Trump tells countries quit ICC
UNITED NATIONS — On Tuesday, Donald Trump used his address to the UN General Assembly to urge every nation to leave the International Criminal Court “immediately” — Trump tells countries quit ICC, he declared, calling the court “evil” and “a rogue institution.” By Thursday, the scoreboard of his pressure campaign was in: one new withdrawal — Naoero, a Pacific island nation of about twelve thousand people formerly known as Nauru — set against a European Union openly discussing a blocking statute to shield the court from American sanctions, and Japan dispatching an official to The Hague to stand by the court's sanctioned president.
What Trump asked for, and what he got
Tuesday's appeal at UNGA capped an escalating American campaign against the Hague-based court. Washington says the ICC oversteps its authority when it claims jurisdiction over citizens of countries — including the United States and Israel — that never ratified its founding treaty, the Rome Statute. The result during General Assembly week was a single taker.
Naoero's President David Adeang told the Assembly his country would formally withdraw from the Rome Statute, citing the court's “increasing irrelevance.” After meeting Naoero's deputy foreign minister, U.S. Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael DeSombre celebrated on X: “Naoero joins a growing number of nations standing up for their sovereignty against the ICC's illegitimate overreach.”
The “growing number” remains small. Since Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched the campaign in July, Venezuela and Chad have announced plans to withdraw. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger announced their exits the previous year, denouncing the court as an instrument of “neocolonial repression.” The Rome Statute still counts 125 parties.
The “dismantle the ICC” campaign
In July, Rubio announced a sweeping drive to “dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary.” He argued that the court threatens American service members, the administration's deportation operations and U.S. strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats. The tools so far are financial sanctions and visa bans on court staff, plus prepared entity-wide sanctions that sources say could undercut the court's basic ability to operate. Our earlier analysis explains how institution-wide ICC sanctions could reach banking, payroll and evidence systems.
Trump has said the campaign is aimed at protecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against whom the ICC issued arrest warrants in November 2024 alongside his then-defense minister and a Hamas military commander over the Gaza war. That legal pressure remained part of the backdrop to Netanyahu's UNGA speech and the mass delegate walkout.
The Associated Press notes that the Rome Statute established the court in 2002 as a court of last resort for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression, stepping in where nations cannot or will not prosecute. “The ICC regrets any decision to depart from the collective effort to end impunity for the most serious international crimes,” court spokesperson Oriane Maillet told the AP. A State Department spokesperson told the AP: “Five countries so far have announced plans to withdraw from the Rome Statute, and we welcome more announcements in the future.”
The defense rallies
While Washington collected Naoero, the court's defenders moved. The European Union rallied behind the Netherlands-based court, with officials discussing a blocking statute in response to potential U.S. sanctions — a legal shield that would bar European firms from complying with them.
“We have the tools in our toolbox when it gets really serious, how to defend ICC, and here at the UN we are rallying countries behind supporting the ICC functioning and the accountability part because it's not only a European issue; it's much broader than that,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters this week.
Japan — whose national Tomoko Akane serves as ICC president and is already under U.S. sanctions — called the proposed sanctions “very unfortunate” and dispatched an official to The Hague to discuss support. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi used her own General Assembly address on Tuesday to affirm the court's side: “Since the end of the Second World War, Japan, as a peace-loving nation, has attached great importance to the rule of law in the settlement of any disputes.” Her statement also fit the wider rule-of-law message examined in our report on Takaichi's warning ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.
Why this matters
ANALYSIS: The arithmetic of coercion is not cooperating with the rhetoric. Five or six departures out of 125 parties is a rounding error, and the leavers tell their own story: three Sahel juntas whose exits predate Trump's campaign and grow from specifically West African soil — coups, French withdrawal and fury at a court perceived as a neocolonial instrument — plus Venezuela, Chad and a microstate of twelve thousand people. Trump's campaign is surfing that current, not creating it.
Meanwhile, the counter-mobilization is institutional. A blocking statute would not merely defend the court; it would create a standing legal mechanism against American sanctions. The campaign is manufacturing the very architecture of resistance it claims to be dismantling.
Trump also said the quiet part aloud. By framing the drive as protection for Netanyahu, he stripped fence-sitting governments of the ability to present an exit as high principle. Nobody wants to be the second Naoero when the price is standing next to a sanctions list.
The deepest irony is structural: the United States never joined the Rome Statute, so it cannot quit the court. It can only pressure others to leave a club it refused to enter, while demanding that the club stop investigating its friends.
Who wins, who loses
Winners: Netanyahu, who gains the explicit protection of the world's most powerful government; the Sahel juntas, for whom ICC scrutiny was an irritant; and Naoero, which banks American goodwill at negligible cost.
Losers: the court's claim to universality — every exit, however small, feeds the narrative that international justice is optional; victims in the Palestine and Afghanistan situations, whose cases lose political oxygen with each withdrawal; and American soft power in The Hague, where Washington now lobbies against an institution most of its allies fund.
The court itself occupies the uncertain middle: diminished in membership, but hardened in its remaining coalition — and currently holding former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte in its detention center, a live reminder that its docket does not pause for American pressure.
What happens next
Three things matter now. First is the entity-wide sanctions decision. If Washington designates the court as a whole, banks, vendors and even internet providers face a choice between U.S. market access and servicing The Hague — the one move that could genuinely “dismantle brick by brick.”
Second is the EU blocking statute. If Brussels enacts it, European companies would be legally barred from honoring the American sanctions, setting up a transatlantic legal collision.
Third is the withdrawal watch. The State Department says it welcomes more announcements, but after a full UNGA week produced exactly one microstate, the burden of proof is on the campaign. The court's 125 remaining parties — including every EU member state and Japan — have now been put on notice that neutrality will be read as defiance. How many of them blink before the sanctions land is the real test of whether “evil” and “rogue” are the end of the story, or just the opening bid.