New York on edge: the UN summit as pressure cooker
Today marks the start of the High-Level Week of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. On paper, it’s the annual diplomatic high mass: speeches, handshakes, bilateral meetings. Behind the scenes, this year it has become something else entirely.
On the East River, the interests of world powers, international courts, and strategic allies collide at an unprecedented, charged moment. Tensions between the United States, Japan, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague are reaching a boiling point. And with them, the survival of the multilateral legal order is being put to the test.
Takaichi and Trump: a conversation on the clock
On the sidelines of the summit, US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi meet. For Tokyo, timing is everything. Two days later, Trump will host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington for an official state visit.
Tokyo fears that Washington may make concessions in those talks that directly affect Japan. Think of Taiwan’s vulnerable status, or the stricter export restrictions China has imposed on rare earth metals. To avoid being sidelined in any deals made over her head, Takaichi travelled to New York herself. Her goal: to personally secure a reaffirmation of American support for deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
The real explosive dossier: the US versus the Court
The most sensitive topic hanging over this summit is the escalating fight between the United States and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It hit a low point when the American government fully deployed its sanctions tools under Executive Order 14203.
That order, signed by Trump on 6 February 2025, imposes financial penalties and entry bans on anyone involved in investigations into American citizens or their allies. Initially, it targeted individual prosecutors. In the summer of 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a coordinated strategy to fully neutralise and dismantle the Court.
A sitting ICC president on the sanctions list
The most far-reaching step followed on 18 August 2026. The US State Department placed the Court’s sitting president, Japanese jurist Tomoko Akane, on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list. Alongside senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, she landed on the so-called Specially Designated Nationals list.
Washington has now sanctioned nine of the Court’s eighteen judges, plus both deputy chief prosecutors, former chief prosecutor Karim Khan, and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Never before has a sitting head of an international tribunal been targeted so severely.
What a sanction means in practice
The consequences reach far beyond American borders, and they are very concrete. Anyone on the list finds all personal and business assets under US jurisdiction frozen. For American citizens, banks, and companies, it becomes a crime to provide services to that person.
Speaking from The Hague, Akane stated that her credit cards have been disabled and that she is almost entirely cut off from the international banking system. Financial institutions worldwide are refusing her transactions, fearing US secondary sanctions. According to insiders, the US is even preparing sanctions against the Court as a whole. That would effectively make it impossible to pay salaries to hundreds of staff or carry out field investigations.
Japan in an impossible bind
For Japan, this is painful. Since joining in 2007, Japan has been the Court’s largest financial backer, contributing around 15 percent of its regular budget. In Tokyo, Akane is seen as a symbol of Japan’s legal leadership on the world stage.
Takaichi called the sanctions against Akane incompatible with Japanese values and sent a diplomatic envoy to The Hague. But she has so far avoided an open confrontation with Trump. The defence alliance with the US is too important for Tokyo to risk, especially as China grows more assertive in the region.
The UN itself feels it too
The friction is now spilling over into the United Nations itself. Because the US refuses to grant visas to sanctioned ICC officials, a deputy chief prosecutor was unable to address the UN Security Council in person earlier this year.
That sparked a fierce debate over the 25th Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute. Many member states and civil society organisations want to move that conference from New York to The Hague. Full and safe participation in New York has simply become impossible under the American entry restrictions.
A turning point
Today’s UN summit marks a pivotal moment in international relations. National security interests, bilateral power dynamics, and the preservation of a rules-based international order are colliding in New York with full force.
The choices world leaders make here will determine whether international legal institutions can preserve their independence, or whether the multilateral order finally buckles under geopolitical power politics.
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