When Power Says “Full Stop”
✍️ Author’s note
Ambassador Joseph Popolo ended his message on the International Criminal Court with two emphatic words: “Full stop.” They stayed with me.
Perhaps because they reveal something larger than a disagreement over jurisdiction. Power often prefers to declare the argument finished precisely where scrutiny begins.
This essay is not another defence of the ICC. I have made that argument before. It is about something narrower: gratitude, alliances, and what happens when historical sacrifice is invoked as a reason for present exemption.
—WJJH
“Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.”
— Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy
The Netherlands, the country of my birth and where I reside, has maintained one of the oldest diplomatic relationships with the United States. In 1782 the Dutch Republic became the second country formally to recognise the young American republic. The relationship has survived wars, changing interests and considerable shifts in the balance of power.
Lately, however, the Netherlands has not always been fortunate in the representatives appointed by Donald Trump.
His first ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, arrived in The Hague burdened by remarks he had made in 2015 claiming that Muslim immigration had created “no-go zones” in the Netherlands and that cars and politicians were being burned. When confronted with the recording, he initially denied having made the remarks and called the report “fake news.” He subsequently apologised and acknowledged that his claims had been wrong.
The present American ambassador, Joseph Popolo, comes from business and politics rather than the professional diplomatic service. Whatever his private opinions may be is largely beside the point. Ambassadors represent governments, not themselves, and in his recent response to Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten he represented Washington’s position with admirable clarity.
Jetten had used his address to the United Nations General Assembly to defend the International Criminal Court. At the centre of his speech was a proposition difficult to misunderstand:
“International law either works for everyone, or for no one.”
He followed it with an equally direct appeal: “Hands off the ICC.”
Jetten may not have been formally appointed as the European Union’s messenger, but he was certainly not speaking in a European vacuum. His intervention closely reflected the position already being expressed by European institutions, while the Netherlands’ role as host state of the Court gave his words particular weight.
Declarations and political consequences, however, are different things. International law acquires meaning only when we are prepared to apply the standards we demand of others also to ourselves and our allies.
The ICC was created as a standing institution intended to investigate and, where warranted, prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression. It was never intended simply to replace national courts. Under the principle of complementarity, genuine domestic investigation and prosecution remain central.
The Court is imperfect. It depends upon states for cooperation and operates in a world in which law cannot escape the pressures of power. Those are reasons to defend its independence more consistently, not reasons to abandon it.
If Europe now says “hands off the ICC,” I would therefore like to see that principle defended not merely through speeches but through deeds: by protecting the Court’s institutional independence and by supporting the judges and prosecutors who are personally paying the price for carrying out their judicial functions.
That is where Ambassador Popolo enters the argument.
Responding to Jetten on X, he began with what he called “a tremendous amount of respect” for the Dutch prime minister. He then made Washington’s position unmistakable:
“We are happy to keep our hands off the ICC… if it keeps its hands off the United States.”
American troops, he continued, together with other American citizens, “should not be subject to a politicized Court. Full stop.”
The most revealing words may be the last two.
Full stop.
They suggest that, from Washington’s perspective, the jurisdictional question ends where American sovereignty begins.
But that is precisely where the difficult question begins.
The United States has never ratified the Rome Statute and has long objected to the ICC exercising authority over nationals of states that have not joined the Court without their government’s consent. That objection is not a Trump invention; it has existed in different forms under Democratic as well as Republican administrations.
The ICC takes another view. Where the alleged crime occurs on the territory of a state that has accepted the Court’s jurisdiction, nationality alone does not necessarily place the alleged perpetrator beyond its reach.
That is a genuine dispute about sovereignty and jurisdiction. It deserves serious argument.
But Ambassador Popolo introduces something quite different when he invokes America’s protection of Europe.
Alliance loyalty and criminal jurisdiction are not the same thing.
The United States has unquestionably made enormous sacrifices for Europe. Europeans know this. Gratitude for America’s contribution to the liberation of Europe during the Second World War is genuine and deserved. The continuing American contribution to European security through NATO is equally real.
But gratitude cannot confer immunity from scrutiny.
The fact that American soldiers have defended Europe cannot by itself determine whether allegations concerning American personnel elsewhere may legitimately be examined by an international court. Friendship matters. History matters. Security commitments matter. But none of them can determine in advance whether an allegation of a war crime should be investigated.
Nor does historical gratitude travel in only one direction.
The United States itself came into existence with substantial European assistance.
France formally allied itself with the Americans in 1778. Spain entered the wider war against Britain in 1779, while Britain went to war with the Dutch Republic in 1780. What had begun as a rebellion in North America became an international conflict, forcing Britain to divide its military and naval strength among several theatres.
France provided soldiers, ships, weapons and money. Spain challenged British power from the Gulf Coast to the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Dutch financiers supplied badly needed credit, and in 1782 the Dutch Republic became the second country formally to recognise American independence.
American and European historical memory therefore travels in both directions.
There is a particularly interesting reminder in the observations of Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, Count of Aranda, the experienced Spanish statesman involved in the settlement ending the American War of Independence.
Writing to King Carlos III in 1783, Aranda observed that the young American republic had required the support of France and Spain to secure its independence. He predicted that the small republic would one day become a giant and, with growing power, would increasingly pursue its own aggrandisement.
Aranda’s warning was less about ingratitude than about power without illusions.
France, Spain and the Dutch Republic did not support the American cause simply from altruism. Weakening Britain served their own interests.
Nor did the United States enter the European wars of the twentieth century solely from altruism. Principle and immense human sacrifice were involved, but so were American security and national interest. The international order that emerged after 1945 also produced extraordinary economic, financial, strategic and military advantages for the United States.
There is nothing particularly cynical in acknowledging this.
That is how alliances work.
The difficulty begins when historical gratitude is converted into a continuing political claim:
We protected you; therefore you should accept an exception for us.
With Carl von Clausewitz in mind, the American president might therefore pause before proceeding.
Alliances are instruments through which states pursue objectives where their interests sufficiently coincide. The weaker that common interest becomes, the easier the alliance is to disrupt. Alliances may contain friendship, habit, shared memory and sometimes genuine affection between peoples, but they are not sustained by sentiment alone.
They remain an essential component of international power.
History has demonstrated this repeatedly.
Hegemonic powers rise and decline, however formidable their military and economic strength may once have been. Alliances can soften that decline, multiply power and extend influence far beyond what military strength alone can accomplish.
But alliances must also be maintained.
And when interests diverge sufficiently, when accumulated goodwill is treated as something permanently owed rather than continuously renewed, even the strongest power may eventually discover that without allies it is rather cold outside.
Afterword — The Price of Diplomacy
Europe’s response to the latest American pressure on the International Criminal Court contains an uncomfortable contradiction.
In words, support remains firm. European governments continue to defend the Court’s independence and integrity. Yet the six-month delay before the full consequences of the American measures take effect has also been welcomed as an opportunity for dialogue.
Diplomacy is not weakness by definition. Alliances are sustained through negotiation, compromise and restraint. But diplomacy becomes something else when the breathing space is used to weaken the very institution supposedly being protected.
That is the danger Europe now faces.
International law depends upon institutions, but institutions depend upon participation, cooperation and political protection. A court does not have to be formally abolished to be weakened. It can be deprived of services, financial channels, diplomatic support and, eventually, members.
This leaves Europe with a question that cannot indefinitely be answered by declarations.
What price is it prepared to pay for the principles it says it defends?
The temptation to seek accommodation with Washington is understandable. Security matters. Trade matters. Financial stability matters. Alliances matter. Those are not trivial considerations, and states have always balanced principle against interest.
But compromise also has a price.
If exemptions are repeatedly accepted for powerful allies, international law becomes less universal with each exception. A rule that restrains only adversaries gradually ceases to look like a rule and begins to resemble an instrument of power.
This is where Europe’s strategic dependencies become important. For decades it has spoken increasingly of strategic autonomy while remaining dependent upon the United States in security, finance, technology and other critical areas. Such dependencies are manageable when interests broadly coincide. They become visible when they do not.
The ICC may therefore become more than a dispute about one court.
It may become a test of whether Europe is prepared to bear costs for the international order it so frequently invokes.
For the judges, prosecutors and employees of the Court, this is hardly an abstract discussion. They are being asked to trust European assurances while political leaders search for accommodation with the government exerting pressure upon them.
One can understand the desire for diplomacy.
The harder question is whether diplomacy protects the Court, or merely postpones the moment when Europe must decide what it is actually prepared to defend.
Europe may ultimately conclude that security and economic interests outweigh confrontation with Washington. That would be understandable as statecraft, but it would not be cost-free.
Every exception made for a powerful ally narrows the space in which international law can still claim to be universal.
And perhaps that is Europe’s real weakness: not that it lacks principles, but that its dependencies make those principles increasingly expensive to enforce.
That is where rhetoric ends and power begins.
Netherlands, October 2026
📌Blog Excerpt
Ambassador Joseph Popolo’s response to Rob Jetten’s defence of the ICC raises a broader question about alliances, gratitude and international law. I have written before about Washington’s confrontation with the Court in Marco Rubio and the Rules of the Jungle. This essay takes a different road: what happens when past sacrifice is invoked to justify present exemption?
