The media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war. This is because winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield. And it remains true regardless of the aspirations of many journalists to give an impartial and balanced assessment of conflict. The experience of the US military in the post-Cold War world demonstrates that victory on the battlefield is seldom as simple as defeating the enemy by force of arms. From Somalia and Haiti through Kosovo and Afghanistan, success has been defined in political, rather than military, terms. Today's military commanders stand to gain more than ever before from controlling the media and shaping their output. The laws and conventions of war, however, do not adequately reflect the critical role that the media play in shaping the political outcome of conflicts. International humanitarian law requires that media members are afforded the rights of civilians; the question is whether this is sustainable when the exigencies of warfighting suggest that controlling the media is essential. The Media and the Laws of War It is difficult to generalize about the international media, a heterogeneous entity that includes representatives of numerous organizations with varying political and cultural foundations. But it is nonetheless an incontrovertible fact that the international media as a whole are not a neutral force on the battlefield. Consider the US-led invasion of Iraq. Of course, the US military was aware of the possibility of bad press when it introduced widespread embedding. Reporters bring their own perceptions, and the level of access and freedom of reporting entailed in the embedding scheme meant that damaging reports were a real possibility. Indeed, damaging reports eventually occurred, as when The Washington Post quoted Lieutenant General William Wallace as saying that the enemy being fought was different from the one we war-gamed against. (1) Members of the media remain entitled to express their opinions, whether or not they are billeted with US forces. In an era in which the media are less deferential to authority than World War II, and in wars that are less integral to their home societies, journalists have proved capable of fierce criticism, both of individual participants' behavior and of the wider strategic purpose of a conflict. Consider a later example from the occupation of Iraq, the battle for Fallujah in April-May 2004. Writing after the withdrawal of most coalition forces from downtown Fallujah in favor of indigenous Iraqi units, Ralph Peters offered this assessment of the power of the media in determining military outcomes: The [US] Marines in Fallujah weren't beaten by the terrorists and insurgents, who were being eliminated effectively and accurately. They were beaten by al-Jazeera.... The media [are] often referred to off-handedly as a strategic factor. But we still don't fully appreciate [their] fatal power.... In Fallujah, we allowed a bonanza of hundreds of terrorists and insurgents to escape us--despite promising that we would bring them to justice. We stopped because we were worried about what already hostile populations might think of us. The global media disrupted the US and Coalition chains of command.... We could have won militarily. Instead, we surrendered politically and called it a success. Our enemies won the information war. We literally didn't know what hit us. (2) The Fallujah stalemate demonstrates that the neutral status that the press enjoys in conflicts is far removed from neutrality in any normative sense. The question then becomes whether this is an appropriate circumstance, whether it is sustainable, and what are the likely implications. The Geneva Protocols The overarching framework of international humanitarian law governing the conduct of belligerents dates to an era before the expansion of international news networks that operate across a range of media and are capable of live battlefield reporting. …