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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello. Welcome to a new episode of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Eleonora Matiacci, an associate professor of political science at Amherst College. Today, I'm here with Professor Daniel Kermarik, who's an associate professor of political science and law at Northwestern University. His new book is called above the the United States and the International Criminal Court. It was published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press. Professor, thank you for joining us and welcome.
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Thanks for having me. Eleonora.
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Your book starts by painting a very interesting scene. It's 2018, and John Bolton is the newly appointed National Security Advisor. He's giving his very first public speech in this role. During the speech, Bolton describes a mighty American adversary. He defines this adversary as, quote, outright dangerous and in nightmare come to life, end quote. Those are some strong words. As we read on, we find out that those words are directed to the International Criminal Court. That was a twist. Tell us, what is the International Criminal Court? And was it as puzzling to you as it may be to US readers that John Bolton would define it in those terms?
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Yeah. So to start, let me give a little bit of background about the iacc. So the IACC stands out as the world's first and only permanent international criminal tribunal that has jurisdiction over atrocity crimes. In particular, that's genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. And to be sure, there were other tribunals in the past. So in the period after World War II, we had the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal to prosecute the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And then more recently in the 1990s, we had what were sometimes called the ad hoc tribunals to address genocides in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. But all of those tribunals were set up to investigate and prosecute crimes committed in very specific contexts. And once they had done so, they closed up shop. The ICC is different because it's the culmination of that tribunal building process. It's now standing at the ready to investigate atrocity crimes as they occur. And the court itself is now based in the Hague, a city in the Netherlands that is famous for hosting many international organizations. And as of now, it has 125 countries that have joined about two thirds of the world's countries. And now, as your opening hinted, the United States is not one of those countries that joined the icc. And in fact, the US Was one of only seven countries to vote against the creation of the icc.
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Seven. Wow.
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Yes, one of seven. This was back when Bill Clinton was the president and with only a few exceptions, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, the US has mostly been hostile to the court since then. You also asked was I surprised about the Bolton quote? And the answer is sort of. Bolton has long been hostile to the IACC well before that speech. And he was actually the person that led U.S. attacks on the ICC back when George W. Bush was president. So there was a clear track record of hostility here. But even for a staunch ICC opponent like him, that was some pretty incendiary language. That's typically how we expect U.S. foreign policy officials to talk about geopolitical adversaries or terrorist groups, not a legal institution made up of prosecutors and judges.
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B
Yeah, indeed. So, as you hinted at in this answer to this question, the book is a deep dive into the relationship between the US and the International Criminal Court, or icc. Before we go any farther, tell us what are the stakes here? Why should our listeners care about the relationship between the US and the International Criminal Court?
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So let me give you just two reasons. The first is that the US and the ICC have very similar goals. Both American officials and ICC officials talk constantly about the need to end impunity for the world's worst perpetrators of atrocity crimes. And if the relationship was better, they could help each other. And in particular, the US could help the icc. Because the ICC has a major challenge in its quest to end impunity, which is enforcement. The ICC doesn't have its own police force. It can't track down and apprehend wanted individuals and take them back to the Hague. It needs states to make arrests for it, and sometimes states do this. But overall, the track record of state cooperation with the IACC in terms of making arrests is not the best. But the US as the world's, you know, unambiguous policing and military superpower, could really help the ICC by devoting just a tiny portion of its policing military capabilities to apprehending fugitives from the courts. So there's a wonderful quote from a former international judge that I think captures this perfectly. He said, this is a court that needs some American muscle. And, and I think he's right. So that's, that's the first reason it's all about the US Helping the icc. However, there's something in it for the US too, if the relationship was better. And here the idea is that American opposition to the court is actually hurting US Foreign policy. I'd say the most notable way in which this happens is that it alienates America's allies, who are almost all big supporters of the Court. So to give you an example, we talked earlier about how the US Was one of only seven countries to vote against the creation of the icc. Not a single one of its NATO allies would go along with it in voting against the court. The creation of the court, and to this day, American hostility to the ICC remains a sticking point in transatlantic relations. And if the US Were able to offer support or even just tone down the attacks, I think it could buy some goodwill from its European allies, which is in short supply at the moment.
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Yes, indeed, that sounds about right. Yes. Okay, so there's a lot to be gained here by achieving better relations, both from the perspective of the United States and from the perspective of the ICC International Criminal Court. Great. So with those stakes in mind, the book asks three separate questions, and we will unpack them one by one. The first question that the book asks, as I understood it, is why does the US Oppose the ICC when it supports almost every other international justice initiative? This is what you ask in chapter three, and you bring in a very interesting quote that sort of describes this general approach of the United States to every other international justice initiative. The quote goes as follows. Quote, since international criminal justice first became operational in 1945, it has had no greater friend or promoter than the US End quote. What's going on here?
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So the quote is accurate. The short story is we wouldn't have modern international justice without the United States, which is something that's surprising to a lot of people. I just wrapped up teaching international criminal law to law students at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. In their mindset, the ICC is, of course, what comes to mind first. And they were shocked to learn the history of America's relationship with other international justice institutions, which is much better. So to take a really quick tour through history, let's go back to Nuremberg. Sort of the birth of modern international justice. The other allies did not support plans for the tribunal. Instead, they wanted to shoot Nazis the minute they were captured. Summary executions was the plan, and it was the United States that insisted on a judicial response, which, brief interesting aside, here, a very young Henry Kissinger was one of the people in the Army Counterintelligence Corps who was trying to ferret out hiding members of the Gestapo and SS throughout Germany.
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I never knew he was everywhere.
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Yes, he certainly was. So this is the United States, right? Not just creating the tribunal, but providing the diplomatic military muscle to make it work. And also the evidence. The oss, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, captured all kinds of Nazi documents in the chaotic days at the end of the war, which they then turned over to the tribunal at Nuremberg. That allowed the tribunal to prosecute the Nazi leadership in their own words, sign documents and memos such that they didn't have to call potentially unreliable witnesses to the stance. It was all there in writing. So this was a huge American led effort. And you could tell a similar story for what happened at Tokyo for the former Yugoslavia, or for rwanda in the 1990s. So the real question is, against this backdrop of support for other international tribunals, why is the US So hostile to the icc? What's different? All right. And the short answer is that these other tribunals presented no plausible threat to the U.S. but the ICC, at least hypothetically, could. And in particular the American fear is that the court might initiate politically biased investigations or prosecutions that target American troops scattered around the world.
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Let's switch to the second question you ask here. When does the US Oppose the icc? Not just whether it opposes it, but when does it oppose it? Here you focus on two main variables and four outcomes tell us more.
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Right. So in this portion of the book, I'm trying to shift away from the why does the US Fear the court, which I just mentioned, is all about trying to protect US troops from what many American officials view as a potentially rogue ICC prosecutor who might inject anti American biases into his or her work. So that's sort of a background condition. But what's interesting is that despite that fear being a constant, American policy to the court is actually a variable. Now, often it's a hostile policy, but it's not always right. There are other times where the US seems pretty apathetic about what the ICC is up to and barely responds to the ICC making the decision to open up a new investigation or issue an arrest warrant. And there's still other times where the US actually helps the icc. So in this part of the book, I'm trying to say, what's going on here? How could we explain this kind of variation? So what I do in this chapter is introduce three different strategies the US might conceivably pursue in response to ICC investigations. And I call these opposition, assistance, and neglect. And then I try to explain why the US would pick one strategy over the others in response to a particular investigation. And so as you mentioned, right, there are two main variables that I think can explain the choice of strategy. So the first is whether the investigation threatens U.S. troops. The other one is whether the investigation advances broader U.S. foreign policy goals because these investigations don't happen in a vacuum. And even though, yes, the US always worries about protecting its troops. Sometimes the ICC opening an investigation is very much consistent with US foreign policy interests, even if that's not the ICC's goal. So these variables can interact. And if you'd like, I can briefly walk you through how this interaction plays out. So if there's an investigation that threatens US troops and does nothing to. Or let me. Let me put it this way. Let's say we. Let's start with one that does not threaten US troops and it doesn't advance interests, this is when we get the neglect strategy. The US has nothing to gain, but also nothing to lose from the ICC investigating. So an example here would be the court's investigation into the civil war in the Central African Republic. The US had very little to say about the investigation, and instead it prioritized closing its embassy and evacuating American personnel to safety.
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Right.
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So this is neglect. And when I say neglect, I don't mean to imply the US Cares nothing about events in the Central African Republic. Instead, I'm suggesting that it cares very little about the ICC investigation itself. Now, if there is an investigation that does not threaten troops and advances US Foreign policy interests, that's when we get an assistance strategy. Since here there's nothing for the US to lose, but there is something to be gained, possibly. So a good example here would be the ICC investigation into the Libyan conflict in 2011, the Muammar Qaddafi regime, and here the US helped the court get jurisdiction. The ICC did not initially have jurisdiction, but the US Worked through the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the court, allowing it to open up an investigation. And this was a real watershed moment in US ICC relations because it was the first time the US Explicitly voted in favor of referring a situation to the court. So that's where you start to feel pretty optimistic. But there, of course, is also opposition. So that comes about when an investigation threatens American troops and also does not advance interest. So this is when the US Wants the ICC to go away. Right. There's. There's a lot to lose and nothing to gain from ICC involvement. And Afghanistan is the classic example here. The US was very worried about this investigation because the court's investigation, Afghanistan, of course, coincided with the US Military occupation of Afghanistan. And the ICC made it clear that no side in this conflict, whether it was the us, Taliban, Afghan National Forces, no one would get a free pass. And the ICC would at least look into the possibility that American forces may have committed torture, CIA black sites, and even the US bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital. In Afghanistan. So as a response, this is when Trump imposed economic sanctions. The first time Trump imposed economic sanctions against the ICC was in response to Afghanistan. And the final part of the way in which these two variables can interact is, I think, the most interesting one. Sometimes you get a situation where an investigation does present a plausible threat to US troops, but it also advances American foreign policy interests. And so this is what I call in the book Competing Priorities for the United States. The ICC opening up its investigation is helpful in some ways to the United States, but also harmful in other ways. And Ukraine is a perfect example here. So on the one hand, this is great from the US perspective, the ICC is investigating Russia and even issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. So you can imagine this is during the Biden administration and they're thrilled about this part. However, Russia, just like the US, Never joined the icc. So if the United States were to endorse the ICC investigating Russia, it would undermine the long standing American claim that the ICC has no business investigating us either. So the Biden administration's weighing these trade offs back and forth. And after about a year, almost a whole year of not being sure what to do, Biden eventually ordered U.S. intelligence and military agencies to begin sharing classified intelligence with the court that linked specific Russian commanders to attacks on Ukraine. So this is, I think, where the rubber really meets the road. And in this case at least, the US settled on a supportive policy to the court.
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That's fascinating. That's fascinating. I wish I could be in that room where they were waiting. These trade offs, very interesting. Okay, so so far you explained to us why the US opposes the ICC when it does. Let's get to the third question. A lot of this opposition is predicated upon the assumption that the ICC will be biased. And this is the third question that you take on in the book. Well, so tell us, is the International Criminal Court biased toward the us?
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In a word, no, it's not. But to elaborate on that a little bit more. So what I try to do in this part of the book is to assess the extent, if any of anti American bias at the ICC with a statistical analysis of the ICC's track record, its history over more than two decades. And so to do this, I started with a global sample of violence against civilians, which is meant to approximate the universe of situations where the court might possibly open up an investigation. And then I match this data with geolocated data on every US foreign military base. So these are military bases abroad. Right. And the U.S. has nearly 800 of them. And then I in the analysis, try to examine whether or not ICC investigations are more likely when US troops are present in a country. So this would be evidence of bias. If that was true and contrary to this narrative of bias that we hear from US policymakers, from both parties, I would add, not just Republicans, I find that there's no evidence to suggest that ICC investigations disproportionately target the American military.
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Wow, this is very interesting. Okay, so you walked us through all the three questions that the book asks. In the conclusions, you draw out some implications of your findings. What are those implications?
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So there are a number of them, and some of them are sort of in the weeds for ICC scholars. But there's one big macro takeaway. And so let me share that with you.
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Yes.
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As you said before, Eleanor, like much of the US opposition to the court is justified by American politicians on the grounds that they are protecting U.S. troops by being antagonistic to the ICC. And I would like American officials to step back and rethink what it actually means to protect U.S. troops. So American service members are routinely exposed to incredible risk in the course of their duties. Right. They're deployed to war zones, fail states, terrorism hotspots. And when US policymakers deploy soldiers to these risky situations, it is typically treated as unremarkable, run of the mill foreign policy. But when there's even a tiny chance that the IACC might probably prosecute an American soldier, which, by the way, is something that has still never happened in more than two decades of the ICC being opened, it's treated as an existential threat that there's even this mere possibility. So if American politicians and policymakers are serious about protecting their soldiers, I would humbly suggest that the current mode of thinking about the threat that the ICC presents is completely out of proportion to the actual risks involved. And instead, scaling back the use of force abroad would be a far more effective way to protect the lives and the liberty of American soldiers than attacking the International Criminal Court.
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This is a thoughtful implication. I'm glad you shared it with us. And it's very well supported by the findings in the book. The book relies on very rich empirics. I wanted to say that. So, another question for you. You've been working on this book for many years, I assume. Usually that's what we do. And now the book is out and the world looks the way it does. Do you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about the relationship between the US and the International Criminal Court than when you started?
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I am, unfortunately more pessimistic than When I started, I wrote most of the book during the Biden years and there was a lot of optimism then, especially after the American decision to assist the ICC's investigation in Ukraine. There are a lot of really smart people saying that this move heralds a new dawn in U.S. iCC relations. Very shortly after that happened, October 7th happened and the Biden administration turned against the ICC because its investigation in Palestine implicated Israeli leaders and the United States did not support that. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump returned to office and imposed a new round of sanctions against the icc. So now the relationship between the two sides, it's at an all time low. And I think that the best the ICC can hope to do for the next few years is just muddle through and hope that the next president, whoever that happens to be, is maybe supportive or at least less antagonistic, and hope for that, because right now we are in a dangerous zone for US ICC relations.
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B
If you put it like that, I do feel less optimistic than I would like to be. If our listeners could take away just one core idea from your book, what would that be?
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I think it's very similar to something I said at the start of the podcast, which would be, to put it in a sentence, US Fears of the court are overblown. And it's important to get to a better relationship from the American side, not just to be nice to the icc, but because a better relationship would also be beneficial to the United States.
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This is next comes perhaps the most unfair of all questions. So we've taken enough of your time today, and the last question we always ask is, what are you working on next?
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No, I'm happy to answer that. I'm working more on the US and the iacc, and particularly I'm working on what I see as one of the biggest paradoxes in this relationship, which is that Even though the US government is often very hostile to the ICC, the American public loves the ICC, or at least the idea of the ICC. So according to survey data of the US public, about 3/4 of Americans want the US to participate in the ICC. 3/4. And on top of that, this is some bipartisan support. So majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans all say they want the US to participate in the iacc. Now, as a fellow political scientist, Eleanor, I'm sure you can immediately see why this is so puzzling, which is that in democracies, we typically assume that government officials or other political elites respond to public opinion. That is obviously not happening here. So what's going on? So in my new project, I'm trying to figure this out. I'm working with a friend and co author Thomas Gift at University College London, and we are surveying US Foreign policy elites to understand why this big gap occurs. And our tentative answer at this point is that it's largely due to foreign policy elites misperceiving what the public wants. So in some surveys of these foreign policy elites, they don't realize the extent to which the American public supports the court. So while I was quite pessimistic earlier to try to end on a high note, this public support for the court is one thing that does actually give me some optimism about US ICC relations. But it's going to take a while. But over the long term, to the extent that the public continues to support the court, the hope is that eventually this would trickle into sort of official government discourse and policy.
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B
I'm still thinking back to that number you just gave us. 3, 4. Bipartisan support. Like it just. You don't, you don't hear that very often these days. Wow. You must come back when the book is done to tell us all about it.
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A
I certainly will. Thank you so much.
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B
Oh, this has been delightful. Thank you so much, Professor Kemerek. My guest has been Professor Daniel Kermerick, who's an associate professor of political science and law at Northwestern University. His new book is called above the the United States and the International Criminal Court. It was published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press. I'm your host, Eleonora Matiacci. Until next time, thank you for listening
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