Humanitarian law still has enormous unrealized potential to guide the world’s statesmen in determining when regional disorders threaten the broader peace. For the events of the past decade – from the war in Bosnia to the attacks of 9/11 -- have shown that war crimes and crimes against humanity, coupled with impunity, are an alarm bell signaling that far worse things are about to happen. Humanitarian law was drafted on the ashes and ruins of disastrous past conflicts; it is the law of "never again." But it cannot work unless the major world power, the United States (and the leading regional powers) shows respect for its own commitments and is seen to be showing respect.

The US government’s unilateral reinterpretation of major elements of the Third Geneva Convention (on Prisoners of War), and its refusal to provide due process under any legal code to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and other sites, sets a serious negative precedent. Lesser powers, with aggressive intentions, will deduce that if the biggest single power can ignore universal, ratified covenants, they can do the same. This can lead to mayhem in far-flung places. Moreover, the US government’s approach can result in enormous future embarrassment when it is determined, as I am sure it will be, that a significant number of individuals was held indefinitely and without due cause.

The US government’s failure thoroughly to investigate atrocities during the 2001 Afghan intervention, in particular, the murder by suffocation of hundreds of Taliban prisoners, is another troubling sign of disdain for the law by the world’s leading power. Its worldwide campaign against the International Criminal Court, lacking any defensible basis in fact, law, or logic, is seen by most of the civilized world as a ludicrous quest that can only prove counter-productive to the shared aims of world peace and order. There is no question that the new court’s statute and procedures deserve scrutiny and improvement, but a frontal outside assault will hardly bring about the desired result.

Roy Gutman is a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and President of the Crimes of War Project.