Joe Biden’s administration has decided to cover its nose and ignore the prohibitions of its allies, and even its own rules, to enter the dirty war against Russia by delivering cluster bombs to Ukraine o Scatter: A type of munition that disperses explosives over areas often larger than a football field. Some of these small but deadly bombs sometimes remain unexploded, until some innocent person stumbles upon them, months or years after they are launched.
Russia has repeatedly used cluster bombs in its invasion of Ukraine and, according to Washington, both on the battlefield and in populated areas. In addition, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s forces urgently need a decisive reinforcement in their counteroffensive against Vladimir Putin’s, which is so far producing insufficient results to change the course of the war.
“We base our security assistance decisions on Ukraine’s needs on the ground,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said when he officially announced the move. “Ukraine requires artillery to sustain its offensive and defensive operations,” he added, and “has been asking for these (grape) weapons” to defend its territory. “We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm – he pointed out – and that is why we have postponed the decision as much as we could. But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks overrun Ukrainian positions,” he stressed. And he assured that the (relative) security levels of the model of these weapons that Washington will deliver “have nothing to do with those of Russia”, which are much more dangerous.
“Ukraine would not use this ammunition in any other country”, but within the borders it is defending. It is “their citizens” that the military is protecting, and soldiers “are motivated to use any system that minimizes the risks to their own,” said Sullivan, who described the handover as “a bridge” while the production of conventional weapons for Ukraine increases in the coming months and palliate its thorny shortage at the moment.
Almost all of America’s allies, with the notable exception of Ukraine, are flatly prohibited from producing, using, and transferring cluster bombs. The veto groups 108 countries attached to the corresponding convention, signed in Dublin in 2008.
In view of this very broad international agreement, which in addition to the USA and the countries facing Ukraine, China, India, Israel and Pakistan skipped, Washington adopted a restriction by which it undertook not to export ammunition of grapes with an error rate greater than 1%, measured in terms of failed explosion of their charges. But Biden and the Pentagon chose yesterday to circumvent such regulation. Jake Sullivan emphasized that the error rate for undetonated submunitions in bombs going to the invaded country is “less than 2.5%” not 1%.
France and Germany, signatories of the Dublin convention along with most of the EU’s partners, including Spain, yesterday recalled their adherence to this pact, but avoided directly criticizing the US for its controversial handover to Kyiv. Berlin even expressed some understanding: “We are sure that our friends in the United States have not taken the decision to supply such munitions lightly,” said German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. “We must remember once again – he added – that Russia has already used cluster munitions on a large scale in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
NATO, for its part, disagreed and left the hot potato in the hands of the member states. The Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, specifically said that the organization “does not pronounce” on cluster munitions. “So it is up to the individual allies to make those decisions.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross recalled that “where cluster munitions are used, they cause a significant number of preventable civilian casualties”. And he pointed out that field workers are the main victims of bombs that do not explode on the spot, while children take second place among the victims.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres “is against the continued use of cluster bombs,” a representative of his office said. And on behalf of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, its spokeswoman, Marta Hurtado, stated that “the use of such ammunition must cease immediately and must not be used anywhere”.
The delivery of the controversial weaponry is part of a new $800 million U.S. military aid package to Ukraine that, from Pentagon stockpiles, will also include Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles, as well as missiles for shells and for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars).
