Captain Perfidy: Dutch Courage Goes Feral

Why US Forces Don’t Dress as Civilians, Medics, or the Enemy. It’s not because they're nice.

According to the New York Times, it’s no longer enough for the United States to shoot the wounded.

Now we dress up as civilians to do it.

For the moment, set aside the question of whether this is an “armed conflict” at all. I don’t believe the United States is at war with Venezuelan cartels, and I doubt an international armed conflict ever existed beyond the Maduro abduction operation. The existence of an armed conflict matters for many legal questions.

It doesn’t matter for this one.

Because what’s at issue here is perfidy.

Perfidy is the use of deception to induce an enemy to believe you are protected under the laws of war — civilian, wounded, medical, or surrendering — and then killing them once they rely on it.

Perfidy is one of the most serious violations of the laws governing the use of military forces.

Why the Rules Exist (And What Everyone Gets Wrong)

The laws of armed conflict rest on one simple premise:

We have to be able to tell who is a soldier and who is not.

Everything flows from that.

Protection of civilians.
Protection of medics.
Protection of the wounded.
Surrender. Parlay. White flags.

This isn’t about morality. It’s about function.

If shooting the wounded is legitimate, fighting to the last man becomes inevitable.
If medics are fake, medics get shot.
If shooting those under a white flag is ok, every conflict becomes one of annihilation (no one can surrender or negotiate peace).
If soldiers masquerade as civilians, civilians become targets.

That’s why perfidy is prohibited — not to protect civilians, but to protect soldiers.

Soldiers are granted combatant immunity: they are not personally criminally liable for acts that would otherwise be murder, arson, or terrorism. That bargain only works if the rules are followed. Break them, and the system collapses into an endless set of reprisals and annihilation.

The Law Is Not Ambiguous

The letter of the “law” on perfidy is found in the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Now, before you object, yes, I understand that the United States is not a party to Additional Protocol I. It has nevertheless repeatedly been stated, by the United States, and I know from having written our manuals, directives, policies, and strategies, that the prohibition on perfidy reflects customary international humanitarian law, is binding as a matter of policy and practice, and that the United States (until apparently now), internalized and followed the protocol. Up until now, the United States military functioned, punished its own, and directed its troops as if the Additional Protocols were U.S. law.

But, for the sake of argument, the US chose to ignore the Protocols entirely; the rule exists in the treaties the U.S. has ratified:

• Hague Regulations (1907): killing or wounding treacherously is forbidden; misuse of a flag of truce is prohibited.

• Geneva Convention I: the wounded and sick must be protected.

• Geneva Convention I: medical personnel and the Red Cross emblem may not be attacked or misused.

• Geneva Convention IV: civilians are protected precisely because combatants are distinguishable.

Feigning civilian, medical, wounded, or protected status to conduct military operations violates these rules. Full stop.

It is never lawful to pretend to be the Red Cross.
It is never lawful to masquerade as civilians to gain a lethal advantage.
It is never lawful to obscure military identity while exercising military force.

In wartime, this becomes a war crime. Outside wartime, it is still a treaty violation. Different labels. Same prohibition.

Identification Is Not Optional — and Not Conflict-Dependent

One point needs to be made explicit, because too many people are pretending it’s debatable, which is why the whole discussion gets “muddled” with this whole “war crime” discussion.

The obligation to properly identify military forces does not arise only in armed conflict. It arises from the fact of being a military force of a nation-state at all.

You cannot function as a state’s armed forces while disguising who you are. Identification is not a tactical preference; it is a condition of legitimacy. The entire treaty framework governing military force — Geneva, Hague, and customary law — presupposes that states will make their forces legible as forces. That obligation exists independent of how, where, or whether those forces are deployed in combat.

To conclude otherwise is absurd. It would mean a state could evade every restraint in the system simply by denying the existence of armed conflict while deploying armed force in disguise. That interpretation would defeat the very purpose for which states entered these treaties in the first place.

Pacta sunt servanda¹ cuts both ways.

A nation-state does not get to exercise military power anonymously. If it does, it is no longer operating as a lawful armed force — it is engaging in treachery by design.

The Strategic Consequence Everyone Is Ignoring

The conventions don’t exist because war is humane.

They exist because reciprocity is brutal.

Once the United States normalizes disguising its forces as civilians, every civilian aircraft, vessel, or vehicle becomes suspect. And when one is attacked, the explanation will be simple:

How were we supposed to know?

And it will be acceptable to relax the protections afforded by the laws of armed conflict.

The people who will pay for this aren’t policymakers or television lawyers.

They’re the people in uniform.

1. Pacta sunt servanda is the foundational principle of treaty law that agreements are binding and must be performed in good faith. The maxim originates in Roman law, was carried forward through medieval canon law, and is now codified as a core rule of modern international law. It is most clearly expressed in Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: “Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.”

Functionally, pacta sunt servanda prohibits states from accepting the benefits of a treaty regime while evading its burdens through semantic gamesmanship or opportunistic reinterpretation. A state may not comply with treaty obligations only when convenient, nor defeat the object and purpose of a treaty by reclassifying conduct to avoid restraint.

Here, the principle matters because the treaty framework governing armed forces presupposes identifiable state military forces as a condition of restraint, reciprocity, and accountability. Allowing a state to disguise its armed forces while denying the applicability of armed conflict would hollow out the very obligations it undertook in entering the treaty system. Pacta sunt servanda forecloses that move.