Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof reportedly said of the new Trump sanctions on the International Criminal Court: “We don’t know the exact impact yet, but it could make the court’s work very hard and possibly impossible in certain areas.”
That’s true on both counts: While the order tees up the mechanism through which President Trump can target the international court, the full extent of these measures won’t be known until later. And he could potentially cripple the court through the wide application of these sanctions.
Yesterday’s executive order is very similar in nature to the one that the president issued in 2020, in response to the ICC’s investigation of U.S. service members’ conduct in Afghanistan. Like the 2020 order, the one issued yesterday allows for the imposition of asset freezes and visa bans targeting specific individuals. In 2020, the Trump administration issued a shot across the bow, targeting ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another ICC official.
This round of sanctions could apply to a wider circle of ICC officials, making life difficult for current staff members — barring travel to the U.S. and access to property subject to American jurisdiction — while also possibly deterring others from joining the organization in the future.
The executive order issued yesterday tasks Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with submitting within 60 days a list of people who could be subject to the sanctions, and there’s good reason to believe that this list will be longer than the one issued in 2020. Since the initial action against the ICC, the court has declined to heed U.S. warnings that Washington will not stand for behavior that it considers to be illegitimate and illegal. Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, chose to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Those warrants were granted by an ICC judge in November, expanding culpability for the the court’s vendetta against Israel beyond the prosecutor’s office. Meanwhile, the ICC continues to investigate American conduct in Afghanistan — a probe that could lead to the prosecution of Americans by a judicial body to whose authority the U.S. has specifically objected.
The upshot: Prosecutors, judges, other staff, and even advisers could potentially be affected this time — a welcome development that will serve to deter future actions that target U.S. and allied interests.