U.S. Won’t Sign Int’l Cluster Bomb Treaty

Previous PeacePundit posts (see list below) have discussed civilian casualties caused by deployment of land mines, unmanned drones, and other “lingering” weapons. The principle for determining responsibility for civilian deaths is simple:

If you put weapons out and they kill innocent people, you are responsible.

Like land mines, cluster bombs are a weapon that continues to kill and maim — mostly innocent civilians — long after hostilities have ended. Each cluster bomb, when dropped or fired into a battle zone, splits into dozens or even hundreds of small “bomblets” that rain down upon the targeted area. Thus, more enemy fighters and equipment can be targeted by fewer bombs, artillery shells, or missiles.

However, many of the bomblets fail to detonate initially, and lay scattered around the battlefield for weeks, months, even years, until some unsuspecting civilian happens by and either accidentally kicks them or picks them up. Boom! The unfortunate people who find them lose feet, hands, eyes, or lives. Many bomblets are brightly colored and so entice children who find them to pick them up.

International agencies have often tried to ban or limit the use of cluster bombs, similarly to efforts to ban and limit biological weapons, chemical weapons, land mines, and nuclear weapons. A recent AP article, excerpted below, describes the latest effort: a treaty signed by a large number of nations. Unfortunately, the main countries that make and use cluster bombs, including the U.S., won’t sign the treaty. They argue that cluster weapons are too effective to give up, and claim the right to continue to use the most effective weapons available to defeat their enemies.

That argument is of course completely bogus, because those same nations have previously signed treaties banning or limiting the use of even more effective weapons: biological, chemical, and nuclear. Are they saying that they want to be able to use those as well?

Please write your congressional representatives and ask them to push for a ban on cluster weapons, or at least a requirement that cluster bomblets that don’t explode initially must then deactivate themselves reliably and permanently.

Associate Press, 31 May 2008

111 Nations, But Not US, Adopt Cluster Bomb Treaty

…

[A] treaty formally adopted Friday by 111 nations … would outlaw all current designs of cluster munitions and require destruction of stockpiles within eight years. It also opens the possibility that European allies could order U.S. bases located in their countries to remove cluster bombs from their stocks.

The United States and other leading cluster bomb makers — Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan — boycotted the talks, … All defended the overriding military value of cluster bombs, which carpet a battlefield with dozens to hundreds of explosions.

But treaty backers — who long have sought a ban because cluster bombs leave behind “duds” that later maim or kill civilians — insisted they had made it too politically painful for any country to use the weapons again.

“The country that thinks of using cluster munitions next week should think twice, because it would look very bad,” said Espen Barth Eide, Deputy Defense Minister of Norway, which began the negotiations last year and will host a treaty-signing ceremony Dec. 3.

…

However, the treaty … suggests that a treaty member could call in support from U.S. air power or artillery using cluster munitions, so long as the caller does not “expressly request the use of cluster munitions.”

The treaty also contains promises to mobilize international aid to cluster bomb-scarred lands such as southern Lebanon, where a 2006 war between the militant group Hezbollah and Israel left behind an estimated 1 million unexploded “bomblets.” The pact requires treaty members to aid explosives-clearance work and provide medical, training and other support to blast victims, their families and communities.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the treaty would not change U.S. policy and cluster munitions remain “absolutely critical and essential” to U.S. military operations.

…

U.S. defense analysts … doubted that the treaty would force any American retreat on the matter, noting that a majority of U.S. artillery shells use cluster technology. “This is a treaty drafted largely by countries which do not fight wars,” said John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org.

…

Ivan Oelrich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said he expected U.S. forces to keep using shells, rockets and bombs that break apart into smaller explosive objects because they have 10 times or more killing power than traditional munitions, particularly against troops in exposed terrain or in foxholes.

Government and military spokesmen in other cluster bomb-defending nations were similarly dismissive of the treaty.

“Russia will not ban cluster bombs and land mines,” Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Buzhinsky said earlier this week in Moscow. “We stand for evolutionary development of these weapons. Russia’s Defense Ministry objects to radical and prohibitive measures of this kind.”

The treaty spells out future requirements for legal cluster weapons. … But U.S. analysts derided the conditions as illogical.

Both Oelrich and Pike said it would be technically possible to design new cluster munitions that meet all of the treaty’s criteria …

Oelrich said the treaty’s insistence on electronic fail-safes ignored the possibility of producing submunitions encased in metals that rapidly deteriorate when exposed to sun or moisture …

…

Pike said if other countries insist on shells, rockets and bombs that contain no more than nine submunitions each, the military logic would be inescapable. “It would just mean I’m going to have to shoot more of them!” he said with a laugh.

[Read full article]

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