Op-Ed

US War on ICC Isn’t New, Isn’t Just Coming From GOP, and Isn’t Just About Israel

This is a disingenuous bipartisan effort to discredit the ICC and international humanitarian law as a whole.

By Stephen Zunes ,

Truthout

August 7, 2026

People take part in a demonstration in defense of the International Criminal Court, holding banners reading "Hands off the International Criminal Court" and placards depicting Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Ursula von der Leyen, at Piazza Ugo La Malfa, on July 16, 2026 in Rome, Italy.Simona Granati - Corbis / Corbis via Getty Images

The United States has launched an all-out assault on the International Criminal Court (ICC). In the past few weeks alone, the Trump administration has vowed to eradicate the top court, pressured countries to withdraw from it, and has attacked progressive political leaders like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani who seek to carry out its mandates.

These attacks are jarring, but they are not new, are not only about Israel, and are not just coming from Republicans.

The renewed chorus of attacks began on July 13, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio renewed a U.S. attack on the court by announcing a plan to “dismantle” the ICC “brick by brick, if necessary.” Rubio claimed that, without such action, U.S. police officers or border patrol agents “could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws we neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.”

This claim is utter nonsense. The ICC has no jurisdiction over crimes committed by law enforcement officers in the United States. And while Rubio claims that the U.S. has not consented to the international humanitarian law that the ICC seeks to uphold, such law is actually drawn directly from binding treaties — including the Genocide Convention as well as the Geneva Conventions and related protocols, which the U.S. government has signed, ratified, and in many cases, incorporated into its own military manuals.

More revealing is Rubio’s complaint that the United States can’t “control” international law. No country can do that, nor should they be able to. The law is the law. As Kenneth Roth, the former longtime director of Human Rights Watch, put it: “Law is meant to bind people, not be controlled by them.”

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal accompanying his official announcement from the State Department, Rubio claimed that the court is “run” by “hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.” This is also untrue. Virtually every European government is a member of the ICC. None of its 18 justices are from countries with hostile state relations with the U.S., and all but three of those countries are inarguably democracies. Of the 73 people indicted by the ICC, none of them have been Americans and only six of them have been associated with governments allied with the United States.

Rubio’s attack was followed by continued attention on the court, this time from Mamdani, who called on federal authorities to act on an ICC warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and arrest him during a planned trip to New York later this year. In response, Mamdani was falsely accused of unfairly singling out Israel, even though he explicitly stated that his position would apply to “any other war criminals.” His focus on Netanyahu was simply because no other indicted war criminal was scheduled to visit his city.

Only two Israelis have ever been indicted by the ICC. This hasn’t stopped prominent U.S. politicians like Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to insist that the court has an “anti-Israel bias.” Similarly, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) has accused the ICC of a “continued, longstanding bias against the Jewish state,” and former Rep. Kathy Manning (D-North Carolina) has criticized what she referred to as its “efforts to single out and undermine Israel.”

What actually appears to bother these lawmakers is not the baseless claim that the ICC has an anti-Israel, anti-American, or anti-Western bias, but that it refuses to make exceptions for the United States and its allies. These demonstrably false statements from lawmakers reveal a disingenuous bipartisan effort to discredit the ICC and, by extension, international humanitarian law as a whole, in the eyes of the American public.

If the court has displayed any bias, it would be against Africa. Of the 75 people indicted by the ICC, 59 have been from African nations. Indeed, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso jointly announced their withdrawals from the court last year, claiming the ICC is an “instrument of neocolonial repression in the hands of imperialism.”

It is important to note that none of these anti-ICC U.S. politicians have complained about indictments and investigations against African leaders or militants, leaders of Hamas or the Taliban, or Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials. Their attacks on the ICC are because the court seems unwilling to arbitrarily exempt U.S. allies from their investigations.

The true nature of these denouncements was made quite explicit in a bipartisan bill called the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2024. That bill would have imposed draconian sanctions on non-Americans who directly or indirectly participated in ICC prosecutions of people who are lawful citizens or residents of the U.S. or its allies, so long as their own nation did not consent to ICC jurisdiction.

The bill was both particularly broad — it threatened anyone who was involved in arresting or detaining or even simply investigating U.S. allies — and harsh, in that it would sanction the family members of the people it targeted as well. The lawmakers’ argument was essentially that ICC investigations should be based not on the available evidence, the severity of the crimes, or the basis of international law, but on the geopolitical orientation of the government of those accused. The bill passed the House with significant Democratic support, but failed to reach the floor of the Senate.

It should be noted that the bipartisan attacks against the ICC are not new. In 2002, a bill drafted by right-wing Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) prohibited the United States from cooperating in any way with the International Criminal Court. The bill was supported by then-New York Sen. (and future Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats, and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

This vindictive legislation also restricted U.S. foreign aid to countries that support the ICC. It also authorized the president of the United States “to use all means necessary and appropriate to free members of the United States military and certain other allied persons if they are detained or imprisoned by an international criminal court,” including military force, which led to its nickname: the “Hague Invasion Act.”

This law also initially constrained the Biden administration from providing intelligence it had gathered to the ICC regarding Russian atrocities in Ukraine until Congress passed an amendment which opened up some legal space by repealing restrictions on using U.S. funds and other cooperation in order to support the ICC’s investigations targeting Russian war crimes.

In 2024, Joe Biden became the first president to openly side with alleged war criminals against the ICC when he denounced as “outrageous” a report to the ICC recommending the indictment of Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (along with three Hamas leaders) for war crimes. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” Biden underscored, despite the fact that the report never questioned Israel’s right to self-defense. Similarly, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it “shameful” and “a profoundly wrong-headed” decision, which the United States “fundamentally rejects.”

A major argument in Washington against the ICC prosecution of Israeli officials was that Israel was not a signatory to the Rome Statute. The state of Palestine is, however, so attacks on and from Palestinian territory would unquestionably qualify. In any case, neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the statute, but that didn’t prevent the indictment of Russian officials and U.S. support for those indictments.

The attacks on the ICC have reached a new level since Trump returned to office. Executive Order 14203 has given the administration the unprecedented authority to impose sanctions on any foreigner who supports the ICC’s investigations of U.S. or Israeli citizens. This has been used to sanction the ICC’s chief prosecutor and 10 of its judges with financial restrictions and travel bans, leading to them not being able to use credit cards or have Google accounts and mandating prison sentences for any American providing them with services. It has also been used to sanction UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and three Palestinian human rights organizations as well. As a result, Georgetown University has removed Albanese, a distinguished Italian jurist, as an affiliate scholar, while the University of Southern Maine banned a conference she was set to virtually address which was scheduled to take place on campus.

Meanwhile, the respected human rights group Al-Haq can no longer fund its operations because its bank accounts have been closed. YouTube has removed hundreds of Al-Haq’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses. In addition, U.S.-based human rights groups with which Al-Haq had long collaborated are no longer able to provide financial support, and in many cases, have severed communications altogether due to threats of being targeted by the U.S. government or losing funding.

Ironically, the targeting of the ICC may actually get members of the administration or congressional allies in the war on the court in trouble. Article 70 of the Rome Statute criminalizes impeding, intimidating, or corruptly influencing any ICC official as part of an effort to prevent them from performing their duties or retaliate against them for having done so, a provision that even applies to non-signatories.

In his op-ed last month, Rubio claimed the ICC “threatens every aspect of our political and legal system.” He insisted that the ICC and its supporters are “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts, and the force of so-called international law.” To address this alleged threat, he announced a new diplomatic campaign that will not only increase the administration’s pressure against the ICC, but will also withdraw foreign aid and impose other penalties on countries that continue to cooperate with it.

While the United States is among the minority of the world’s countries to have never joined the ICC, it has been pressuring member countries to pull out. The Trump administration during its first term successfully pressured the Philippines to withdraw in 2019. The U.S. pressured Hungary to announce its withdrawal last year, and Venezuela and Chad to announce their withdrawals last month, after Rubio announced his campaign against the court. Like Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, both Venezuela and Chad mentioned allegations of “bias” against the court, but Chad specifically referenced a request from the U.S. to review its membership.

The European Union has denounced U.S. “attacks or threats against the court, elected officials, personnel or those cooperating with the court” as “simply not acceptable.” In response to such objections by U.S. allies, American legal scholars, and others, Rubio has utilized the popular antisemitic dog whistle by claiming the ICC is backed and run by “smug globalists.”

Despite right-wing claims that the ICC could prosecute U.S. servicemembers for war crimes, the court can only prosecute those from countries that are unable or unwilling to prosecute themselves. While unevenly applied, the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice has generally been seen as adequate to forestall the risk of the ICC ever prosecuting American soldiers.

However, now that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has dismantled Pentagon offices designed to enforce the laws of war and criticized what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” and “burdensome rules” on U.S. troops, which he implied could include the Fourth Geneva Convention, such protection from international prosecution might soon be threatened. In any case, the ICC has generally not targeted individual soldiers for atrocities, but those who commanded them.

There is some serious speculation that the administration’s assault on the ICC may be based in part of fear that U.S. officials could be targeted as well.

The post-World War II international legal system upon which the International Criminal Court is based was crafted by Western nations, particularly the idealists of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. While there are some reasonable critiques of the limitations of this “rules-based international order,” it at least sent a message — however unevenly these principles may have been enforced — that the killing of civilians, torture, territorial conquest, maltreatment of prisoners of war, apartheid, and genocide are illegal, and that perpetrators of these crimes should be held accountable.

This is what Trump administration officials, members of Congress, and critics of Mamdani’s statement oppose. They are essentially rejecting the liberal international order in favor of a new system in which governments — at least the United States and its allies — are no longer bound by such principles.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco. Zunes is also the co-author, with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2023).

The Normalcy of American Wars

by Andrew P. Napolitano | Aug 7, 2026 |

The war in Iran is unlawful and unconstitutional, but in post-World War II America, it is normal. Here is the backstory.

When President Donald Trump decided to begin bombing Iran last June, he did not state a coherent or lawful reason for doing so. His director of national intelligence and his own CIA had publicly told him that Iran did not possess a nuclear weapon and had ceased building one in 2005.

His secretary of state told him that Iran and Israel had threatened each other, but he could not articulate how Iran imminently threatened the United States. Yet, since Israel planned to attack Iran, he wanted the U.S. to help Israel do so. This was not a lawful request as the U.S. has no treaty with Israel and, under treaties to which the U.S. is a party, the legal bases for all offensive wars can only be treaty compliance or prevention of an imminent attack.

When Trump addressed the nation, his helter-skelter rationale argued for replacing Iran’s government, destroying its civilian-use enriched uranium, destroying its ability to build a bomb it wasn’t building, and neutralizing its offensive and defensive weaponry. None of these goals was lawful; nor was attacking a Tehran girls school. There was no mention of an imminent attack on the U.S. or the economic effect of war on the vital international oil super-highway, the Strait of Hormuz.

No one in Trump’s inner circle registered disagreement, except his vice president and his director of counterterrorism. They told him there was no legal or constitutional basis for his war.

They were correct, but Trump had history on his side.

For much of American history, presidents have steadily accumulated the power to wage war while Congress has gradually surrendered the constitutional authority that the Framers explicitly entrusted to it. This transformation has weakened constitutional checks and balances, expanded executive power beyond its constitutional limits, claimed millions of lives, cost trillions of dollars, and repeatedly drawn the United States into conflicts that had little or nothing to do with defending America.

The Constitution is remarkably clear on the question of war. Article I grants Congress · not the president · the power to declare war. The president, under Article II, wages war, but only after Congress has authorized it.

James Madison argued that the executive branch is the branch “most interested in war, and most prone to it,” which is precisely why the Constitution deliberately divided the war power.

The Framers believed that no single individual should possess the authority to plunge the nation into armed conflict, yet over the past eight decades, presidents of both political parties have steadily ignored these constitutional limits.

President Harry Truman committed hundreds of thousands of American troops to combat in Korea without obtaining a declaration of war from Congress because he said U.S. troops there constituted a “police action.”

The pattern only intensified during the Vietnam War. Although Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, it was based on a fraud and effectively delegated its congressional constitutional responsibility to the president. The result was years of escalating conflict that ultimately claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese while achieving none of its stated objectives.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, fundamentally accelerated this trend. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force and the Patriot Act · the former granting the president broad authority to pursue those responsible for the attacks, and the latter substantially impairing rights protected by the Fourth Amendment.

What was presented as a targeted war authorization evolved into legal justifications for military operations across multiple countries against groups that did not even exist in 2001.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq illustrate the costs of this expansive approach. The war in Afghanistan lasted two decades before ending with the return of the Taliban to power. Iraq was invaded based on fabricated or erroneous intelligence assessments regarding weapons of mass destruction.

The proper role of government · according to Thomas Jefferson, its only role · is to protect life, liberty and property, not to remake foreign societies through military force. Wars of choice generate unintended consequences, empower new enemies, create refugee crises and expand government power at home.

The economic and human consequences are equally profound. Massive defense expenditures have pushed the debt of the federal government to nearly $40 trillion. A government willing to kill millions and spend trillions on foreign wars while borrowing money to pay the interest on borrowed money will one day collapse of its own weight; as have all empires.

A genuinely constitutional foreign policy would look very different. Military force should be reserved for defending the United States against actual or truly imminent attacks, not speculative threats or ambitious nation-building projects, or favors for other countries. Congress should debate and vote openly before committing American forces to any combat.

Strong national defense does not require perpetual war. A capable military can deter aggression. Diplomacy, commerce and peaceful engagement generally serve American interests more effectively than military intervention.

George Washington’s warning against entangling foreign commitments and John Quincy Adams’s declaration that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” remain relevant guides for a republic committed to liberty, rather than an empire committed to conquest. Of course, monsters abroad can follow you home.

The constitutional allocation of war powers exists not as a procedural rule but as a substantive safeguard for freedom itself. Every unnecessary war expands executive authority, enlarges government, consumes wealth, risks American lives without clear necessity and diminishes personal liberty.

The best protection against endless conflict is a less powerful presidency and a renewed commitment to the Constitution’s deliberate separation of powers and the principle that the United States should fight only when its own security imminently and genuinely requires it.

Is it any wonder that the U.S. is unwilling or unable to justify its recent killings of 163 Tehran school girls and their teachers?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

From Strategic Depth To Strategic Adaptation: How Pakistan’s Western Frontier Is Reshaping Deterrence In South Asia – Analysis

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency


August 8, 2026
By Shaunak Nath

Key Takeaways:

Pakistan’s traditional concept of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan is breaking down as the Taliban government fails to curb TTP attacks, turning the western frontier into a sustained military commitment rather than a secure rear.

Simultaneous pressure on both eastern (India) and western fronts is forcing Pakistan to adapt force employment through greater reliance on drones, ISR, precision strike, integrated air defence and full-spectrum deterrence rather than simply expanding conventional forces.

These adaptations are reshaping South Asian deterrence, making future crises more technology-driven, faster-moving and harder to control, so that strategic stability now depends as much on how military power is organised and employed as on the overall balance of forces.

Strategic assumptions often outlast the conditions that gave rise to them. Few examples illustrate this more clearly than Pakistan’s longstanding pursuit of strategic depth. For decades, Pakistan’s defence planning rested on the assumption that Afghanistan could provide a secure western frontier, allowing military planners to concentrate their attention on India as the country’s principal strategic challenge. Today, the strategic assumptions underpinning that approach are becoming difficult to sustain.

Over the past several years, Pakistan’s security environment has become markedly more complex. Relations with the Taliban government have deteriorated amid persistent disputes over cross-border militancy, while attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have intensified across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Islamabad has responded with cross-border strikes, expanded counterterrorism operations and increased military deployments along the Durand Line, yet violence continues to challenge its ability to secure its western frontier. At the same time, Pakistan’s rivalry with India remains unresolved. Although large-scale hostilities following the 2025 India-Pakistan crisis have subsided, the Line of Control (LoC) remains heavily militarised, both countries continue to modernise their military capabilities, and the underlying drivers of strategic competition persist.

Viewed individually, none of these developments are unprecedented. Taken together, however, they point to a broader transformation in South Asia’s strategic landscape. Afghanistan is no longer functioning as the secure western rear envisaged in Pakistan’s traditional conception of strategic depth, but as a persistent source of military and political pressure. The implications extend beyond Pakistan’s internal security, raising important questions about force allocation, defence planning and the future of deterrence in South Asia.


This article argues that the strategic assumptions underpinning Pakistan’s long-standing pursuit of strategic depth are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. As Pakistan devotes greater military attention to its western frontier, it is adapting the way military power is organised and employed rather than simply accepting a reduction in its strategic position. These adaptations, reflected in changes to force employment, capability development and operational planning, are beginning to reshape the logic of deterrence with India. The significance of Pakistan’s changing western frontier therefore lies not only in what it reveals about Afghanistan, but in how it is reshaping the foundations of strategic stability across South Asia.
From Strategic Depth to Strategic Constraint

For much of the post-Cold War period, Pakistan’s defence planning benefited from a relatively clear strategic hierarchy. India remained the country’s principal military adversary, while security challenges on the western frontier, though often serious, were generally treated as limited in scope and geographically contained. Counterterrorism operations, border management and instability in Afghanistan undoubtedly demanded military resources, but they did not fundamentally alter Pakistan’s conventional force posture or the assumption that its primary strategic focus lay to the east.


That hierarchy is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Pakistan has confronted a sustained resurgence of the TTP, which the UN estimates comprises approximately 6,000-6,500 fighters operating from Afghanistan. Pakistan has responded by completing fencing along almost the entire 2,600 km Durand Line and significantly increasing the tempo of counterterrorism and border security operations. According to official figures, Pakistani security forces conducted more than 75,000 such operations in 2025, averaging over 200 operations each day. Yet persistent cross-border militancy and recurring tensions with Kabul demonstrate that these measures have not restored the strategic conditions that once allowed the western frontier to be treated as a secondary theatre. Instead, the western frontier has become an enduring operational commitment requiring sustained military attention.

The strategic significance of this shift lies not simply in the persistence of violence, but in the new demands it places on defence planning. Pakistan fields one of the world’s largest standing militaries, with approximately 660,000 active personnel. Yet even a force of this size cannot eliminate the strategic trade-offs created by simultaneous commitments across multiple theatres. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, rotary aviation, special operations forces and logistics capabilities committed to sustained operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan cannot simultaneously be optimised for conventional contingencies elsewhere. Nor is the challenge limited to force availability alone. Prolonged commitments across multiple theatres require different readiness cycles, command arrangements and planning assumptions, forcing military planners to balance competing operational priorities rather than concentrating overwhelmingly on a single primary adversary. The central challenge is therefore not the overall size of Pakistan’s armed forces, but the opportunity costs created when critical capabilities must be distributed across multiple and enduring security commitments.


This does not mean Pakistan’s deterrence posture is necessarily weakening. Military organisations rarely respond to structural pressure through passivity; they adapt. The question, therefore, is not whether Pakistan possesses sufficient military resources to manage multiple security challenges simultaneously, but how sustained commitments on its western frontier are changing the way those resources are allocated. It is these adaptations, rather than the absolute balance of military power, that are likely to shape the future evolution of deterrence in South Asia.

Adapting to a Two-Front Reality

Contemporary analyses of South Asian deterrence continue to focus primarily on the conventional military balance between India and Pakistan. While this remains an essential dimension of regional stability, Pakistan’s changing security environment suggests that such a framework is becoming increasingly incomplete. As Lawrence Freedman has argued, deterrence depends not only on military capability, but also on how that capability is communicated, perceived and ultimately employed. Pakistan’s changing western frontier reinforces this insight. The central question is therefore no longer whether Pakistan’s deterrent is weakening, but how changing strategic constraints are reshaping the employment of military power.


The nature of that adaptation is equally revealing. Military organisations confronted with competing operational demands rarely solve the problem simply by increasing manpower. Instead, they seek to maximise the effectiveness of finite resources through technology, intelligence and operational integration. For Pakistan, this has meant placing increasing emphasis on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), unmanned aerial systems, precision-guided munitions and integrated air defence. The operational lessons emerging from Operation Sindoor and the subsequent India–Pakistan crisis illustrate why these capabilities have become increasingly valuable. Rather than relying solely on conventional manoeuvre, both sides employed drones, long-range precision fires and stand-off weapons to project force while limiting the exposure of major ground formations. Pakistan’s use of unmanned systems alongside missile strikes demonstrated how relatively low-cost platforms could be employed not only to attack targets but also to probe, saturate and complicate an adversary’s air-defence network. This emphasis is reflected not only in increased defence spending but also in Pakistan’s continued investment in Chinese-supplied J-10CE combat aircraft, HQ-9 air-defence systems and unmanned platforms, alongside efforts to expand domestic drone production following the conflict. The strategic lesson is therefore not simply that drones are becoming more common, but that networked and stand-off capabilities enable states operating under competing geographic pressures to generate greater combat effectiveness without proportionately expanding conventional force structures.

These developments also have important implications for crisis stability. The 2025 India–Pakistan conflict demonstrated that future confrontations are unlikely to resemble the large-scale conventional wars that shaped much of South Asia’s strategic thinking during the twentieth century. Instead, they are increasingly characterised by drones, stand-off missile strikes, cyber operations, electronic warfare and information campaigns operating alongside more traditional military capabilities. Such technologies enable states to project force while reducing the exposure of major formations, but they also compress decision-making timelines, increase uncertainty and make it more difficult for political leaders to interpret an adversary’s intentions during rapidly unfolding crises. More fundamentally, the conflict demonstrated that technological change is compressing the distinction between conventional conflict and strategic signalling. Capabilities once regarded primarily as tactical are now influencing political decision-making at the strategic level. The principal implication is therefore not simply that future crises may escalate more quickly, but that they may become more difficult to control once escalation has begun.


For Pakistan, these developments are also likely to reinforce the importance of capabilities designed to offset conventional asymmetry. As sustained commitments on the western frontier constrain the flexibility with which conventional forces can be employed, Islamabad is likely to place greater emphasis on capabilities that preserve escalation control, complicate an adversary’s operational planning and strengthen deterrence despite competing force commitments. Full-spectrum deterrence should therefore be understood not simply as a nuclear posture, but as one element of a broader strategy of strategic adaptation, enabling Pakistan to compensate for structural pressures affecting conventional force employment. This should not be interpreted as evidence that conflict has become more likely. Rather, it suggests that the mechanisms through which deterrence is maintained are evolving in response to a more demanding strategic environment.

Pakistan’s changing western frontier illustrates a broader principle in strategic studies. Strategic geography rarely alters regional balances of power directly. Instead, it reshapes the assumptions underpinning defence planning, the ways in which military power is organised and employed, and ultimately the conditions under which deterrence operates. Pakistan’s experience demonstrates that states confronted with structural constraints do not simply become stronger or weaker. They adapt. As conventional military competition, internal security and emerging technologies become increasingly intertwined, understanding how states adjust the employment of military power may prove as important as measuring the balance of power itself. The future of deterrence in South Asia will therefore depend not only on relative military capabilities, but also on how effectively both India and Pakistan continue to adapt to an evolving strategic environment.

Conclusion

Pakistan’s deteriorating security environment on its western frontier represents more than a difficult counterterrorism challenge. It reflects a structural shift in the strategic assumptions that have long underpinned Pakistan’s defence planning. As those assumptions become less sustainable, the issue is no longer whether Pakistan can maintain deterrence against India, but how it chooses to adapt the employment of military power in response to competing and enduring security demands.

The significance of this evolution extends well beyond Pakistan itself. South Asian deterrence can no longer be understood solely through comparisons of force size, defence expenditure or conventional military balance. It is increasingly shaped by the interaction between strategic geography, force employment and technological adaptation. The growing importance of stand-off strike capabilities, unmanned systems, integrated air defence and networked intelligence reflects a broader shift in how military power is generated and employed under conditions of persistent strategic constraint.

Pakistan’s experience therefore illustrates a wider principle in strategic studies: changes in strategic geography rarely reshape regional security directly. Instead, they alter defence planning, encourage new forms of strategic adaptation and gradually transform the conditions under which deterrence operates. For policymakers, the challenge is not simply to measure shifts in the regional balance of power, but to understand how changing strategic environments reshape the way military power is organised and employed. The future of deterrence in South Asia will depend not simply on which state possesses greater military power, but on which adapts more effectively to a strategic environment in which geography, technology and security are becoming ever more closely intertwined.



About Shaunak Nath

Shaunak Nath is a London-based policy researcher whose work focuses on South Asia, Indo-Pacific geopolitics, and foreign policy analysis. He holds a Master's degree with First Class Honours in International Peace and Security from King's College London, and has worked with academic and policy institutions on issues ranging from Indian foreign policy to democratic governance and strategic competition. He writes on international politics for policy and general audiences.
View all posts by Shaunak Nath →

GENDER APARTHEID STATE

Europe And The Taliban: From Isolation To Engagement? – Analysis



Image: Grok

August 2, 2026
Observer Research Foundation
By Shairee Malhotra and Maiwand Safi

Key Takeaways:

The EU hosted a Taliban delegation in Brussels in June 2026 for talks focused on migration and the repatriation of Afghan nationals, marking the first official meeting between the two sides on European soil since 2021.

While the EU insists the discussions are technical and do not amount to formal recognition of the Taliban, the engagement reflects growing European pressure to accelerate deportations of rejected asylum seekers and those with criminal records.

The talks highlight a pragmatic but controversial shift: Europe needs cooperation with the de facto authorities in Kabul to manage migration, while the Taliban gains diplomatic leverage and a path out of isolation.

In June 2026, a significant development unfolded in the relationship between the European Union (EU) and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. European governments had shut down their embassies in Kabul when the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Last month, however, EU officials hosted a five-member Taliban delegation in Brussels, led by Afghan foreign ministry spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi, after Belgium granted them one-day visas.

As a follow-up to the first meeting, held in Austria in January, the talks focused on migration and the repatriation of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan, amid growing pressure within the EU to accelerate the return of rejected asylum seekers, or those deemed a possible security threat on account of criminal offences committed in host countries.

A Diplomatic Breakthrough?

While the European Commission stressed that the talks do not amount to formal recognition of the Taliban, this represented an important diplomatic achievement for the regime. Through its instrumentalisation of migration dynamics into an opportunity for diplomatic engagement, the Taliban actively engaged the EU. For the first time since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, an official delegation of the Islamic Emirate held talks with EU officials on European soil, overcoming its five-year diplomatic isolation. According to Balkhi, the visit to Brussels was historic because it marked the first official interaction between the Taliban and the EU.

For Kabul, the visit’s significance went beyond migration issues. The Taliban delegation was focused on confidence-building, maintaining a diplomatic presence within the EU, and ensuring a dignified return process for Afghan nationals. It also reiterated its demand that Taliban-appointed diplomats be allowed to serve in Afghan embassies across the European continent, many of which, apart from Germany, remain staffed by diplomats appointed before August 2021.

But the visit also carried broader diplomatic resonance. With the EU now engaging the Taliban, Kabul possesses leverage in dealings regarding migration. Notably, it was not the Taliban that initiated contact, but the EU that approached them. Discussions regarding the Taliban’s diplomatic presence in Europe, including consular representation, have already begun. Kabul has maintained that the visit sought to advance broader diplomatic engagement and cooperation with the EU. Thus, for the Taliban, the visit was an opportunity to demonstrate that even in the absence of formal recognition, international engagement with Afghanistan persists, and Kabul remains an important participant in discussions affecting both Afghanistan and Europe.

The EU’s Migration Conundrum

For at least a decade, migration has remained among the hottest policy issues for European governments, with far-right parties exploiting the backlash for political gains. The EU has framed its meeting with the Taliban as a response to 20 of the EU’s 27 member states that have urged stricter migration policies and firmer legal pathways for deportations.

According to EU data, member states received approximately one million asylum applications from Afghans between 2013 and 2024, with roughly half approved, making them one of the largest groups of migrants seeking asylum in the EU. As European governments aim to enhance migration controls and accelerate the repatriation of rejected asylum seekers, engagement with the authorities in Kabul has become increasingly difficult to avoid, amid a growing recognition that migration cannot be managed without cooperation with the Taliban.

The reality is that the Taliban remains the authority governing Afghanistan. Any substantial arrangement regarding the return of Afghan nationals, the provision of consular services, and the coordination of humanitarian assistance inevitably requires cooperation with the Taliban. For policymakers in Europe, including EU migration chief Magnus Brunner, this is perceived not merely as a matter of political choice, but of political necessity. Meanwhile, Germany and Austria, where deportations are high on the agenda, have already been in talks with Taliban officials, and have deported Afghan nationals with criminal records. Berlin also allowed two Taliban officials to work at the Afghan diplomatic mission in Germany to facilitate further deportations.
The Limits of Engagement

EU officials have consistently reiterated that the meetings were technical in nature, and should not be interpreted as a step towards formal recognition of the Taliban. Yet this line of reasoning remains controversial. Hannah Neumann, a Member of the European Parliament, argues that the talks symbolise a political normalisation of relations with the Taliban without securing any accountability in return. Others condemned the EU for granting the Taliban access without attaching clear conditions or benchmarks to such cooperation. The fact that the EU is granting visas and negotiating deals with the Taliban points to a pattern of de facto, incremental recognition — even as Brussels insists that the talks do not amount to formal recognition of the Islamic Emirate.


Despite the strategic imperative for cooperation, EU-Taliban engagement remains constrained by political and humanitarian challenges. Already, over three million Afghans were forcibly repatriated from Pakistan and Iran in the past year. This large-scale influx has placed additional pressure on a country grappling with severe economic challenges and the consequences of international sanctions. A further increase in deportations from Europe risks exacerbating an already fragile environment, where, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, one-third of the population, numbering over 17 million Afghans, is “food insecure”. Meanwhile, on the Rule of Law Index, Afghanistan ranks 142nd of 143 countries.

Negotiating with the Taliban remains politically contentious within Europe. Human rights organisationshave urged the EU not to conclude migration arrangements that could be seen as legitimising the current government in Kabul, arguing that any engagement should stay consistent with the EU’s broader foreign policy principles. The EU is, in fact, in talks with several other countries, including Bangladesh, on taking back citizens with criminal records, among other issues — but cooperation with Afghanistan has attracted far greater political scrutiny, given the unique circumstances surrounding the current government. At the same time, growing domestic demands and far-right pressures within EU member states to tighten migration rules and expedite the repatriation of denied asylum applicants have only heightened the imperative to engage with Kabul. Together, these concerns continue to shape the limits of the EU’s engagement with the Taliban, even as migration pressures push Brussels toward greater practical cooperation.
A Strategic Imperative

The Taliban’s Brussels visit should be understood less as a diplomatic breakthrough and more as evidence of Europe’s growing recognition that practical challenges — migration management, consular affairs, and humanitarian coordination — cannot be addressed without engaging the authorities in Kabul. For the Taliban, meanwhile, its interplay with Brussels can be viewed as a strategic effort to alleviate its global political and economic isolation, while gradually expanding its diplomatic reach by engaging on specific issues.

For Europe, the issue ties into the wider debate on EU migration policy. The EU’s pragmatic yet controversial shift towards selective cooperation with the Taliban, driven by practical considerations on issues of mutual concern, reflects the bloc’s delicate effort to balance its core values against growing domestic pressure to tighten migration policies.

About the authors:

Shairee Malhotra is Deputy Director of the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

Maiwand Safi is a Research Intern with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.

About Observer Research Foundation
ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.
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Justice for Adversaries, Immunity for Allies: America’s War on International Justice

Jared O. Bell

 July 29, 2026

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In 2017, I traveled to the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland as a visiting Erasmus professor from the International University of Sarajevo. While there, I toured Majdanek, the former Nazi concentration camp and site of mass murder.

The camp was vast. Its rooms carried the stale, musty smell of an old history book left in an attic. I had visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and would later visit Yad Vashem. Yet nothing haunted me more than walking through Majdanek, where gas chambers and other structures used in the systematic murder of prisoners remained in place.

At Majdanek, as at several other Nazi camps across Europe, the Nazis used Zyklon B to murder prisoners. Standing inside those rooms, history no longer felt abstract. It was physical. It surrounded you.

The horrors committed at Majdanek and across Nazi-occupied Europe made the need for accountability impossible to ignore. After the war, the United States and its allies established the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, advancing a revolutionary principle: government officials and military leaders could be held personally responsible for crimes committed in the name of the state.

Those principles later shaped the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and, eventually, the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court. The United States helped build this architecture of international justice.

Yet Washington’s commitment to it has always been conditional.

The hypocrisy lies here: The United States wants a system capable of delivering justice, but only so long as that system cannot hold the United States or its allies accountable. Washington embraces the language of war crimes when the accused are American adversaries. When the same standards are applied to American officials or allies such as Israel, international justice is suddenly described as illegitimate or an assault on sovereignty.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Successive administrations have resisted the Court’s authority while supporting it when its work aligned with American interests. The Bush administration allowed the Security Council to refer atrocities in Darfur to the ICC. The first Trump administration later sanctioned ICC officials after the Court authorized an investigation into alleged crimes in Afghanistan involving possible abuses by U.S. personnel.

President Joe Biden revoked those sanctions and supported accountability efforts against Russia in Ukraine. But his respect for the Court also proved conditional. When the ICC prosecutor sought arrest warrants for senior Israeli leaders over alleged crimes in Gaza, Biden called the move “outrageous.” Washington supported the Court when it pursued Vladimir Putin but condemned it when the same institution examined an American ally.

Donald Trump’s return brought a sharper escalation. In February 2025, he issued an executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC. Then, on July 13, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an effort to dismantle the Court “brick by brick, if necessary.”

This is no longer mere skepticism. It is a campaign to weaken one of the central institutions created to hold perpetrators of grave international crimes accountable.

Rubio pointed to calls for American personnel to be investigated over U.S. strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats, revealing that his campaign is not only about defending sovereignty in the abstract. It is also about shielding American officials from possible scrutiny over operations that legal experts and human-rights groups have described as potentially unlawful. By March 2026, a Pentagon official said the United States had conducted 45 strikes and killed 157 alleged members or affiliates of drug organizations.

Human-rights organizations and legal experts have described the attacks as possible unlawful or extrajudicial killings. Suspected drug trafficking is a crime, but it does not automatically transform civilians into enemy combatants who may be killed without arrest or trial.

Similar questions surround American operations in Iran. On February 28, 2026, a missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab. An Associated Press investigation concluded that the strike was carried out by the United States and killed at least 157 people, including 123 children.

It has not been publicly established that Rubio launched his campaign because of that strike or any other specific operation. But international-law experts argue that the administration appears to be acting preemptively to shield its military operations from outside scrutiny.

Rubio once supported the ICC’s role in pursuing Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Now, when similar principles might reach American officials or allied leaders, he portrays the Court as a threat that must be dismantled.

Washington does not oppose international justice in principle. It opposes international justice that it cannot control. It wants a Court capable of prosecuting Vladimir Putin, the Taliban, and America’s other adversaries, but not one capable of examining an American president, commander, or allied Israeli leader.

This retreat is especially dangerous because genocide and mass atrocities continue in Sudan, Gaza, Myanmar, Ukraine, and elsewhere. At precisely this moment, the international community should be protecting institutions that investigate atrocities, preserve evidence, prosecute perpetrators, and challenge impunity.

The ICC is imperfect. It depends on states to make arrests, moves too slowly, and has faced legitimate criticism. But destroying imperfect institutions does not produce better justice. It produces less justice.

For justice to be meaningful, it must be applied fairly and equally. Equality before the law is a principle the United States has promoted abroad for decades.

Washington cannot credibly demand accountability from its adversaries while seeking immunity for itself and its allies. A system of justice that bends according to the identity of the accused is not justice at all. It is power disguised as principle.

The lesson of Nuremberg was never that justice should apply only to the defeated. It was that no person, no government, and no nation should stand above the law.

Jared O. Bell is a former U.S. diplomat and scholar of human rights and transitional justice, dedicated to advancing global equity and systemic reform.