SAIS Review of International Affairs

U.S. policy toward the International Criminal Court is disconnected from the central politics of the Court and focused on a mostly irrelevant sideshow. The Court’s fundamental political problem is its need for money and security forces to arrest suspects and try them. This feature makes the Court more subject to the control of powerful states than most have realized. Even if the United States cooperated with the Court, however, arrests and prisoners would likely be few and far between. Instead, the United States should work with the Court to refocus its efforts on capacity building in weakly democratic states.