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Sending Cluster Bombs to Ukraine Indicts the US’ Moral Posturing
The Biden administration overrode the warnings of rights advocates and transferred the weapons, which are sure to pose a threat to life well into the future, as they have in other countries.
Aug 23, 2023
President Joe Biden’s administration has taken a cruel weapon—the cluster bomb—off the shelf and sent it to Ukraine to be used in the war against Russia. Prior to being transferred to Ukraine, cluster bombs made in the United States were used by Saudi Arabia as recently as last year to devastating effect in its war in Yemen. The weapons pose such an extraordinary danger to civilians that—although the U.S. is among a minority of countries that refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions banning them, and retains such weapons in its arsenal—they have largely been gathering dust because their use and sale are so controversial on the world stage. The White House’s decision to transfer the bombs to Ukraine both escalates the already horrific war and legitimizes a weapon that has no place in our world.
Cluster bombs are large bombs that contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller bombs, or “bomblets.” Cluster bombs are designed to scatter the bomblets over a wide area upon detonation. At a time when the United States and its allies often claim—inaccurately—to carry out precision killing with “surgical strikes,” cluster bombs are imprecise by nature.
But what makes cluster bombs even worse is the fact that, inevitably, not all of the smaller, scattered bombs explode on impact. The bomblets lie on or below the surface of the ground, potentially for years or even decades, waiting to be detonated when touched. They are, in effect, land mines. As Amnesty International’s Brian Castner concludes, “There’s just not a responsible way to use cluster munitions.”
Well after ceasefires and treaties formally end armed conflicts, cluster bombs continue to threaten civilians in the places where they have been used.
In Laos, where the U.S. dropped cluster bombs extensively as part of its war in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and ’70s, unexploded bomblets continue to litter the land even today. As veteran foreign correspondent Lewis M. Simons—who covered the war in Southeast Asia—wrote in a piece responding to the news of the weapons transfer to Ukraine, “Less than 1% of the dormant bombs have been cleared since the war ended in Laos. About 20,000 civilians been killed during the same period. Even as the numbers gradually decline, thousands continue to be killed, crippled, and disfigured.” He added, “Half the victims are children.”
Well after ceasefires and treaties formally end armed conflicts, cluster bombs continue to threaten civilians in the places where they have been used. In response to the dangers remaining bomblets present to civilians, more than 120 countries have signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
This means that by transferring cluster bombs to Ukraine, the Biden administration is violating an international law that the majority of U.N. member states are party to.
This is ironic given the attention that the White House has rightfully called to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s violations of international law in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. move to send cluster bombs to Ukraine indicts the moral position that it has claimed in the war.
How We Got Here
Biden’s decision fits into a long, dark history of the U.S. manufacture, use, and sale of this destructive weapon. The U.S. has used cluster bombs in large-scale military operations since World War II, including its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq two decades ago. The bomblets that the U.S. used in those invasions were the same size and color as the packaged meals—humanitarian daily rations, or HDRs—that the U.S. also air-dropped for civilians. Human rights groups warned at the time against using cluster bombs, pointing to a similar problem that occurred when the U.S. used them in the Balkan Wars in the 1990s and children mistook the bomblets for toys—but the Pentagon used them anyway. Between the misleading, friendly appearance of the unexploded bomblets and their widespread scatter upon being dropped, cluster bombs killed, maimed, and threatened the lives of many civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, provoking condemnation by human rights groups.
Then in 2006, Israel used U.S.-made cluster bombs in its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. In a move that the U.N. described as “immoral,” Israel dropped the overwhelming majority of its bombs—90%—in the last three days of the war as it was retreating, leaving Southern Lebanon littered with mines that have continued to pose a threat to civilians in the years since. This further fueled public sentiment against cluster bombs.
In 2008, the year that the Convention on Cluster Munitions was drafted and opened to signatories, President George W. Bush’s administration issued guidance regarding the Pentagon’s use of the weapon. While the U.S. would maintain cluster bombs in its arsenal, the new directive required that the “dud rate” of the bomblets had to be under 1%.
The notion that it is possible to develop a cluster bomb—an essentially blunt instrument of warfare—that spares civilians is a total fantasy.
The directive, on the one hand, was a response to international pressure and domestic unease over the threat that such weapons posed to civilians. On the other hand, it gave cover to cluster bombs by suggesting that the destruction they caused could remain limited to the time and place of battle and target only combatants. But the U.S.’s so-called “precision weapons”—such as “smart bombs” and attack drones—have been shown to cause enormous civilian casualties. The notion that it is possible to develop a cluster bomb—an essentially blunt instrument of warfare—that spares civilians is a total fantasy.
In 2017, however, the U.S. abandoned even this effort that at least hinted at a concern for the problem of civilian harm and a commitment to human rights when Donald Trump’s administration reversed Bush’s 2008 directive. This allowed the use of cluster bombs that had already been made—and were in the U.S. stockpile—that had a dud rate exceeding 1%. The new guidance also removed a deadline for replacing older cluster bombs that had higher dud rates.
Ironically, this coincided with the greatest blow to cluster bombs’ credibility in recent memory, when the U.S. provided them to Saudi Arabia for use in its scorched-earth bombardment of Yemen. Riyadh bombed weddings, destroyed bridges and roads used by Yemeni civilians, and slaughtered dozens of children when it blew up a school bus—using U.S.-made cluster bombs. The atrocities rendered the war unpopular in the U.S., leading to a congressional vote to end U.S. involvement—which President Trump then vetoed.
The U.S. remains in the minority of countries that refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, along with Ukraine and Russia.
Still, the cluster weapons transfer to Ukraine remains controversial. In addition to condemnation by human rights groups like Amnesty International, The New York Times—which has enthusiastically supported sending weapons to Ukraine—editorialized against sending the cluster bombs.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration overrode the warnings of rights advocates and transferred the weapons, which are sure to pose a threat to life well into the future, as they have in other countries.
Thankfully though, that is not where the story ends.
During the widespread condemnation of U.S. support of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen at its height in the mid-2010s, anti-war activists in New England organized against Textron, a Rhode Island-based weapons manufacturer that made cluster bombs. The campaign was ultimately successful, and Textron announced in 2016 that it would stop manufacturing the weapon. The many controversies and regulations regarding cluster bombs have led U.S. companies to stop producing them, and Textron was the nation’s last domestic manufacturer. There are currently no cluster bombs being manufactured in the U.S., and, if anti-war activism is strong enough, perhaps there never will be.
Just weeks ago, the U.S. disposed of the last chemical weapons in what had once been an enormous arsenal. Though militarism is on the rise around the world—with Washington being a key driver—the elimination of U.S. chemical weapons is a great milestone in the history of disarmament. The challenge is to build on the success of the chemical weapons moratorium and on the campaign against Textron, and toward the day when we can also assure the elimination of U.S. cluster bombs.
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Kosovo Closes Main Border With Serbia Amid Protests, Rising Tensions
"It is paramount that all involved avoid any rhetoric or actions that can cause tensions and escalate the situation," said the leader of NATO's mission in Kosovo. "Solutions should be sought through dialogue."
Dec 28, 2022
Kosovo shut down its largest border crossing with Serbia on Wednesday, underscoring the extent to which tensions between the two Balkan countries are rising.
Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 with Western support, roughly a decade after North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces intervened and carried out a bombing campaign on behalf of ethnic Albanians during a 1998-1999 civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
Serbia, which had been one of the six constituent republics of Yugoslavia prior to its dissolution, has refused to recognize the statehood of Kosovo, which had been a Yugoslav province within Serbia. Instead, according toAgence France-Presse, Belgrade has encouraged 120,000 ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo to defy Pristina's authority—especially in northern Kosovo where Serbs constitute the majority.
According to Al Jazeera: "About 50,000 Serbs living in ethnically divided northern Kosovo refuse to recognize the government in Pristina or the status of Kosovo as a country separate from Serbia. They have the support of many Serbs in Serbia and its government."
As AFP reported:
The latest trouble erupted on December 10, when ethnic Serbs put up barricades to protest the arrest of an ex-policeman suspected of being involved in attacks against ethnic Albanian police officers—effectively sealing off traffic on two border crossings.
After the roadblocks were erected, Kosovar police and international peacekeepers were attacked in several shooting incidents, while the Serbian armed forces were put on heightened alert this week.
Late Tuesday, dozens of demonstrators on the Serbian side of the border used trucks and tractors to halt traffic leading to Merdare, the biggest crossing between the neighbors—a move which forced Kosovo police to close the entry point on Wednesday.
Due to recent border blockades and closures, just three entry points between the two countries remain open. The obstructions are "preventing thousands of Kosovars who work elsewhere in Europe from returning home for holidays," Al Jazeera noted.
"Kosovo's government has asked NATO's peacekeeping force for the country, the approximately 4,000-strong KFOR, to clear the barricades" erected on its side of the border, the news outlet reported. "KFOR has no authority to act on Serbian soil."
KFOR commander Major General Angelo Michele Ristuccia said Wednesday in a statement that "it is paramount that all involved avoid any rhetoric or actions that can cause tensions and escalate the situation."
"Solutions should be sought through dialogue," he added.
On Tuesday, Kosovo Interior Minister Xhelal Sveçla accused Serbia, under the influence of Russia, of trying to destabilize its neighbor by supporting ethnic Serbs who have been demonstrating for weeks in northern Kosovo.
According to Al Jazeera:
Serbia denies it is trying to destabilize its neighbor and says it only wants to protect the Serbian minority living in what is now Kosovan territory... not recognized by Belgrade.
Moscow said on Wednesday that it supported Serbia's attempts to protect ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo but denied Pristina's accusation that Russia was somehow stoking tensions in an attempt to sow chaos across the Balkans.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called it "wrong" to blame Moscow for escalating tensions between Kosovo and Serbia.
"Serbia is a sovereign country, and naturally, it protects the rights of Serbs who live nearby in such difficult conditions, and naturally reacts harshly when these rights are violated," said Peskov.
"Having very close allied relations, historical and spiritual relations with Serbia, Russia is very closely monitoring what is happening, how the rights of Serbs are respected and ensured," he added. "And, of course, we support Belgrade in the actions that are being taken."
In a joint statement released Wednesday, the European Union and the United States called on all parties "to exercise maximum restraint, to take immediate action to unconditionally de-escalate the situation, and to refrain from provocations, threats, or intimidation."
Serbian Defense Minister Miloš Vučević on Wednesday described the barricades as a "democratic and peaceful" means of protest and said that Belgrade has "an open line of communication" with Western diplomats on resolving the issue.
"We are all worried about the situation and where all this is going," said Vučević. "Serbia is ready for a deal."
As AFP reported, "Northern Kosovo has been on edge since November when hundreds of ethnic Serb workers in the Kosovo police as well as the judicial branch, including judges and prosecutors, walked off the job."
"They were protesting a controversial decision to ban Serbs living in Kosovo from using Belgrade-issued vehicle license plates—a policy that was eventually scrapped by Pristina," the news agency noted. "The mass walkouts created a security vacuum in Kosovo, which Pristina tried to fill by deploying ethnic Albanian police officers in the region."
This article has been updated to better reflect the relationship between the former Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Kosovo.
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How Biden Flubbed Town Hall Foreign Policy Question
Most of our leaders are still hell-bent on preserving America's imperial power at any cost: endless wars, climate catastrophe, mass extinctions, and the terrifying risk of a final, apocalyptic mass-casualty war—most likely a nuclear war.
Oct 19, 2020
Toward the end of Joe Biden's October 15 town hall session, a Trump supporter asked Biden the only foreign policy question of the night. "So peace is breaking out all over the world," the questioner claimed. "Our troops are coming home. Serbia is talking to Kosovo. And the Arabs and Israelis are talking peace, which I believe is a modern-day miracle, what's going on. Does President Trump's foreign policy deserve some credit?"
Instead (Biden) endorsed some of the most deceptive elements of Trump's propaganda, dropped some clangers of his own and, in a classic Freudian slip, laid bare his own enduring commitment to American imperialism.
This question encapsulated all the smoke and mirrors that Trump has used to confuse the public and obscure his broken promises to end America's wars, bring our troops home and build a more peaceful world. This was a fantastic opportunity for Biden to clarify the reality of Trump's abysmal record and explain what he would do instead. But he didn't. Instead he endorsed some of the most deceptive elements of Trump's propaganda, dropped some clangers of his own and, in a classic Freudian slip, laid bare his own enduring commitment to American imperialism.
In response to the questioner's designation of Israel's deal with the UAE and Bahrain as a "modern-day miracle," Biden simply rolled over and said, "I complement the president on the deal with Israel." What he should have said was something like this:
"The UAE and Bahrain are ruled by dictators with absolute, despotic power who represent neither their own people nor the Arab world, let alone the people of Palestine--who gained nothing from these deals. Since these countries were not at war with Israel to begin with, these accords have nothing to do with peace. They are more about flooding the Middle East with even more U.S. weapons and forming new military alliances against Iran. Yes, we need peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors, but they must be deals that truly bring peace, end Israel's illegal military occupations and advance the equal rights of Palestinians and Israelis."
Biden didn't respond to the mention of the White House meeting between Serbia and Kosovo, but he could have explained that it had to be postponed when President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo was indicted for war crimes by an international court at The Hague. Thaci is charged with organizing the killing of hundreds of Serbian prisoners of war to sell their internal organs on the international transplant market under cover of NATO bombing in 1999. When the indictment was unveiled in June 2020, Thaci was literally in his plane on the way to meet Serbian leaders at the White House, and had to make a U-turn over the Atlantic to return to Kosovo.
Twenty-one years after NATO dropped 23,000 bombs on Serbia and illegally annexed Kosovo, neither Serbia nor nearly half the countries in the world have recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Biden could have pointed to this as a case study in why the U.S. must stop waging regime change wars, organizing coups in other countries, and installing CIA-backed gangsters and war criminals like Thaci to rule them.
As for the critically important statement by the town hall questioner that "Our troops are coming home," Biden claimed that there are more troops in Afghanistan now than when he and Obama left office. That appears to be incorrect, since there were 11,000 troops there in December 2016 and 8,600 U.S. troops as of September 22nd, despite the lack of confirmation from the Pentagon on further reductions that Trump had promised.
However, Biden could have simply compared the number of troops brought home by Obama and Trump, which would have been an impressive comparison. Obama reduced U.S. troop levels abroad from 483,670 in December 2008, just before he took office, to 275,850 by December 2016. If the latest figures from the Trump administration are correct, there are still over 238,000 U.S. military personnel overseas.
So Obama reduced the U.S.'s overseas military presence by 43%, while Trump has reduced it by no more than another 14%. With Trump claiming he is "bringing our troops home" in every stump speech, why on Earth is Biden not trumpeting the fact that he and Obama brought home five times more troops than Trump has? Why is Biden running from that record? Is he planning to reverse that trend if elected? Millions of American voters would like to know.
A disappointing aspect of Biden's response was his habitual readiness to take the low road, smearing China's President Xi Jinping, criticizing Trump for even trying to make peace with North Korea, and repeating an unsubstantiated story about Russia paying "bounties" to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops. A better response from Biden would have been to fault Trump for not following through on the peace initiative with North Korea and for stirring up new Cold Wars with Russia and China, when the American people want their leaders to focus on existing threats like the pandemic, our devastated economy and the climate crisis.
The U.S. did indeed rule an empire in the twentieth century, albeit a neocolonial empire in an anti-colonial and post-colonial world that had to be sustained by a whole web of myths and lies.
But perhaps the most revealing moment of the evening was Biden's Freudian slip about the imperial character of America's relations with its allies and the rest of the world:
"You know, we've always ruled - (corrects himself) we've been most effective as a world leader, in my humble opinion - not just by the exercise of our power - we're the most powerful nation in the world - but the power of our example. That's what's led the rest of the world to follow us, on almost anything."
The U.S. did indeed rule an empire in the twentieth century, albeit a neocolonial empire in an anti-colonial and post-colonial world that had to be sustained by a whole web of myths and lies. But now we are standing at a crossroads in American and world history. America's history of war, militarism and international coercion has reached its final stage in the terminal decline of an increasingly corrupt and decadent American empire. Yet most of our leaders are still hell-bent on preserving America's imperial power at any cost: endless wars, climate catastrophe, mass extinctions, and the terrifying risk of a final, apocalyptic mass-casualty war--most likely a nuclear war.
But there is another path leading away from this crossroads, one that Joe Biden should embrace, which involves redirecting our country's resources and energies away from unsustainable imperial power through a peaceful transition to a sustainable, prosperous post-imperial future.
It would have been inspiring to hear Biden say that his goals would be to put an end to U.S. efforts at regime change; to significantly reduce the threat of nuclear war and join the UN Treaty on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons; to free up hundreds of billions of dollars per year for domestic needs by right-sizing the Pentagon budget; and to put peaceful diplomacy front and center.
That would have been a paradigm-changing answer that would have motivated millions of Americans across the political spectrum--from leftists to anti-imperialist Republicans and libertarians--who long to live in a peaceful, just and sustainable world.
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