The United States is no longer content with punishing individual judges at the International Criminal Court. It is preparing to sanction the institution itself — a move that would cut the court off from the global financial infrastructure and effectively render it inoperable. The escalation was laid bare at a UN General Assembly side event organized by the Hague Group, a coalition formed in 2025 specifically to defend international law from this kind of assault. The mechanics matter more than the rhetoric. Secondary sanctions on anyone who cooperates with the ICC would reach every European bank, insurer, and technology supplier serving the Hague-based court. The Netherlands, as host country, would face the impossible choice between its financial relationship with the US and its role as custodian of international justice. Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten's plea — "hands off the ICC" — carries the weight of a government that understands exactly what secondary sanctions would do to its own institutions. The US has already sanctioned ICC President Tomoko Akane of Japan and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal for pursuing cases against officials "whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction." Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi condemned the move this week. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called the court "corrupt and fatally politicised." Trump, at the UN General Assembly, urged nations to reject what he called an "evil group of people." South Africa's foreign minister Ronald Lamola, co-chair of the Hague Group, identified the structural threat plainly: "An independent court remains independent only if judges and officials cannot be punished for carrying out their mandates." This is the extraction logic at its core — using dollar hegemony to punish judicial independence, converting financial power into veto power over international criminal accountability. The irony, noted by international law specialist William Schabas, is that demand for international legal mechanisms is increasing even as the institutions are under siege. More states are bringing cases, more conflicts are generating potential ICC referrals, and the normative framework is gaining traction precisely as its enforcement arm is being targeted. The gap between the system's legitimacy and its operational capacity is widening. Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu delivered the sharpest diagnostic: the greatest threat is not open defiance but selectivity — "the quiet decision that the rules don't bind everybody, they only bind some." This cuts in multiple directions. Western states that invoke the ICC against adversaries while shielding allies have pre-weakened the institution's claim to universality, making the US assault politically easier. The 20-year trajectory is stark. If the world's dominant financial power can immobilize international courts by threatening secondary sanctions, then international criminal law becomes a system that applies only to states without powerful patrons. The Hague Group represents the early immune response — but immune responses fail when the pathogen controls the blood supply.
