This foreign entanglement has not been a business-centered policy, even if the territories at stake have rich resources that not only Americans but also those from non-combatant countries are trying to exploit.
When it came to balancing this priority against the interests of active participants in conflict, especially irregular forces who for tactical reasons choose to go "underground" and not distinguish themselves from civilians, the Geneva Conventions clearly favored the non-combatant.
Those things are at their mildest in Matt Lane, the librarian and archivist of the title: benign high-priest of literary hush, untouched by history (too late for the first world war and a non-combatant in the second), unproblematically Christian.