Geneva 2.0.

• Author: Carpenter, Charli
• Position: Geneva conventions

IN JANUARY 2002, then-White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote a memorandum to President Bush in which he argued that "the current paradigm renders quaint" many of the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. This remark set the stage for a series of efforts by the Bush administration to claim that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the global war on terror, that they applied to some detainees but not others or, at a minimum, that the president is entitled to interpret the treaty's "grave breaches" clauses as he pleases.

These and subsequent actions have set off what some have called a crisis in the laws of war, ironically pitting the U.S. government (perhaps the most Genevacompliant uperpower in history) against human-rights-minded elites whose admirable goal is to promote the very principles for which American political culture has long stood. The arguments of the Bush administration when it comes to torture, prisoner-of-war status and extraordinary rendition have been met with outrage by the international community, constitutional scholars and human-rights organizations like Amnesty International, which has referred to Guantanamo Bay as the "gulag of our times."

But the polarization of these two camps obscures the broad middle ground that exists between them. Both have forgotten that the laws of war always represented a compromise between humanitarian principles and security needs. Advocates for applying current international humanitarian law to all detainees in the global war on terror may hold the moral high ground, but they often misconstrue the political logic of the Geneva regime and its historical context. Those who argue the conventions can and should be disregarded at great powers' discretion gravely underestimate the importance of the regime to securing U.S. interests in the new century.

The contemporary problem--for both governments and transnational-rights advocates--is that neither sovereignty nor battle space is what it used to be. The solution is neither to blindly promote adherence to the letter of the law nor to continue to willfully flout its spirit. Instead, both the U.S. government and members of the transnational human-rights network should seek to update and clarify these rules through an international conference that would lead toward a new additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions.

Striking a balance between timeless moral obligations and new strategic concerns would reaffirm, strengthen and be consistent with the principles of the original conventions. It is also the surest way to prevent the regime from buckling under the weight of our changing times. In this, the United States government and transnational human-rights community should be allies, not adversaries.

IT IS TEMPTING to interpret the crisis in the laws of war as the inevitable triumph of realpolitik over morality. But this is not simply a case of might attempting to make right. The truth is powerful governments often incur significant short-term costs, even in war, to maintain a set of rules they view as in their long-term strategic or systemic interests. However, social-science research shows that international rule-sets generally weaken when historical trends outpace the treaty provisions to which states have agreed. We are living in such an era. While the moral principles of Geneva may be timeless, the literal rules no longer speak either to the realities of warfare or to evolving global norms.

Consider the following. The Bush administration did not invent the idea that detainees could be held indefinitely. In fact, this principle forms the bedrock of the laws of war: prisoners are not to be punished but simply removed from the battlefield. They must be repatriated only at the conclusion of hostilities or when the detaining power is certain the individual will not resume hostilities if released. But times have changed. Some asymmetric conflicts may never have an official "end date." It is difficult to know who might, when released, join the insurgency. In such a situation, the very application of Geneva would seem to conflict with the human-rights outcome many wish to deliver to detainees: some guarantee of due process and an end to indefinite internments.

This is why an area in need of serious review is the relationship of nonstate actors to these rules and their status under the law. In the majority of conflict situations today, the parties to the conflict include nonstate entities of various types: guerilla groups, insurgents, maritime pirates and often mere criminal bands consisting of drugged-up child recruits and armed by a never-ending supply of illicit small arms. Even the most-powerful country in the world is waging a so-called war against a transnational network of private citizens, rather than a sovereign state. All this complicates conventional definitions of "armed conflict"--a concept fundamental to the original treaties.

These nonstate players were never asked to...