nonmembers are alleged to have committed crimes on the territory of a state that has filed an Article 12 declaration (as with Russia in Ukraine, before Ukraine ratified the Rome Statute).
9. The ICC has limited jurisdiction
The principle of complementarity constrains the ICC. This means the court can only intervene in cases where governments prove unwilling or unable to conduct genuine proceedings of their own. Regarding Israel, though its judicial system may be capable of conducting investigations and prosecutions, Israel has been unwilling to actually do so. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials don’t see the military campaign in Gaza as having violated domestic or international law.
10. ICC sanctions didn’t work before
Trump issued a similar executive order in 2020. The first targets were Fatou Bensouda – Khan’s predecessor, who was in her final year as ICC chief prosecutor – and Phakiso Mochochoko, one of her deputies. U.S. sanctions were punitive, but ineffective; Bensouda and her team continued their work.
Given this history, there’s no reason to think U.S. sanctions will have much effect this time around. Khan and the court’s allies have also consistently rebuked attempts to intimidate ICC officials or interfere with their work.
There was another way forward
Rather than use sanctions, the U.S. government could have countered ICC prosecutors’ and judges’ determinations by using the law and providing exculpatory evidence for Americans in Afghanistan (who, again, the ICC isn’t even actively investigating) and Israelis in Palestine – if such exculpatory evidence exists.
That seems to be the direction the Biden administration was headed. In his first months in office, Biden reversed Trump’s first round of ICC sanctions. At the time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that though the Biden administration objected to ICC jurisdiction over the United States and Israel, U.S. officials believed that “our concerns about these cases would be better addressed through engagement with all stakeholders in the ICC process rather than through the imposition of sanctions.”
The current administration and its allies on Capitol Hill have thrown out that playbook. The Trump approach is an effort to apply brute force to reach a desired outcome: no investigations, no prosecutions, no accountability. These moves will no doubt undercut the U.S.’s image abroad and embolden regimes that don’t subscribe to human rights protections and the rule of law to also defy the ICC and international institutions more generally.
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