US Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched a blistering attack on the International Criminal Court on Friday, telling a conservative legal audience that the United States would not submit to “the sterile vision of radical judges or soulless global bureaucrats”.
The speech to the Federalist Society in Washington was his first set-piece address since Republicans were routed in the midterm elections on 3 November, and it immediately fuelled speculation about whether he intends to leave his twin roles as secretary of state and national security adviser to seek the presidency in 2028. Rubio has firmly denied reports that he plans a campaign, though the Federalist Society is a familiar stop for Republican hopefuls.
Rubio, who has sought to give an intellectual frame to President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, dismissed criticism that the administration has broken international law, including the seizure of Venezuela’s then-president Nicolás Maduro and strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that Washington says were carrying drugs.
He said the aim of the US-Israeli war against Iran was to stop Tehran ever acquiring a nuclear weapon, which he described as especially urgent because the Islamic Republic’s “radical Shia clerics” had an “expansionist mentality”. By contrast, he said North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, whom Trump has met three times, was not expansionist. “I’m not excusing the terrible things that have happened there,” Rubio said. “He’s not trying to invade Japan or, you know, China or whatever.”
On the court itself, Rubio repeated his claim that it would try to prosecute American officials or service members, the justification he gave for US sanctions against the ICC announced last month. “Americans have never agreed to submit to the ICC’s authority, but that court and its allies in the global bureaucracy have appointed themselves judge and jury and executioner of the international order,” he said.
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.” The sanctions are designed to cripple the court’s ability to operate and take effect in April unless the court’s supporters reach an agreement with Washington to avert them.
The Trump administration has long been hostile to the Hague-based court, founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and has previously sanctioned its prosecutors and judges. Washington objects to arrest warrants for Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to an investigation into US soldiers in Afghanistan, which the court says is “deprioritised”. The court retains strong backing from most member states, including every EU country and all NATO members apart from the United States and Turkey.
Sources: Reuters — https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rubio-assails-international-court-speech-conservative-legal-group-2026-11-14/
