In a stunning move of diplomatic grace, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces that the best way to prove you’re the “good guys” is to set fire to the rulebook and cite American Exceptionalism.

It is a well-established tenet of American Exceptionalism that laws are beautiful, necessary, and vital structures—like fences—that are designed to keep the neighbors in line. However, the true beauty of American Exceptionalism is the understanding that these fences are clearly intended for everyone except us. We are the architects of the global order, the designers of the neighborhood association, and therefore, it would be terribly gauche to expect us to follow the bylaws we spent the last eighty years writing.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a man who has clearly spent too much time reading Machiavelli and not enough time reading the room, officially launched his crusade to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC). His reasoning? The court is “interfering” with U.S. military and law enforcement operations.

In the language of the common man, this roughly translates to: “It is extremely inconvenient that someone is trying to make us follow the same rules we hold everyone else to.”

The “Sovereignty” Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card

There is a certain artistic flair to how Washington handles the concept of “sovereignty.” It is the ultimate Swiss Army knife of political rhetoric. Need to invade a country? Sovereignty is a suggestion. Need to ignore a global climate treaty? Sovereignty is the law of the land. Need to avoid answering questions about why a stray bomb ended up in a local schoolhouse? Sovereignty is the protective dome under which we reside, safely shielded from the prying, pesky eyes of international law.

Secretary Rubio’s plan is nothing if not ambitious. It isn’t enough for the United States to simply opt-out of the ICC, as we have been doing quite comfortably for decades. No, that would be like walking out of a dinner party because you don’t like the menu. Rubio wants to flip the table, set the curtains on fire, and then sue the host for property damage.

He is calling for a global campaign to essentially de-fund, delegitimize, and dismantle the court entirely. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a teenager deciding that if they can’t be the team captain, they are going to take their ball and go home—but not before slashing the tires of the team bus.

The Art of the Threat

The most hilarious—pardon me, the most robust and forward-thinking—aspect of the plan involves how we intend to convince our friends to join us in this bonfire. We aren’t relying on the power of persuasion or the strength of our arguments. Heavens no. We are utilizing the tried-and-true American tradition of: “Do what we say, or we will make your life a bureaucratic hellscape.”

The plan calls for a suite of punitive measures against any nation that refuses to abandon the ICC. We are talking about sanctions, travel bans, and visa revocations. Imagine being a mid-level diplomat in, say, Norway or Luxembourg. You wake up on a Tuesday morning, have a nice cup of coffee, and suddenly receive an official memo from the U.S. State Department: “We noticed you still believe in the concept of global accountability. We’ve gone ahead and cancelled your trip to Disney World, blocked your assets, and now you’re banned from ever visiting a TGI Fridays again. Please adjust your judicial stance accordingly.”

It is truly a masterful use of soft power. Nothing says “we are the defenders of liberty” quite like threatening a sovereign nation with economic ruin because they refused to sign a loyalty oath to our exemption from the Geneva Convention.

Why Do We Hate the Court?

To understand the current tantrum, we have to look at what actually bothers the State Department about the ICC. The ICC, for all its sluggish, bureaucratic inefficiency, exists to do one thing: hold people accountable for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The U.S. position, historically, has been that we are perfectly capable of policing ourselves. We have a military justice system, after all! It’s quite robust. It has a stellar track record of holding hearings, deciding that some poor 19-year-old corporal is the root of all evil, and then quietly sweeping the systemic issues under the rug so we can get back to business.

The ICC, however, suffers from a lack of imagination. It fails to understand that when the United States does something that looks like a war crime, it is actually just “a complex kinetic engagement conducted in the pursuit of strategic stability.” It isn’t a crime; it’s a product feature.

When an international court suggests that maybe, just maybe, dropping a bomb on a wedding party should have some form of legal repercussion, the State Department views this as an affront to American Exceptionalism. How dare they look at our shiny, expensive, high-tech ordnance and suggest that it is capable of causing “human suffering”? Do they not know we have a budget that exceeds the GDP of most of their member states?

The “Rules-Based Order” (As Long as You’re Not Us)

The irony is thick enough to choke a horse. For years, the United States has lectured the rest of the world on the importance of the “rules-based international order.” We have spent trillions of dollars building an infrastructure of international norms, trade agreements, and legal bodies, all designed to ensure that the world operates according to the principles of justice, transparency, and accountability.

But Rubio’s plan is the ultimate admission that the “rules-based order” was always just a marketing campaign. It was never intended to be a mutual pact; it was a pyramid scheme where we are the ones at the top, collecting the fees and writing the rules, while everyone else is expected to provide the labor.

When the ICC tries to enforce those rules against one of the partners at the top, the entire structure is revealed to be a fragile house of cards. The message to the world is clear: “The rules apply to you because you are a rogue state. They do not apply to us because we are the sheriff. And yes, the sheriff is allowed to shoot people without a trial, because the sheriff knows best.”

The Global Reaction: A Performance of Polite Disdain

One can only imagine the look on the faces of the ambassadors in The Hague. They are likely sitting in a conference room, staring at the latest press release from Foggy Bottom, wondering if they should laugh or start looking into alternative employment.

It is a difficult situation for our allies. They want to remain our friends because we provide them with security guarantees and, frankly, because we have a very large supply of snacks and movies. But at what point does the cost of friendship become too high? At what point do you look at your best friend and say, “I’m happy to back you up in a fight, but I draw the line at helping you dismantle the entire global legal system........

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