The title of John Bolton’s speech in Washington – “Protecting American constitutionalism and sovereignty from international threats” – sounded innocuous enough, if a little pompous.

But its text represents the Trump administration’s most devastating and unrestrained attack to date on the global rules-based order and its legal flagship, the international criminal court.

Put bluntly, it is an all-out bid by Donald Trump to end the ICC, the world’s foremost criminal tribunal, and with it, the very concept of international justice. Bolton is the man wielding the knife. And there is a strong possibility they will succeed.

Play Video 1:50 John Bolton strongly criticises International Criminal Court – video

Trump’s third choice as national security adviser is a fitting assassin. With fellow hawks Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, Bolton led the charge for George W Bush’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Undeterred by past mistakes, and unwilling to learn from them, Bolton is now intent on bringing down the Iranian regime. He is unlikely to let considerations of legality get in the way this time either.

Profile Who is John Bolton? Show Hide In March 2018 John Bolton, a longtime foreign policy hawk, was named as Trump’s third national security adviser in just 14 months. Over a three-decade career in foreign policy, he has advocated frequent use of military force and disdained diplomacy and international institutions. Before joining the Trump administration, he was best known for a brief stint as president George W Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations – a body he openly sneered at. His role came to an end because the Senate would not confirm him. Bolton has called for bombing both North Korea and Iran. Less than a month before his appointment by Trump, he penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed making “the legal case for striking North Korea first". He seems to have played a key role in the collapse of the second Trump summit with Kim Jong-un in February, when he appeared to have drafted a maximalist list of demands for all-or-nothing disarmament that was presented to the North Korean dictator in Hanoi. A year of diplomacy ground to a halt with Kim, who had been expecting a more gradualist approach Bolton was a harsh critic of the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump pulled out of, and went further, advocating military force against the country. A bombing campaign was the only way to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he wrote in another op-ed. Bolton has seized the initiative in the fast-moving escalation of tensions with Tehran during 2019, spinning military deployments in the Gulf that were already in the pipeline as confrontational steps against Tehran, and reportedly irritating some in the Pentagon and intelligence agencies by putting a sensationalist spin on intelligence about Iranian military movements. In the standoff in Venezuela, Bolton was again centre stage, making himself the lead US voice for a failed effort at regime change in Venezuela in late April, producing a personal video appeal calling – in vain – on Nicolás Maduro’s top aides to defect. Behind the scenes he has urged a reluctant US Southern Command to come up with ever more aggressive solutions to Maduro’s hold on power. In the past he has also opposed the International Criminal Court in the Hague. As undersecretary of state under George W Bush, he travelled around the world negotiating two-way agreements in which countries pledged not to send US officials to the court. He also forcefully opposed the UN security council referring suspected genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan to the court, though the United States ultimately sat out that vote and the referral went forward. Bolton grew up in a working-class Republican family in Baltimore, and his first political experience was as a volunteer in the doomed 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative from Arizona. He attended Yale University. Unlike many of his fellow students, he fiercely supported the war effort in Vietnam, but not to the point of taking part himself. He avoided the draft by joining the Maryland national guard.

Bolton held senior positions in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, and wrote a book summing up his views: Surrender Is Not An Option. He is derided by critics as a warmonger, but defines his own philosophy as “Americanist” – a close cousin to Trump’s “America First” slogan – and is no fan of traditional carrot and stick diplomacy. “I don’t do carrots,” he has said. Trump announced on 10 September 2019 that he had fired Bolton, tweeting that "I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration". Photograph: REX/Shutterstock/Rex Features

Like many American conservatives, Bolton has always detested the ICC. Although the Rome statute setting up the court came into force in 2002, and 123 states are party to it, the US, Russia, China, India and others such as Israel have either not ratified or have rejected the treaty.

That has not stopped the US pursuing an egregious double standard. Washington has frequently supported ICC proceedings when they suit American interests.

The refusal of major powers to allow a level playing field has weakened the ICC and it has been criticised for focusing investigations on countries with less wealth and influence, mainly in Africa.

That emphasis has changed under Fatou Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor since 2012. It is her move to open a formal investigation of possible crimes in Afghanistan since 2001 by US military and civilian personnel, as well as the Taliban, that has so alarmed Washington.

On the face of it, the US has a lot to answer for in terms of alleged illegal killings and detentions, forced rendition, torture and mass civilian casualties that could amount to war crimes.

Bensouda has also reopened a preliminary inquiry into alleged war crimes by UK nationals in Iraq, from 2003 to 2008. Since Britain is a state party to the Rome statute, there is no question its citizens are subject to the court.

Yet part of Bolton’s purpose was to suggest that US sanctions and other punitive measures against the ICC and its personnel could assist America’s allies if they, too, find themselves in the dock. That category may include Israel, given the ongoing ICC preliminary inquiry in Palestine.

US sanctions, if implemented, could fatally undermine the ICC. African states tempted by withdrawal, like South Africa, may decide to go ahead. Non-member countries will be encouraged to limit or refuse cooperation.

A case in point is Myanmar, where the ICC is attempting to assert its jurisdiction over alleged crimes against humanity inflicted on the Rohingya minority – against the regime’s wishes.

The collapse of the ICC would be welcome in Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s regime shares Trump’s hostility to binding trans-national legal rules and standards and his appetite for acting with impunity. Russia currently faces a preliminary ICC inquiry in Ukraine.

Likewise, China, sailing roughshod over international law in the South China sea and Taiwan, will presumably not be sorry to see the end of the court. But the US move presages another clash with Europe, where the ICC is highly valued.

Bolton’s démarche fits a pattern of unilateralist actions that has seen the US withdraw from the UN’s human rights council, discard both the multilateral pact on Iran’s nuclear activities and the Paris climate accord, raise new trade and tariff barriers and threaten to pull out of Nato and the WTO.

Trump says he is fighting for US sovereignty. But to the rest of the world, it looks like the unacceptable face of American exceptionalism.

