Trump says he will dismantle the ICC ‘brick by brick’. It could be his most chilling move of all | Steve Bloomfield

The US is aligning itself with dictators and autocrats to prevent those accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes from ever facing justice

Barely a month appears to go by without Donald Trump making a fresh attempt to destroy the international rules-based order. The US has pulled funding from dozens of international institutions, shut down USAID and withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement. Nato may survive on paper, but Trump has made clear that he has little interest in coming to the aid of any ally that is attacked. The Board of Peace is clearly an attempt to sideline the United Nations.

But the state department's announcement last week that it wishes to dismantle the international criminal court brick by brick" could be Trump's most frightening move of all.

Steve Bloomfield is the former international editor of the Observer and a previous winner of the Orwell prize