"The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created in 1998 to complement national justice systems, with nation-states' consent. However, the court has gone rogue, launching politically motivated investigations into U.S. and Israeli service members.
This month, the State Department took decisive action to stop this miscarriage of justice by sanctioning those responsible for undermining the rule of law and the court's stated mission...
By attempting to assert jurisdiction over Americans, the court in essence is trying to bind the United States to the Rome Statute, thereby contravening the foundational principle of international law that treaties are binding only if a state consents to be bound.
The court's action is a serious attack on American sovereignty and an outrageous misuse of resources by a so-called 'court of last resort' that is supposed to intervene only where national legal systems lack the capacity and willingness to do so.
By straying far from the International Criminal Court's original mandate, the prosecutor's recent conduct also has vindicated a quarter-century of American concerns that the ICC would morph into a tool of global politics.
In addition to targeting Americans, the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, is trying to insert herself into one of the world's longest-running and most vexing political quandaries by investigating the legality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
A Palestinian-backed lawyer recently urged Bensouda to go a step further and bring charges not only against Israeli officials, but also against Americans - including President Trump, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and me - as 'accomplices' in an alleged conspiracy to commit war crimes.
Such entreaties aren't the dispassionate pursuit of justice by impartial civil servants; they signal that the court is a tool of politics by other means...
We stand ready to work with our allies who are members of the ICC to resolve our concerns about the organization in an amicable way. But if that effort fails, we will use all tools at our disposal to protect our citizens and defend our sovereignty."