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View all search resultsThe subversion of the International Criminal Court
Some institutional failures unfold not through scandal but procedure, with acts of sabotage dressed up in the language of good-faith inquiry and accountability.
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Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan (left) talks to registrar Osvaldo Zavala Giler (right) prior to the first appearance of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charge of crimes against humanity over his deadly crackdown on narcotics, in The Hague on March 14, 2025. (AFP/Pool/Peter Dejong)
S
ome institutional failures unfold not through scandal but procedure, with acts of sabotage dressed up in the language of good-faith inquiry and accountability. By the time anyone notices what is happening, the damage has been done.
I fear that this is what we are witnessing in attacks against Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Recent developments seem to satisfy goals that the United States and Israel have spent months working toward.
The story starts in April 2024, when a group of US senators warned, in fact, threatened, Khan that if he dared to seek an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, he would become a target himself. Undeterred, Khan did just that, filing applications for warrants to arrest Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and a Hamas commander, just as he had previously sought the arrests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the Taliban leadership.
But now, Khan’s enemies have managed to start a debate about his potential removal, with allegations of sexual misconduct serving as the tip of the spear. It is a classic case of an institution failing to subject an internal matter to the principles (namely, the rule of law) that it is supposed to uphold globally. Although an internal judicial panel, the mechanism the Court itself created to weigh such matters, examined the allegations and found that they did not meet the threshold for proving misconduct, those pushing for Khan’s removal have not given up.
In the latest development, ICC member states are preparing to conflate two separate questions, whether serious misconduct occurred and whether the prosecutor should be removed, in a single vote. This is no mere formality. Folding the second question into the first, which, again, has not been proven, enables removal based on an unsubstantiated accusation, or on a different issue altogether (such as engaging in a consensual intimate relationship from a position of authority, something that no one ever alleged).
Since the Khan case is obviously part of a larger offensive against the ICC, it is worth calling attention to the identity of the ICC’s enemies and what they want. On July 13, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio published a commentary in The Wall Street Journal whose title left no room for ambiguity: “Why We’re Dismantling the International Criminal Court.” That was not idle rhetoric. The US has already sanctioned 11 senior ICC officials, including Khan, two deputy prosecutors and eight judges, all of whom have had their bank accounts frozen, credit cards canceled, Apple, Amazon and PayPal accounts locked, and so forth.
Nor did Rubio stop at announcing the administration’s intention to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick.” He also dressed up the effort as a civilizational crusade. Casting the court as an instrument of progressive activists, globalist elites and governments hostile to the US, he announced a diplomatic campaign to rally every ally that endorses the MAGA creed of national sovereignty against globalism.
