Rubio suggests force against international court; sanctions due in April unless deal reached
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attacked the International Criminal Court in a speech to a conservative legal group at Washington's Mayflower Hotel on Friday, arguing for a muscular foreign policy and against international law restraining US actions. The address to the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention was his first prepared speech since Republicans were routed in the November 3 midterm elections, and it heightens speculation over whether he will leave his roles as national security adviser and top US diplomat to run for president in 2028. Rubio, who has at times sought to provide an intellectual justification for President Donald Trump's America First foreign policy, has firmly denied reports that he will soon embark on a presidential campaign; the Federalist Society is an occasional stop for Republican hopefuls.
Rubio said the United States would not submit to what he called the sterile vision of radical judges or soulless global bureaucrats, repeating his assertion that the court would try to prosecute US officials or service members, the claim he used to justify sanctions against the court announced last month. Americans have never agreed to submit to the court's authority, he said, but that court and its allies in the global bureaucracy have appointed themselves, in his words, judge and jury and executioner of the international order. He suggested that if the court tried to enforce its rulings against Americans, Washington would respond with force, quoting the Roman general Pompey: stop quoting laws to men with swords.
Sanctions take effect in April unless a deal is reached
The US sanctions, designed to stifle the court's ability to operate, will take effect in April unless the court's supporters can reach an agreement with Washington to avert them. The Trump administration has long been hostile to the Netherlands-based court, founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and has previously imposed sanctions on its prosecutors and judges. The court has strong backing from most member states, including all European Union countries and every NATO ally except the United States and Turkey. Washington has denounced the court over arrest warrants issued for Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and over an investigation into actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan, which the court says has been deprioritized.
Defense of the administration's record
Rubio dismissed criticisms that the Trump administration has broken international law through such actions as seizing Venezuela's then-president Nicolas Maduro and striking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that the administration says were carrying drugs. He said the goal of the US-Israeli war against Iran was to prevent Tehran from ever developing a nuclear weapon, which he called particularly urgent because, in his words, the Islamic Republic's radical Shia clerics have an expansionist mentality. He contrasted that with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, whom Trump has met three times, saying he was not excusing the terrible things that have happened there but that Kim is not expansionist and is not trying to invade Japan or China.