Washington helped build the postwar international order. From Nicaragua to Iraq and the latest sanctions against an international court, its record tells a more complicated story.
On June 26, 1945, American Secretary of State Edward Stettinius signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco. President Harry Truman watched. Flags from participating countries surrounded the delegates.
The Second World War had left much of Europe devastated. Governments wanted a system that could prevent another catastrophe.
The United States helped build it.
I have been thinking about that signing ceremony while following Washington’s latest confrontation with the International Criminal Court. The Americans who shaped the postwar order understood the dangers of allowing powerful countries to settle disputes through force.
Yet the United States has repeatedly resisted international restraints when its own interests were involved.
Donald Trump has brought this contradiction into sharper focus. He did not invent it.
To understand what is happening, we need to return to the rules Washington helped establish and examine what American governments have done when those rules became inconvenient.
The System Was Never Designed to Treat Everyone Equally
Fifty countries attended the San Francisco Conference in 1945. The Charter they signed became the foundation of the United Nations when it entered into force on October 24.
The United States was a leading architect, but it did not act alone. Britain and the Soviet Union shaped the negotiations. China participated too, while smaller countries pressed for provisions reflecting their own interests.
The UN Charter established an important restriction.
Under Article 2(4), member states must refrain from threatening or using force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence.
Military force is not absolutely prohibited. Article 51 recognises individual and collective self-defence following an armed attack. The Security Council may also authorise enforcement action.
A country cannot simply declare another government dangerous and assume it has the legal right to invade.
But the Charter contained a political compromise.
Five countries received permanent seats on the Security Council. Each could veto substantive decisions.
The United States was among them.
The veto reflected the balance of power after the war. The organisation’s founders understood that major powers would be unlikely to join a system capable of easily imposing decisions against their interests.
That arrangement helped make the United Nations possible.
It also left a problem at its centre. A permanent member can prevent Security Council action against itself, although doing so does not make an unlawful act legal.
Smaller countries have never enjoyed comparable protection.
Nicaragua: The Judgment Washington Would Not Accept
On June 27, 1986, the International Court of Justice delivered a judgment against the United States.
Nicaragua had accused Washington of unlawful military and paramilitary activities directed against its government.
The Reagan administration had supported the Contra forces fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
Washington argued that its conduct could be justified through collective self-defence.
The Court rejected that argument. It found that the United States had violated international obligations concerning the use of force and intervention in another country’s affairs.
The judges also found violations relating to Nicaragua’s sovereignty and peaceful maritime commerce.
The judgment required the United States to cease its unlawful conduct and make reparations for the injury caused.
Washington had already announced in January 1985 that it would no longer participate in the proceedings.
The judgment did not change that position.
On November 3, 1986, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 41/31, calling for full and immediate compliance.
Ninety-four countries voted in favour. Three opposed it. Forty-seven abstained.
The decision showed that a large majority of voting states supported compliance with the Court’s judgment. It did not give the General Assembly the power to force Washington to obey.
I consider Nicaragua one of the clearest examples of the weakness built into international law.
The Court could examine American conduct and issue a judgment. Enforcing that judgment against the world’s most powerful country was another matter.
There is an important difference between having legal authority and possessing the means to exercise it.
The events took place nearly four decades before Trump’s second presidency.
Any argument that the current president alone destroyed American respect for international rules ignores this history.
Why the Two Iraq Wars Matter
In August 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait.
The Security Council condemned the invasion. On November 29, it adopted Resolution 678, authorising countries cooperating with Kuwait to use all necessary means if Iraq failed to comply with earlier resolutions by January 15, 1991.
The United States subsequently led the military campaign that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
This was an example of American military power operating under explicit Security Council authorisation.
Now consider what happened twelve years later.
In March 2003, President George W. Bush ordered another invasion of Iraq.
His administration argued that Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes and alleged weapons of mass destruction presented a serious threat.
Washington and London maintained that previous Security Council resolutions provided a legal basis for military action.
Many other governments disagreed.
There was no new Security Council resolution expressly authorising the invasion.
In September 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the war had not conformed to the Charter. He considered it illegal.
The British government’s position was different. It continued to defend the legal basis on which it had acted.
Years later, the 2016 Iraq Inquiry delivered a severe assessment of British decision-making.
Its findings included a failure to exhaust peaceful options before military action.
The inquiry did not itself issue a legal ruling on whether British participation was unlawful. It criticised the process through which the government reached its legal decision.
The difference between the two wars remains important.
In 1991, Washington led a coalition with express Security Council authority to reverse Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
In 2003, it invaded Iraq without obtaining the additional explicit authorisation that many countries believed was required.
Iraq illustrates another danger.
Military superiority can allow a government to proceed despite international opposition. It cannot, by itself, establish that the decision was lawful or politically wise.
Trump Has Opened Another Front Against International Justice
On February 6, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14203, authorising sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
The ICC is not the same institution as the International Court of Justice that ruled in the Nicaragua case.
The ICJ settles legal disputes between states. The ICC prosecutes individuals accused of crimes falling within its jurisdiction.
The ICC was created by the Rome Statute, which entered into force in July 2002. It is not a UN court.
The United States has never become a party to that treaty.
American objections to the ICC also predate Trump’s presidency.
Washington maintains that the court should not exercise jurisdiction over American citizens without US consent.
The Rome Statute, however, permits the ICC to exercise jurisdiction under specified conditions when alleged crimes occur on the territory of a state that has accepted the court’s authority.
That can include alleged crimes committed by nationals of countries outside the treaty.
The court is also intended to complement national justice systems rather than replace them.
The legal disagreement is real.
But the Trump administration moved beyond objections to the court’s jurisdiction.
On October 9, 2026, the United States imposed sanctions on the ICC as an institution.
Previous sanctions had targeted individual judges and prosecutors. The new measure brought the institution itself under American sanctions.
The US Treasury’s sanctions record confirms the action. The ICC condemned the measures.
The European Union objected as well.
The latest sanctions deserve attention because they potentially affect the ordinary services on which an international institution depends.
Can Sanctions Pressure a Court Without Closing It?
A court needs more than judges and legal documents.
It needs functioning payment systems. Its staff use software. Suppliers must be able to provide services without facing avoidable legal risks.
American sanctions can create uncertainty for companies involved in these activities.
The October decision did not, however, mean that every transaction involving the court became prohibited.
The US Treasury issued four general licences allowing specified activities to continue.
One licence covered certain transactions necessary to maintain ICC operations and remained valid until April 7, 2027.
Other licences covered areas including telecommunications and enterprise software.
On October 23, the European Commission issued guidance urging European operators to continue providing services to the court.
It also made clear that permitted payments, including those processed through European infrastructure, should continue.
I would not claim that the sanctions had already paralysed the ICC. The evidence does not establish that.
Their political significance is nevertheless substantial.
An international court now faces sanctions imposed by a country that regularly calls for accountability when rival governments are accused of serious wrongdoing.
Washington argues that it is defending its sovereignty.
Critics argue that it is using financial pressure against a judicial institution whose decisions it dislikes.
There is another difficulty.
If the United States believes the ICC has overstepped its jurisdiction, it can challenge the court’s legal reasoning and seek support from other governments.
Sanctioning the institution itself raises a separate question about the proper limits of American economic power.
A government does not need to send soldiers into another country to exert considerable pressure beyond its borders.
Does America Expect Rules That Others Must Obey?
The United States is not alone in resisting international constraints.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrates the continuing importance of the Charter’s prohibition on aggressive force.
China’s maritime disputes have also raised serious questions about how powerful countries respond to international legal decisions. In an earlier article about a possible Chinese quarantine of Taiwan, I examined another case where coercion could carry costs far beyond the immediate dispute.
Neither example excuses American conduct.
Nor does criticism of Washington establish that Russia or China would offer a fairer international system.
The problem is larger than any single government.
When major powers demand obedience to international law from their rivals but seek exceptions for themselves, weaker states face a serious disadvantage.
I look at this partly from Pakistan.
Our region has experienced wars and territorial disputes. We know that differences in military strength can shape diplomatic outcomes.
International law cannot remove those differences.
It can at least provide recognised principles through which smaller countries challenge the conduct of more powerful states.
That is why judicial decisions matter, even when enforcement is difficult.
A judgment against a powerful government may not change its behaviour immediately. But it can establish a legal record that is harder to dismiss than a political accusation.
Nicaragua demonstrated both the value and the weakness of that process.
America Has Power. Does It Still Accept Restraint?
The United States gained considerable influence from the international system established after 1945.
Its allies benefited from American security commitments. International institutions also gave Washington opportunities to shape decisions far beyond its borders.
The system was never neutral in its distribution of power.
Yet it gave countries reasons to cooperate through established institutions rather than rely entirely on military strength.
Washington’s record has been inconsistent.
The Nicaragua judgment exposed the difficulty of holding a powerful country accountable.
The 2003 Iraq invasion showed how American leaders could proceed with military action despite deep disagreement over international authorisation.
The 2026 sanctions against the ICC concern a different institution and a different legal dispute. They should not be presented as another identical violation of the UN Charter.
What connects these episodes is Washington’s recurring resistance to outside restraints.
Trump has made that resistance more confrontational, particularly in his treatment of the ICC.
But the habit is older.
America helped write the rules that emerged from the ruins of the Second World War. It also helped create a system that gave major powers unusual freedom to protect their own interests.
For decades, Washington has tried to reconcile those two positions.
It still has the military strength and economic influence to challenge international institutions when their decisions become inconvenient.
What remains uncertain is how many other countries will continue defending a system whose most powerful architect is often reluctant to accept its limits.