I haven't got this thing figured out yet, but I know a lot of the major powers are not signatories to the treaty.
I think part of the problem is that they are going to have to decide just what is a war crime. Innocents get killed in war, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, and not all of their deaths constitute war crimes; errant bombs, etc. My understanding of this is that it just might be a political tool against more powerful enemies; for example, the Palestinians would insist that Israel's actions a few months ago were war crimes and genocidal, while it appears that the IDF went out of their way to avoid casualties on both sides. It is almost a certainty that the Arab world would try to prosecute ?Sharon,?entire Israeli government, somebody, for this. Ditto in Bosnia, where we killed civilians directly, and also possibly indirectly by damage to the infrastructure of the country.
I really need to study this more, but this time we are not the lone major power to join up with a bunch of countries we consider to be rogue nations, such as with the land-mine treaty.
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