“To those rightly raising questions about the US decision to send cluster munitions to 🇺🇦, your concerns about “war crimes” & international law today would have had a lot more credibility if you raised similar concerns the previous 499 days about 🇷🇺 using such weapons against 🇺🇦.” Michael McFaul
#Ukraine
I liked the way Michael Kofman put it some months back – that using cluster munitions is a way to compensate for a lack of standard HE munitions being available, and if we could provide Ukraine with sufficient HE munitions, they wouldn’t need to use cluster munitions – and that would be preferable. I think that he made a good point – obviously, given the options, Ukraine would prefer not to deal with UXO cleanup. But, apparently Ukraine didn’t consider the available HE munitions to be adequate.
And I have difficulty second-guessing Ukraine’s position. It’s them that have the most skin in the game on this decision. As long as we’ve given them as much information as we can on the costs of the munitions, so they understand what they’re dealing with, then I think that Ukraine should be the one to make the call.
I mean, there have already been a bunch of cluster munitions used in the war, not to mention a shit-ton of landmines laid. Hell, naval mines even. And even non-cluster munitions do have a dud rate, though it’s less of an issue than with cluster munitions.
I mean, there’s going to be a very considerable amount of UXO cleanup work to do after the war regardless.
Yep. It’s hard for me to call it a war crime if they’re using it on their own land. However, if they start launching CBs on Rostov on don, they’ve crossed a line
Well, it’s not a war crime regardless, as countries need to sign up to a treaty to prohibit cluster munitions. While a number of countries have done so, none of Russia, Ukraine, or the US have signed up to said treaty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munitions
So they can’t be violating said treaty.
There’s no customary international law prohibition on cluster munitions, so absent membership in a treaty, countries can’t be violating international law.
That being said, I think that the main issue isn’t one of legality, but an ethical position. It’s a question of “people are probably going to die down the road from these, and it will take the expenditure of money to make the use of that land safe; is the tradeoff there a reasonable one”. On one hand, I get that the child or grandchild of someone in Ukraine might be killed. On the other hand…if their grandparent dies in the current war because they lacked sufficient weight of artillery fire to suppress opposing forces during an assault, that child isn’t going to be around either, so…
Sure. Agreed. The Ukrainian’s can dictate if they want to use it on their own land, with an understanding of future repercussions of demining and making the land safe. Ethically, I will be very opposed to Ukraine deploying CBs on Russian civilian centers (actual Russia, not the made up one from Putin’s decree).
Pop off on Luhansk, Donetsk, and Sevestapol. Don’t employ CBs on Krasnodar.
I’m sorry to be that man, but I’ll remind you that russia was using CBs basically from day one. Having a moral high ground is cool, but we need to protect ourselves. We need to do that any way possible. It’s weird that you think Ukraine should be able to endanger itself, but not the enemy’s territory.
Not by attacking and endangering noncoms, no thank you