The Joe Biden government has decided to hold its nose and ignore the prohibitions of its allies, and even its own regulations, to enter the dirty war against Russia by delivering cluster bombs to Ukraine: a type of munition that it disperses explosives over areas often larger than a football field. Some of these small but lethal bombs sometimes remain unexploded, until some innocent man stumbles across them, months or years after they are released.
Russia has repeatedly used cluster bombs in the invasion of Ukraine and, according to Washington, has done so both on the battlefield and in populated areas. In addition, the forces of Volodimir Zelenski urgently need a decisive reinforcement in their counteroffensive against those of Vladimir Putin, which is yielding insufficient results for now 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 officially announcing the measure. “Ukraine requires artillery to sustain its offensive and defensive operations,” he added, and “has been asking for these (cluster weapons)” to defend its territory. “We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm,” he said, “and that is why we have postponed the decision for as long as we can. But there is also a massive risk of civilian damage if Russian troops and tanks overwhelm Ukrainian positions,” he stressed. And he assured that the levels of (relative) security of the model of these weapons that Washington will deliver “have nothing to do with those of Russia”, much more dangerous.
“Ukraine would not use this ammunition in any other country,” but within the borders it is defending. It is “its citizens” that the military is protecting, and soldiers “are motivated to use any system that minimizes the risks to their own,” Sullivan also said, posing the delivery as “a bridge” while production of conventional weapons for Ukraine increases in the coming months and alleviates its tricky shortage at the moment.
Almost all US allies, with the notable exclusion of Ukraine, have an outright ban on the production, use and transfer of cluster bombs. The veto groups 108 countries attached to the corresponding convention, signed in Dublin in 2008.
In view of that very broad international agreement, which, in addition to the US and the countries in conflict in Ukraine, China, India, Israel and Pakistan skipped, Washington adopted a restriction by which it undertook not to export cluster munitions with a rate of error greater than 1%, measured in terms of the failed explosion of its charges. But Biden and the Pentagon chose this Friday to circumvent such regulation. Jake Sullivan stressed that the error rate for unexploded submunitions in bombs going to the invaded country is “less than 2.5%”, not 1%.
France and Germany, signatories to the Dublin convention along with a large part of the EU partners, Spain included, recalled this Friday their adherence to that pact but avoided directly criticizing the US for its controversial handover to Kyiv. Berlin even expressed some understanding: “We are sure that our American friends have not taken the decision to supply such munitions lightly,” said German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. “We have to remember once again – he added – that Russia has already used large-scale cluster munitions in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
NATO, for its part, got out of the way and left the hot potato in the hands of the member states. The Alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, specifically said that the organization “does not take a position” on cluster munitions. “So it’s up to individual allies to make those decisions.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross recalled for its part that “where cluster munitions are used, they cause a significant number of avoidable civilian casualties.” And he pointed out that farm workers are the main victims of bombs that do not explode on the spot, while children occupy the second place among the victims.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio 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, his spokesperson, Marta Hurtado, stated that “the use of such ammunition must stop immediately and not be used anywhere.”
The delivery of the controversial weapons is part of a new package of US military aid to Ukraine amounting to 800 million dollars which, coming from Pentagon stocks, will also include Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles, as well as projectiles for howitzers and the System of High Mobility Artillery Rockets.
