Opinion: We use the term war crime to describe notably heinous acts. It has made us forget that war itself is always a crime.

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“It’s too early to say that,” Biden responded a week into Russia’s genocide against Ukrainians when he was asked if Putin is committing war crimes. Yes, remember Ukraine? Atrocities continue in Ukraine, even as the media has lost its taste for covering them. For a few weeks of what many called a “war,” global powers refused to say that an obvious genocide was a war crime.
And that is precisely why the term “war crime” is not just useless, it is detrimental.
Defining a war crime itself is a difficult but important task. The phrase “war crime” seems to suggest there is such a thing as a “humanitarian war.” That is what the U.N. envisioned, writing that “humanitarian intervention” is “the threat or use of force … for the sole purpose of preventing or putting to a halt to a serious violation of human rights.” As a result, organizations like the Red Cross, dedicated to saving lives, believe that “even wars have rules.”
There are a host of violations that constitute a war crime. Niche acts like “taking of hostages,” “extensive destruction and appropriation of property” and “making improper use of a flag of truce” are among them. In the same list, though, are broader terms like “wilful killing” or “wilfully causing great suffering.” With this broader definition, seemingly any war is a war crime. For example, every United States intervention made in the name of “counter-terrorism” has been based on lies or imperialist reasons. In itself, that is “wilful killing.” Not to mention, what difference does it make? If one unintentionally kills, why is it worse than wilfully doing so.
Not to be misunderstood, there must be a difference between killing soldiers and killing civilians and journalists. Designating these differences is crucial to characterizing a flawed regime. To me, though, even going to war or invading a nation says enough about a nation. Just as a civilian killing another civilian is never justified — apart from self-defense — to initiate a war that results in the loss of life must be treated the same: a crime.
Semantics aside, the term war crime normalizes all the war around it. News cycles right now still pick up leads on threats of chemical violence or civilian murder, but the stories not shared are the innocent Ukrainian soldiers who are killed every day. Our eyes widen as a schoolhouse is bombed, but military lives taken by weapons designed to shred the body is a normal part of diplomacy. As Samuel Moyn wrote about the normalization of warfare in “Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War,” “we fight war crimes but have forgotten the crime of war.”
As individuals who are virtually unbothered by the war apart from raised gas prices due to a temporary shock to the oil market, our indifference to military violence is terrifying. Every life lost in the war is a death that would not have happened if not for an autocratic regime. Every life lost, by definition, is the result of a war crime. That is precisely why it is a flawed term.

The distinction “war crime” made was meant to give the international community greater ammunition in punishing regime leaders, but it does not. Putin has managed to remain untouched in these past few months, while the rest of the world and his own country suffer. Instead, the only thing the term war crime has done is make us gasp for 3 seconds when Biden called Putin a war criminal and move on. The only thing the term has done is make us forget that during every second of our day to day, crimes continue to happen.