The ICC will survive Trump's attacks, Canadian judge says

When Donald Trump came to the United Nations General Assembly in September, he was clear about his intention to tear down the global rules-based order and especially international law. The United States is equally opposed to the out-of-control institution known as the International Criminal Court. We will never allow U.S. service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us. The Trump administration has even threatened and financially attacked judges at the International Court in The Hague. Can the courts survive the U.S. assault? The mission of that court is to prosecute war crimes when lower courts in member states are unable or unwilling to do so. International courts have prosecuted a parade of accused war criminals. Government leaders like Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic from Serbia, To the perpetrators of genocides in Africa, to the latest case, Rodrigo Duterte from the Philippines. Canada is a member state of the ICC, and Canadian Kimberly Prost has served as a judge on the court since 2018. The mission of the ICC is to bring justice to victims, to bring them repair for the harm committed, and of course to bring an end to impunity through accountability for the worst crimes known to humankind. Prost was one of the first judges personally targeted by the U.S. administration. It is an attack in favor of impunity and ending accountability for these crimes. That's the only way it can be framed. They are attacking the entire system of criminal justice that has been built up internationally since the Second World War. Our diplomats and our soldiers could be dragged into this court and that's a very troubling Very troubling to me. The United States never signed on as a member state of the ICC. And when the court indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza in 2024, the Trump administration effectively declared war against it. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he will tear the ICC down brick by brick because of a perceived threat to the sovereignty of the United States. Today it threatens every aspect of our political and legal system. Border patrol agents removing violent criminals from our country. American Marines risking their lives to defend our homeland. Prosecutors working to dismantle terrorist plots to attack and kill Americans. Rubio talked about how the ICC is going to come after immigration agents in the United States. That's poppycock. Kenneth Roth was the longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch when the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. He is now a senior fellow at Yale University. You know, nobody claims the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed in the United States. But what Trump and Rubio are trying to stop is the court having jurisdiction when crimes are committed in ICC member states. The first thing that should be said about it from the U.S. point of view is, leave us alone. We are not members of the ICC. We want nothing to do with the ICC. Elliott Abrams served in key foreign policy positions in the Reagan, Bush, and Trump administrations. If an American service member commits a war crime, it should never be prosecuted by the ICC. We have confidence in the American system of justice. American service members commit crimes. They're human beings. So the idea that they are immune from prosecution would be a terrible idea, and they should not be immune any more than you or I should be immune. But there is no reason for the ICC to prosecute. My impression when Rubio announced Trump's new sanctions on the ICC was that Trump is really trying to make the world safe for American and Israeli war criminals. I think that a statement like that is a fairly disgusting statement. No one wants to make the world safe for any crimes or war crimes. The question is, who prosecutes? We do not have faith in the ICC. One of the great ironies here is that in 2022, Marco Rubio and the entire US Senate called upon the ICC to prosecute Vladimir Putin for war crimes committed in Ukraine. And there was bipartisan support when the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023. But when the ICC then charged Netanyahu using that exact same territorial jurisdiction, suddenly that was anathema and the U.S. government declared war on the court again with the Trump administration imposing sanctions, you know, first on 13 judges and prosecutors of the ICC and now on the institution itself. The first wave of U.S. sanctions made life very difficult for the targeted ICC judges, whose credit cards stopped working and bank accounts were frozen because of American control over the international financial system. These economic sanctions are not symbolic in any way. You immediately begin to feel the effects. All my credit cards are cancelled, whether they were issued in Canada or the Netherlands or in the U.S. Wherever they were issued, they're all cancelled because of the impact of the U.S. on the SWIFT system. Then there's a question, all your banking services can be withdrawn. The next wave of U.S. sanctions could shut down the entire court's computer services and even the ability to pay employees. In a fairly threatening manner, Marco Rubio has asked all American allies to withdraw support for the court. This administration will not sit by as the ICC and its allies seek to threaten our people. If they believe they can deprive us of our sovereignty, we will teach them the full meaning of American resolve I'd like to ask him one day, too, when he talks about tearing the court down brick by brick, what option he's offering to the victims, the thousands of victims in the cases we're investigating, because no one else wants to. Canada's Foreign Minister, Anita Anand, has rejected Rubio's entreaties. How do you respond when the Trump administration asks you to help tear down the system of international law? So, Canada's a sovereign country. And, as I have repeatedly said, as a sovereign country, we determine our foreign policy, and that includes the principles on which our foreign policy is based. And one of those fundamental principles is respect for international law, international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions. At the United Nations in September, President Trump increased the pressure on U.S. allies. I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately. The U.S. campaign to get countries to withdraw from the ICC is not working out very well. That campaign is going nowhere. Of the 125 member states of the ICC, only two have withdrawn at Trump's urging. Venezuela has basically become a vassal state of Washington and Chad, which is very dependent on U.S. military aid. On this, Elliott Abrams agrees. They may have gotten, that is, Trump administration may have gotten a handful of countries to pull out, but I don't think they're going to succeed in getting more, partly because people simply don't agree, and partly because the administration has offended so many other governments that they're not in the mood to cooperate. Do you ever think of quitting your job at the ICC to get away from these sanctions? Absolutely not, never crossed my mind, not for a moment. We deal with the most atrocious crimes and we deal with all these victims who've suffered horrors and it would never cross my mind that I would not continue to pursue justice in this role or in other roles because that's what it's all about. With the support of over 100 member states for a court of last resort, the ICC has so far proved quite resilient in the face of an unprecedented assault from Donald Trump and the U.S. government. Will a president humbled in the midterms ease off on his aggressive agenda, or will he remain hell-bent on bringing down international institutions in the time he has left?