Cluster bombs: A line that should never be crossed

US President Joe Biden's plan to send cluster munitions to Ukraine for use against Russian forces in the ongoing war is controversial because it is bad, immoral and could involve commission of a war crime if civilians suffer.  He said the decision to dispatch these weapons was considered for some time, although Ukraine has been demanding them for months and wants to use them in its delayed, slow-going offensive in the east of the country.

Biden's decision bypassed a US law banning the manufacture, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 per cent.  The munitions due to be sent to Ukraine have a failure rate of less than 2.5 per cent, Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed, although military experts do not believe this assertion. Sullivan compared the claimed US rate with a 40 per cent failure rate of Russian munitions in use by both Kyiv and Moscow.

Although both Ukraine and Russia have been employing Russian-made cluster munitions since the start of the war, this has been largely ignored.  Biden’s decision to increase their use is a bad idea.  His determination to include cluster munitions in his new $800 million package of weaponry for Ukraine has, in the opinion of Congressional opponents of this move, undermined his moral status. “Cluster bombs should never be used. That is crossing a line,” Californian Democrat Representative Barbara Lee said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union”. She continued, "What I think is that we ..would risk losing our moral leadership. And so I’m hoping that the administration would reconsider this because these are very dangerous bombs, they’re dangerous weapons and this is a line that I don’t believe we should cross.” Other top Democrats agree with her while leading Republicans favour exporting shells carrying cluster bomblets. Politico reported that Biden’s ex-press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier that Russia’s use of such weapons could potentially constitute a war crime.  She did not mention that Ukraine was also using these weapons but that has become standard practice among apologists for this war which has been provoked by NATO's eastward expansion after the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

Hundreds of small cluster bomblets contained in artillery shells and bombs dropped from warplanes are anti-personnel weapons which scatter across extensive battlefields killing, wounding and maiming combatants.  While a majority explode in the air or on contact with intended human targets, many do not explode on impact and can remain hidden as mini-landmines which kill and harm civilians weeks, months, and years after conflicts have ended. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been victims of cluster shells since World War II.  Allegations of war crimes have been dismissed.

Human rights and anti-war organisations have campaigned long and hard to get cluster munitions banned and succeeded with the 2008 Dublin international treaty against these munitions.  This has been adopted and ratified by 111 parties and accepted by another 12 states.  Countries which adhered to the convention are prohibited from using, manufacturing, stockpiling, transferring to others and promoting the use of these weapons.  The US, Russia, Ukraine, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Brazil are among the states not party to the convention.  The signatories include NATO members Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Iraq, Lebanon, The Netherlands, Norway, Palestine, Portugal, New Zealand and Spain.

Under US pressure a provision was adopted to allow signatory countries to cooperate in military campaigns with non-signatory states.  This has permitted Biden to go ahead despite the opposition of Britain, Spain, Canada and New Zealand.

Biden has said that he had taken this action because the Ukrainians are "running out of ammunition", indicating that the US, with annual military budgets well over $800 billion, has expended its stock of conventional 155 mm howitzer shells and will replace them with cluster shells.  Howitzer shells are in short supply in Ukraine which is consuming vast stocks of munitions daily.

At the end of March this year, US Chief-of-Staff General Mark Milley said the Pentagon "has a long ways [sic] to go to" to boost its munitions stockpiles to ensure the country is prepared to wage defensive war. Milley and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed with Congress the affect of the Ukraine war on US supplies of materiel. Due to this war, US firms have had to step up production to meet demand and provide for possible challenges to the US from Russia and China. These industries must be delighted with increased sales.

Cluster munitions have been widely used by the US in this region. In 1991, the US and its allies dropped 61,000 cluster shells containing 30 million submunitions on Iraq and Iraqi forces in Kuwait. The US used cluster munitions in its 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan and employed this weapon in the totally unprovoked, deadly, destructive, and politically disastrous war in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. Millions of bomblets were scattered in countryside and urban areas.

Israeli forces used cluster munitions in 1971-1973 in Lebanon, 1982 in Syria and the 2006 war against Lebanon. The UN estimates that Israel fired up to 4 million submunitions. Many of these bomblets remained for years undetected in south Lebanese fields although there has been extensive de-mining, including by UN, international and Emirati experts.  Cluster bomb clean-up is a long, dangerous, and costly process.