– The United States has never agreed to establish a world court that can override our own courts and Constitution.
This is what Secretary of State Marco Rubio writes in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal.
Rubio considers it unacceptable that American soldiers, police officers, border guards and elected political leaders risk being brought before an international court, judged by judges from random countries around the world, found guilty under international laws to which the United States has neither consented nor over which it has any influence, and then imprisoned hundreds of miles from America.
– The ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country, not with bullets and missiles, but with clauses, treaties and so-called international law, Rubio said, according to the AFP news agency.
Yet this is precisely the authority that the International Criminal Court now claims to possess. Both major political parties in the United States have protested against this development.
President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification because of his “concerns about significant flaws in the treaty.”
Two years later, a bipartisan majority in the Senate passed the “American Servicemembers’ Protection Act”, authorising the President “to use all means necessary” – including military force – to prevent the ICC from seizing or arresting Americans.
The EU takes a different view of the matter and is leading Western European countries, including Norway, towards full support for the ICC, as a means of opposing the Trump administration.
Straffedomstolen og EU på samme side, tar opp kampen mot Trump
During Trump’s second term, the number of attacks against the United States through the ICC has increased. Activists have, among other things, demanded that the ICC take “immediate and concrete measures” against the Trump administration’s deportation of criminal illegal migrants to El Salvador.
The military attacks on the smugglers’ boats belonging to “narco-terrorists” have also been strongly criticised.
US efforts to counter what it considers the ICC’s unlawful interference have been portrayed as a further reason for the ICC to focus its attention on Americans.
When 12 US senators wrote to the ICC prosecutor to express their concerns, the prosecutor’s office accused them of criminal offences.
The UN naturally sides with the ICC, and it is not alone. A former head of Human Rights Watch said that “all 125 member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) would have a legal obligation to arrest Trump if he were to appear.”
The Trump administration will always protect American citizens from this threat, Rubio emphasises, arguing that sovereign states should be prioritised over globalism.
Rubio concludes:
By using every tool available to our government, and by working with every ally we can rally, we will dismantle the International Criminal Court – brick by brick, if necessary.