I don't understand.

In a war, with bombs falling, massed groups of combatants firing at each other, fighters dog-fighting in the sky, tanks rolling over towns and villages, commanders and generals intent on destroying the armies of the enemy, with even lawyers, doctors and nurses taking up arms, how do you prevent atrocities, whatever those are, or war crimes from being committed? Since 1945 the United States of America has a fought a war in every decade to date.

In the sixty years of United States' wars, ignoble acts have been committed by United States military personnel and the government for which they have fought. The effects of US military interventions have sometimes lingered for decades; for example, the use of the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam between 1961 and 1971 is still causing misery today. Many children continue to be born with debilitating health problems because of the persistence of the chemical in the environment.

The United States is not the only country that has been at war over those sixty years. The Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Great Britain...all have been at war and in those wars, it is alleged, atrocities have been committed, war crimes have been committed.

The central question remains: how do you prevent atrocities and war crimes from being committed? Until the beginning of the Nuclear Age, in which large stock-piles of nuclear warheads and the missiles for their delivery were amassed, "war crimes" were punished using some form of victor's justice. The Nuremberg Trials were show trials used to punish the Axis Powers after the Second World War, but even if the Axis Power had had foreknowledge of the trials, it is doubtful that they would have stayed their hands from doing what they did during the war. The hypocrisy of the trials is demonstrated by the fact that the Allied Powers were never held to account for the bombing of Dresden in 1945 in which almost 25,000 people were killed in two nights of aerial bombing.

I have followed the debate as closely as I can of the question of preventing sexual violence and sexual exploitation during periods of armed conflict. I am afraid I do not see how men and women in combat will be prevented from committing acts of sexual violence when they are in combat; it goes against their instincts to commit violence as they have been trained to do and are urged to do when at war. War or armed conflict are not clinical events in which violent emotions are not  de riguer; they are violent contests in which atavism and savagery are weapons too for the destruction of the enemy or, at least, for his capitulation. In that atmosphere, in that environment, it is strange that sexual violence will be absent.

The second strange thing about the debate is that this rule seems not to apply to nations like the United States or the Israel, Great Britain or France, but applies to every one else, depending on whether the United States and its allies like them or not. If the prosecution of those accused of those accused of atrocities or war crimes can only be guaranteed because they are not backed by a world power, what is the point of even considering rules to police it to begin with? I am afraid I do not understand. Perhaps one day I will, though I fear I won't.