Initially, it was created to address human rights violations[...]"
Yet here we are: it's being used to harass judges who address human rights violations.
It's even more egregious it used the Magnitsky Act for that...
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
I think Trump has successfully destroyed all of that and replaced it with (rhetoric about) threats of hard power.
The Trump administration is the equivalent of a lazy/absent parent. The kids have no respect for them whatsoever, but they're sick with them for time being and aware that belt hurts when it's deployed.
It is understandable that you would have this impression, given that the US leader has total legal immunity, directly controls the judiciary, Congress, tariffs and formerly independent financial agencies, openly threatens journalists and news media companies, appoints untalented lackies and openly enriches himself and his family and associates, openly uses federal legal entities to pursue opponents, deploys the military within the country against its own citizens, and has made federal arrest without warrant a common daily event.
It you live in a country where your government does not exhibit such characteristics, it's easy to mistake the above as an indication of something suspiciously unlike democracy.
From TFA: "In concrete terms, the rule of law is equality for all individuals, globally, before justice."
The rule of law has now become — for those who enjoy American expressions — a type of fan fiction.
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ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
The USA's might is highly dependent on the world order it fostered after WW2, and especially after the Cold War.
Erode that, and the USA as we've known the past 70 years starts to crumble. If in a couple decades the rest of the world works to decouple from the dollar as the main reserve currency; decouple from the dependency to sell to the USA; and decouple the dependency on American tech you still have a rich country but definitely not the superpower with the might as it exists today.
It's not possible for the USA to be funded with the astronomical deficits it runs to keep its war machine, it's not possible for the US, culturally and politically, to majorly increase taxes to cover this deficit. Slowly there would be cuts to its defence spending, diminishing its might.
Not sure why Americans decided this was a good path, didn't expect to see the era of Pax Americana to be so abruptly shaken during my lifetime but here we are.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Lots of people realize the importance of this, but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
And yes, I do understand how utterly bonkers it is to suggest something this big changing over just 3 years.
> Both men are indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the destruction of the Gaza Strip.
Role in destruction isn't a war crime they are being indicted for and as such irrelevant in this context.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Anybody can look into any country’s actions unless that country has authority over them and forbids it.
So is any atrocity allowable if you have enough civilian human shields?
[1] https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/08/imposing-further-sanc...
I don’t think the ICC was plotting to undermine US or Israel sovereignty. The dispute is about jurisdiction. The ICC has a pretty expansive theory that says it can go after nationals of non-member states if the alleged conduct happened on the territory of a member state. That theory has been around for years and mostly lived in briefs and conferences. What changed in 2025 is that the ICC started acting on it and advancing real cases that implicated non-members. At that point it stopped being academic and started looking like a real-world precedent with consequences for allies and potentially US personnel. That’s the slippery slope. The administration had already tried protests and non-recognition and concluded it was not changing behavior. The August sanctions were framed as a last-resort escalation to draw a hard line against what they saw as ongoing overreach, not as a response to some new hostile intent.
Surely couldn’t have that much blackmail on him. You’d need something so shocking that it’d ruin him and his entire family forever. Where just mentioning the name would cause disgust for generations. Surely there’s nothing like that in the archives.
Was Brazil's justice trying to impose its legal authority outside of its jurisdictions? Nope. Was it hurting humans rights? Nope.
It's simply to bully, and meddle with entities that go against the interests of the current administration.
I don't buy your justification why this case is not the same, at all.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
Neither of those are certain and even for people that a) applies to, b) can be a big hassle.
Just ask Netanyahu.
In the case of Israel the ICC used a loophole to work around this, since the Israeli courts are actually able to prosecute Netanyahu (and are currently doing so on other matters).
...without trial. And assuming guilty and sentenced to death.
This is standard rules of war. Soldiers don’t have to convene a court before shooting at enemy combatants.
The ICC is an international court but it administers trials (mostly) local to the members' jurisdiction so this point is moot. A warrant from the ICC doesn't ask the member states to go to war and hunt the target, it asks them to arrest them if the target is within their jurisdiction
The fact that the ICC warrant was unlikely to lead to Hamas' leaders arrest in the short term is not particularly meaningful
The "mostly" qualifier is because IIRC there are some provisions for truly extraterritorial prosecutions in the Rome treaty but I don't know that they've ever been actually used
They have a warrant out for Putin, has that made any impact on the war in Ukraine?
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
Yet another attempt at explaining how the US is really acting in its own self-interest even if the actual beneficiary is Israel.
So let me state it once again clearly: the beneficiary of this move is Israel. The political capital expended is American. The US works for Israel.
It's good to see an European politician (ICC judge is a political role) to test own medicine.
mkleczek•2h ago
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
tgv•2h ago
integralid•1h ago
krior•1h ago
lmz•1h ago
rounce•1h ago
CaRDiaK•1h ago
bdcravens•38m ago
tgv•5m ago
Arguments about amount are immaterial to me. Cash transactions of say $500k are physically doable in many systems.
And cash transaction don't require burning the Amazon, of course.
alecco•1h ago