Why doesn the United States support the International Criminal Court (ICC)?
Christine Chung: The United States is not a member nation of the ICC, but it is not quite right to say that it hasn’t supported the ICC. When the ICC started operating, in 2002, the Bush administration openly adopted policies intended to impede the Court’s work, citing concerns that U.S. nationals could be unfairly targeted by the ICC. By early 2005, however, the same administration abstained from the United Nations Security Council vote, referring the Darfur situation for investigation by the ICC. By the time President Bush left office, State Department officials were expressing willingness to cooperate in the ICC’s investigations and cases, if asked. So in the Court’s first years of operation, we reached a point where the U.S. government was willing to undertake a case-by-case consideration of whether to support the ICC’s work. To take the additional affirmative step of joining the ICC will require ratification of the Rome Statute — the international treaty that created the Court — b
