This chapter explores the effects of the Trump presidency in human rights foreign policy. Taking into account the mixed character of U.S. foreign policy in previous decades, it provides a measured account of how the populist rhetoric of “America First” was translated into concrete actions, initially under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and more intensely under National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The disorganization of the administration has left room for career officers to implement a relatively traditional human rights policy in some areas. The Trump administration has departed most significantly from past administrations in declining to embrace the core principles on which human rights policy is based. Its support of strongmen because of – not in spite of – their authoritarian qualities may leave its most distinct (and damaging) human rights legacy.

Chapter 5 considers the first term of the George W. Bush (Bush 43) administration (2000–2004) when the US ‘unsigned’ the founding ICC statute and used a combination of domestic legislation and bilateral agreements to obstruct its further development. This period demonstrates a clear rejection of both legalist and liberal internationalist conceptions of the court. The dominant rule of law conception was instead that of illiberal nationalism combined with elements of illiberal internationalism, leading to widespread global criticism that US policy was contrary to the international rule of law. US policymakers nevertheless continued to defend US compliance with legal obligations and international criminal justice, while opposing a court advancing the principles recognised by legalist advocates.

The Conclusion considers implications of these findings in the era of President Donald Trump and beyond, which so far exhibits clear continuity with the ideological structure of its predecessors. The case of the ICC provides compelling evidence that foreign policy ideology structures distinct conceptions of the international rule of law amongst American legal policymakers and that these received principles set hard limits to reaching a universal understanding of the proper design and development of the international legal order. Defining the international rule of law remains a dialectical process in which ideological visions of global order contest power through the shared space of the international legal system. Continued commitment to this contest is evidence, nevertheless, of the consequence of IL as a framework for sustaining discourse about global power and transcendent values.