THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Little Marco's Temper Tantrum
2026, Week 29
This week, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio published a brief opinion column in the Wall Street Journal. Clocking in at roughly 800 words, it’s a short and digestible piece, but it’s probably not uncharitable to characterise it as a declaration of war against the International Criminal Court.
So, this week, we’re going to do something a little different. We’ve provided Little Marco’s latest essay for his AP Trump class in full, and interjected along the way to provide some context and clarity to his frothing-mouthed ranting, and offer some of our own interpretation of what’s really gotten under his bonnet.
Why We’re Dismantling the International Criminal Court
The Wall Street Journal – Jul 13, 2026
Essay by Marco Rubio
Most of us would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.
Marco, buddy, I’m gonna stop you right there. Not only could we imagine it, when we think about it, we get so giddy that we fall over and bang our heads on whatever desk or coffee table is nearby, and then when we’re out cold and concussed on the floor, we dream about it.
On a more serious note, however, this is Rubio beginning his essay with a sequence of fallacious arguments which very much establish the tenor with which he means to continue.
For one, the US is not and has never been a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty laying out the function, jurisdiction and structure of the International Criminal Court. As such, the ICC has no jurisdiction over the actions or alleged crimes committed by US military, police or security personnel on US soil, such as Border Patrol agents.
What the ICC does theoretically have jurisdiction over would be alleged crimes committed or ordered by US personnel in territories of signatories to that statute, such as, oh, I don’t know, Afghanistan, for example.
The US can rest easy on that one, however, as only a few weeks after the US withdrawal from that country in August 2021, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that the changing political situation in that country meant that there was ‘no longer the prospect of genuine and effective domestic investigations’ into alleged crimes in Afghanistan, and that the court would instead focus on violations by the Taliban and Islamic State.
Secondly, scarcely one month after the Rome Statute came into effect in July 2002, the United States responded by passing some legislation of its own: The American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which intended to “protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party."
The bill then goes further, authorising the US President to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.” Because of this sweeping and ominous authorisation, the bill is now better known by its popular nickname, The Hague Invasion Act.
But that is what the International Criminal Court now claims the power to do.
Based on what? There have been no new developments or alterations in the ICC’s function, structure or jurisdiction, and no charges or warrants have been issued against US politicians or military personnel.
The ICC was born at the turn of the century. At first, it was marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes. Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.
Again, based on what? Putting aside the bizarre usage of the verb ‘marketed’ to describe the intention behind the court’s establishment, it seems not entirely controversial that an international legal body would necessarily intervene against or override the courts and constitutions of sovereign states where those states and their governments are engaged in crimes the ICC is entasked with prosecuting, namely: genocide; war crimes, crimes against humanity; and crimes of aggression.
Americans never agreed to any of this.
Oh, don’t worry, we know. You’ve made that quite clear through your actions since 2002.
Both of our major political parties opposed the prospect of handing a distant global court the power to prosecute and jail our own citizens. President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification due to his “concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty.” Two years later, a bipartisan Senate supermajority passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, authorizing the president “to use all means necessary”—including military force—to prevent the ICC from detaining or arresting Americans.
See — told you about that Hague Invasion Act. They’re so proud of it, this dumb motherfucker’s boasting about it at the same time he’s trying to claim the ICC is extending its all-powerful globalist tendrils around them.
Rubio’s general aversion to the notion of an international body prosecuting the good men and women of the United States war machine, whether suited or booted, does inadvertently get to the heart of one of the more substantive critiques of the ICC, however.
Since its establishment in 2002, the ICC has issued 74 arrest warrants for individuals accused of violations falling under one or several of those four categories of crimes listed above. Of these, the overwhelming majority have been issued against political leaders and individuals on the African continent; the very first, for example, issued in 2005, was against the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, Joseph Kony.
There have been some recent changes in this pattern which may be setting off alarm bells in Washington, however. In 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes charges pertaining to their military’s actions in Gaza since October 2023.
After ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan issued those particular warrants, figures in Washington were allegedly apoplectic. It was reported that the late Republican Senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham (oh yeah, RIP bozo), contacted Khan to dress him down directly, informing him that the ICC was intended “for Africa and thugs like Putin.” An interesting assertion to ponder, certainly.
Soon after, former President of the Philippines and staunch US ally Rodrigo Duterte was charged with crimes against humanity pertaining to his murderous campaign against alleged drug dealers in that country. Unlike Netanyahu and Gallant (and Kony, for that matter), Duterte was actually arrested in March of 2025. His case advanced from pretrial to trial just a few months ago.
Beginning in 2023, the ICC also began issuing arrest warrants for several Russian politicians and military officers, including Vladimir Putin, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine. (Ukraine officially became a party to the Rome Statute in January 2025.)
Russia, like the United States, is not a party to the Rome Statute (nor is Israel, for that matter), but with Ukraine’s accession, that means Putin et al are now liable for alleged crime committed during their ‘special military operation’ to ‘denazify’ Ukraine, an operation which now sounds strangely similar to the Trump administration’s own ‘special military operation’ to ‘denuclearise’ the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In any case, this point is largely moot, owing to the fact that Iran, also, is not a party to Rome, not to mention that handy Hague Invasion Act again. Nonetheless, it’s possible Rubio et al are feeling a little antsy about the ICC taking action against its international allies, particularly for alleged crimes which the US is loudly aiding and abetting, not to mention likely committing itself.
Americans found themselves in the crosshairs anyway: In 2020 the ICC launched an investigation into what chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia described as “war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” in Afghanistan, declaring that the U.S. government hadn’t prosecuted enough American soldiers to satisfy the court. In effect, Ms. Bensouda was anointing herself the final judge of U.S. military policy and the entire U.S. justice system.
Wah, wah, wah. Once again, Hague Invasion Act. That being said, it is perhaps not unreasonable for international onlookers to have concerns that the United States is not making sufficient efforts to handle its own matters internally — processes which the Rome Statute does not exist to interfere with or undermine — when the most high-profile prosecution of war crimes by US military personnel in recent years was that of former US Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher.
In 2019, Gallagher was arrested and charged with multiple offences during his deployment in Iraq in 2017, most prominently the murder of a 17-year-old detained ISIS combatant (i.e. a prisoner of war), whom Gallagher approached and stabbed with his hunting knife before posing for a photo with the body (a war crime on multiple levels, just to be clear).
Gallagher was reportedly such an unhinged lunatic that even his fellow Seals testified against him, attesting to a long list of other horrific crimes including deliberately shooting elderly civilians, women and children, as well as indiscriminately firing rockets and machine gun fire at civilian areas with no reported enemy presence.
All credit where it’s due, in July 2019, Gallagher was eventually convicted of six of the seven offences with which he was charged. Then, just a few months later, President Donald Trump pardoned Gallagher for his convictions and intervened to ensure he would neither be demoted nor denied access to his military pension or other benefits.
He did so at the behest of a weekend host of the daytime current affairs show Fox & Friends by the name of Pete Hegseth. Hegseth is now the second Trump administration’s Secretary of Defense-cum-War.
So, to recapitulate, putting the disingenuity and hysterics of Rubio’s assertions here aside, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suspect that international legal bodies might not trust the US to properly investigate, prosecute and punish alleged crimes committed by its personnel.
The Afghanistan investigation was only the opening move in the assault against American self-government. The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.
This is just swivel-eyed paranoiac ramblings which a few decades ago one would have expected to hear as the sinister narration in a badly-produced Alex Jones documentary, but which is now being said by a one-time rising star of the neoconservative wing of the GOP — a vaunted ‘reasonable Republican’ — and being published in the Journal as red meat for the increasingly listless MAGA movement. Which is cool!
In the second Trump administration, these calls have continued to grow. Last year, major activist groups urged high-ranking international officials “to take immediate and meaningful action” against the Trump administration’s deportations of violent criminals to El Salvador. Months later, a former ICC chief prosecutor declared that President Trump’s strikes against narcoterrorists amounted to “a crime against humanity” and should be treated as such under international law—a line that was echoed by United Nations leaders, and major leftist nongovernmental organizations, Democratic Party officials and politicians. In March, the Washington-based Democracy for the Arab World Now urged the Iranian regime to request an ICC investigation of “apparent war crimes” committed by American personnel.
The first charge about major activist groups concerns an open letter coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Movement Law Lab, two American non-profit organisations requesting action by the ICC regarding the US’ illegal kidnappings and traffickings of individuals on dubious charges to Nayib Bukele’s hellish CECOT detention centre in El Salvador. The letter was co-signed by numerous other American NGOs and individuals in their personal and organisational capacities.
So, putting aside the fact that this was simply a letter, with no legal force, the signatories were writing as American citizens and organisations within their constitutional rights. So, if Rubio is upset about this he would be better off taking action against them instead of bitching about the international body that was mere recipient of the letter — but that might then entail messier questions about attempts to curtail people’s constitutional rights.
Oh, and for the record, signatories to that letter included the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Lawyers Guild, and the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School. So, again, who is he really mad at here, and why?
U.S. efforts to push back against the ICC’s illegitimate interventions have been framed as a further reason for the ICC to target Americans. When 12 U.S. senators wrote to the ICC prosecutor about their concerns, the prosecutor’s office accused them of crimes. When Mr. Trump imposed sanctions against ICC personnel, a former head of Human Rights Watch said that “all 125 ICC member states would have a legal duty to arrest him were he to show up.”
The 12 signatories in question were all Republican senators and included such luminaries of human rights and international law as Tom 'Send in the Troops to put down George Floyd Protestors' Cotton, Marsha Blackburn, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott and… Marco Rubio. So, this feels kind of like a guy bitching about a mutual not liking his tweets.
And on another note, if you want the ICC to take the complaints of US Senators seriously, maybe you could do something like, oh, I don’t know, becoming a party to the Rome Statute. Ho hum.
It is only a matter of time before the ICC begins making good on these threats. Border Patrol agents working to remove violent criminals from our country, U.S. Marines risking their lives to restore order in the Western Hemisphere, federal prosecutors working to dismantle terror networks plotting attacks on the American homeland—all would face the constant risk of persecution for the “crime” of defending our country.
More InfoWars-made-FOX News agitprop from the Florida GOP’s special little guy. More importantly, there’s a sort of reversal of sequencing happening here in how Rubio forefronts and asserts the primacy of the US taking unilateral action across the Western Hemisphere, violating the sovereignty, territorial integrity and right to self-determination of numerous nations within the region, in order to safeguard those same rights which it deems inviolable for itself. It’s neither novel nor surprising, but it does give the game away as to what is actually being asserted here: Rules for thee (on our terms and our terms only), none for me.
The ICC’s interfering with American military and law enforcement operations isn’t only a grave overreach of its purported authorities.
I’ll take ‘Things which are categorically not currently happening’ for $800, please, Alex.
It would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation. Our decision and our people would be at the mercy of the ICC and its collaborators in the “international community.” To accept the ICC is to surrender control of our national destiny.
Alright, calm down Robocop.
Perhaps more polite and compliant nations could make their peace with that arrangement. But this is America.
Yes, more polite and compliant nations, that’s certainly one way of putting it.
Our forefathers fought a revolution against a foreign power “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Independence is our birthright. We don’t intend to trade it for rule by a self-appointed priesthood of “international law.”
I do appreciate Rubio’s decision to place international law in scare quotes here to indicate he either doesn’t think it’s a real thing, doesn’t or shouldn’t apply to the United States or is simply a risible fiction. It certainly clarifies a lot of the things we’ve been trying to convey over these past few months.
The Trump administration will always protect American service members from this threat. The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message—sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted. This is only the beginning. Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.
Once again, the contradiction between sovereign states and what Rubio derisively terms globalism as a dog-whistle to the MAGA base reveals what is actually being contested here. The assertion of the primacy and supremacy of US military and diplomatic unilateralism over and against the sovereignty of all other states, as it is glaringly practicing right now, sits in glaring tension with the sanctity of sovereign states he is trying to assert.
Regarding the US security umbrella, its beneficiaries and the providers, this is a pretty bold threat to make at a time when the US is loudly and provocatively declaring its disinterest in its longstanding international security partnerships, perhaps even its desire to abandon them entirely, and substitute them with transactional arrangements one might feel more apt to describe as a protection racket. It is all the more dubious to do so at a time when the US is revealing itself to be an erratic, unreliable and perhaps even ineffective security guarantor on the global stage, as demonstrated by the Iran debacle, and while it makes open and alarming threats to its longstanding partners on the world stage.
Regarding the threat to dismantle the ICC ‘brick by brick’, this is probably a combination of red meat for the MAGA coalition at home at a time when the GOP party is increasingly listless as DJT finally enters his belated ‘lame duck’ period. But it is also of a piece with Washington’s longstanding drive to replace international bodies with thinly veiled front groups for American business and political interests, most recently Trump’s morally ghastly (and Tony Blair-approved!) Board of Peace in Gaza. A veiled declaration of intent to substitute US political, economic and military unilateralism for any and all attempts at international oversight and enforcement, and to then capture wider swathes of the world within the 'protection racket' model of international security which Trump has championed, and which Rubio et al are now pathetically embracing.
The most charitable reading of much of this is that it’s the latest in a decades-long effort by more ‘respectable’ individuals in the American right-wing coalition to take the demented, spasmodic rants and ramblings of Donald Trump — who possesses a mind free of contradiction because his mind is capable of holding precisely one thought at any time — and bolster them with intellectual scaffolding and drape them in an encompassing rhetorical veneer which might grant them an overall coherence.
This is, once again, a noble effort by Rubio, but a noble failure. It is nonetheless understandable why he would attempt it. Over the past few months, it has become apparent that certain figures within the GOP are awakening to The Donald’s glaring cognitive decline over the past few years, and so are considering the eventual physical which will follow.
The Republican Party might finally be confronting the prospect of having to direct a post-Donald GOP. With JD Vance a busted flush and Rubio one of the only establishment Republicans who both weathered Trump’s attacks and wormed his way into the inner circle, it seems likely the crown will fall to him.
As with his speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Rubio is attempting to take the scattered diktats of Donald’s disintegrating brain and re-territorialise them within the more respectable frame of pre-Trump neoconservatism. Rubio would do well to remember Trump’s failed casinos, botched real estate deals, stiffed contractors and various merchandising flops. Lay down with a dog, and you’ll wake up with fleas.
And Donald Trump is, to use his own pejorative vernacular, a dog.