What now for war trials after Milosevic?

And what are the costs? International trials are slow. They are expensive, drawing resources from other initiatives. More fundamentally, fetishizing law narrows our options for supporting transitional societies. Trials are important, but it's wrong to prioritize convictions over peace and stability: Sometimes insisting on arrest can destabilize fragile states.

Yet without missing a beat, international law turns from disappointment to the next indictee who is key to everything. Now that Milosevic is dead, focus has shifted to Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic as the key players who must be brought to justice. I, too, hope they are tried, but only if it contributes to regional stability, not because outsiders need a villain in the dock.

Some interpret Milosevic's death in a cell as a metaphor for justice, but international criminal law does not work that way: Milosevic died an alleged war criminal, not a proven one. In our haste to reaffirm international justice after his death, let's remember what his life shows about the limits of that project. What can tribunals do, and what can't they? The answer is mixed. Courts can produce individual justice, but not necessarily international justice. Their ability to deter war, define truth, or promote reconciliation is unproven.

Yet the international criminal law paradigm continues to dominate our thinking. Milosevic was no strategist; he only wanted another day in power, and another. What do we want? So far: Commitment to one-size-fits-all justice and an end to politicking, but not a strategy for using law as one tool among many in responding to war.

A comprehensive strategy would incorporate amnesties (including a UN Security Council pardon power), truth commissions, exile for entrenched leaders and lustration for mid-level officials, and civil compensation. It would prioritize domestic processes - and have the courage not to insist on trials in countries that aren't ready.

And it would recognize that war is still the best way to combat war crimes: The energy expended on tribunals might be better invested in building consensus on robust, timely intervention when crimes are being committed rather than seeking punishment afterward.

Most of all, international law needs a dose of humility. We should reexamine the attractive but empirically dubious shibboleth "no peace without justice." Peace without justice happens all the time. Justice is a rare bird, and agreement on what justice means is rarer still. But peace and stability - without which justice seldom flourishes - are within the reach of a flexible response that upholds law yet does not abhor alternatives.

• Timothy Waters was a member of the team at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that drafted the original indictment of Milosevic. He currently teaches international criminal law at the University of Mississippi.

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