Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Bush Administration memorandum argued that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Afghanistan because Afghanistan was no longer a state and therefore no longer a party to those treaties. This article argues both that there is not precedent for such a "failed state" doctrine and that it is, as a normative matter, not a desirable doctrine. It is argued that the memorandum inappropriately jumped from the political science description of a state that can no longer deliver basic services to the legal conclusion that the state no longer existed. A step taken despite the fact that no state (including …