The Trump administration has taken its obsession with using sanctions to a new low with the imposition of sanctions targeting a prosecutor and a head of jurisdiction at the International Criminal Court (ICC):

The Trump Administration has leveled sanctions against the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, who is investigating allegations that U.S. troops committed war crimes in Afghanistan. Human rights groups swiftly decried the sanctions as an attack on international justice.

Sanctioning Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko for seeking to hold all parties responsible for war crimes is outrageous, and it is a perfect illustration of much of what is wrong with U.S. foreign policy today. It is an absurd abuse of sanctions to attack someone for trying to uphold international law, and it is being done in the service of setting up a double standard for war crimes. Some states and groups can be held accountable if they violate international law, but the administration insists that the same standard will not be applied to the U.S. or Israel. Great powers trample on international law when it suits them, but this is an unusually crude example of our government’s hypocrisy.

If Biden wins in November, one of his first actions should be to revoke these sanctions against the ICC. What a disgrace for a nation that purports to care for human rights and the rule of law.

— Brian O'Toole (@brianoftoole) September 2, 2020

This is actually insane.https://t.co/LL3UbBbjuD

— Jarrett Blanc (@JarrettBlanc) September 2, 2020

Having failed to hold war criminals accountable in our own system for years, our government now lashes out at anyone who even tries to investigate the crimes that may have been committed by our forces. This is unfortunately consistent with the administration’s record of both enabling war crimes committed by client states and handing out pardons to convicted and accused war criminals. It is also an outgrowth of our political culture of impunity.

These sanctions will cause real problems for these individuals singled out for unjust punishment:

Human Rights Watch says the sanctions will have a serious impact on Bensouda and Mochochoko, “who not only lose access to their assets in the US but are also cut off from commercial and financial dealings with ‘US persons,’ including banks and other companies. US sanctions also have a chilling effect on non-US banks and other companies outside of US jurisdiction who fear losing access themselves to the US banking system if they do not help the US to effectively export the sanctions measures.”

This outrageous treatment is a reminder that targeted sanctions can also be used in reckless and destructive ways. Other governments have been inclined to cooperate with and abide by U.S. sanctions because they have assumed that our government would use these measures responsibly and only when necessary. The Trump administration has taken the U.S. sanctions addiction to its logical extreme of applying them arbitrarily and punitively with no purpose except to inflict pain. That has already started to change how other governments see U.S. sanctions, and this latest abuse will give them another reason to begin devising alternative systems that the U.S. does not dominate.

This is not just an attack on the ICC; it's an attack on all of international law. The move utterly delegitimizes targeted sanctions, one of our most powerful tools for punishing human rights abusers, war criminals, and others who violate international law. https://t.co/dmWqsUq1PV

— Oona Hathaway (@oonahathaway) September 2, 2020

This is ridiculous on its face but also feels like another milestone in America's ongoing overuse/abuse of sanctions as its primary foreign-policy tool, which has proved largely ineffective in the short term and will have long-term consequences. https://t.co/PK3xcdjBPn

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) September 3, 2020

This might not be happening now if there had been some accountability for those responsible for authorizing and using torture against detainees in the 2000s. The complete failure of our government to hold anyone responsible for those crimes paved the way for what Trump and Pompeo are doing now.