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The incoming Trump administration will introduce a new chapter in American foreign policy and reshape the nation’s approach to global criminal justice and the pursuit of accountability for international crimes. During his first term in office, President Donald Trump and his administration committed to holding ISIS accountable for their crimes, condemned regimes—including Syria and Iran—for their human rights violations, and imposed sanctions on China over its treatment of the Uyghurs. At the same time, the administration also pursued a policy of overt confrontation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose investigations into Afghanistan and in the Palestinian territories were perceived to be a threat to the interest and national security of the both the U.S. and Israel by the administration. Although U.S. opposition to the ICC was not a novelty feature of the Trump administration, its hardline policy towards the ICC went well beyond rhetorical denunciation, resulting in the imposition of sweeping sanctions on the ICC and its officials.
The Biden administration lifted the sanctions, in pursuit of cooperation where ICC activities and U.S. interest aligned, going as far as providing direct U.S. support for the ICC investigation into Russian war crimes in Ukraine. However, this support quickly evaporated following the ICC Prosecutor’s announcement that it would seek arrest warrants against both Israeli and Hamas leaders in relation to the ongoing war in Gaza, resulting in the House of Representatives passing a new ICC sanctions bill (H.R.8282), currently before the Senate.
Against this backdrop of complex U.S.-ICC relations, the Carnegie Endowment’s Global Order and Institutions program will convene a panel of three former U.S. Ambassadors-at-Large on War Crimes Issues and Global Criminal Justice to discuss what’s next for U.S.- ICC relations, what role we might expect the U.S. to play on global accountability issues under the second Trump administration, and where progress might be possible, either on a bipartisan basis or under the priorities of the incoming administration.
