Date

Mar 21, 1986

Description

Executive Secretary Platt informed National Security Adviser Poindexter that the Defense Department and the State Department had decided against ratification of Protocol I but favored sending Protocol II (on non-international armed conflicts) to the Senate. The Pentagon memorandum, signed by Secretary of Defense Weinberger, drew on the JCS report to explain the rejection of Protocol I, but went even further to condemn it. While acknowledging that the Protocol included “good language” to distinguish combatants from non-combatants, it found that language to be “essentially hortatory, while the Protocol’s key operative provision would radically change humanitarian law in favor of terrorists and other irregulars at the expense of civilians.” Noting the various objections raised by the JCS, Weinberger agreed with Chiefs that the flaws of Protocol I were “not remediable through reservations and understandings.”

Noting that the State Department had “previously expressed its sympathy” for the objectives of Protocol I, George Shultz’s memorandum to Weinberger indicated that “our prior positions … have always been conditional … on their military acceptability.” With the Defense Department’s recommendation against ratification, Shultz agreed that the U.S. could make “positive” features of Protocol I as “customary law.” Shultz recommended that the U.S. carry out its decisions “in a manner designed to minimize any potentially adverse international consequences of repudiation of Protocol I.”

Source

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Sven Kraemer Files, box 6, Laws of War 1977 Protocol March 1986

Document published in following posting(s):

Humanitarian Law of War: The U.S.-NATO Review of Additional Protocol I, 1978-1986

Sep 21, 2023