Having spent 30 years enforcing the law in Germany, Iraq, South Korea, and a dozen other places, one of the most important lessons I learned is that bureaucracies place justice behind the fulfillment of self-serving ambitions. As former Senior Antiterrorism/Force Protection Officer for the Coalition Forces in Iraq, I know what accountability looks like when it is real, and when it is theater. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is theater — and dangerous theater at that.

Let me be plain about the legal foundation. The United States withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC, in May 2002. Israel had signed the Statute in 2000 but notified the Secretary General of the UN that it would not become a party to the treaty in 2002. Thus, neither nation is subject to the Court's authority. Under settled international law, a treaty binds its parties — not states that decline to join. When the ICC issues arrest warrants for American military personnel or Israeli heads of government, it is not enforcing international law. It is stretching its jurisdiction over nations that explicitly withheld consent.

The Court's defenders argue that if crimes allegedly occur on the territory of a member state, the court may pursue any national involved, regardless of their country's membership. Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute in 2015; Afghanistan was already a party. Under this theory, a third party's unilateral decision to join a treaty can expose American soldiers and........

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