Cluster Bombs In Ukraine
by Abbe Sudvarg–Board Chair PEP
In remarks to the U.N. Security Council a week after Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, accused Moscow of using “exceptionally lethal weaponry,” including cluster munitions, that “has no place on the battlefield” and is “banned under the Geneva Convention.” Her “no place” reference was later excised from the State Department’s official transcript of the speech.
More than 120 countries, including the UK, France, and Germany, have signed an international treaty – the Convention on Cluster Munitions – that outlaws the use or stockpiling of these weapons due to their indiscriminate effect on civilian populations.
Most of Washington’s NATO allies have signed the treaty, but the United States, Russia and Ukraine never signed.
On July 10, 2023, President Joe Biden announced that the United States would send cluster bombs to Ukraine. The President’s decision bypassed U.S. law prohibiting the production, use, or transfer of cluster munitions with a “dud rate” of more than 1 percent. The dud rate refers to munitions that remain unexploded after being dropped. Biden circumvented the law under a rarely used provision of the Foreign Assistance Act which allows the president to provide aid, regardless of arms export restrictions, as long as he determines that doing so is a vital U.S. national security interest.
Cluster bombs explode in the air over a target and release many smaller bomblets across a large area. These bomblets can fail to explode until they are picked up, potentially years after a conflict has ended.
A significant number of bomblets do not explode on first impact. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the “submunition failure rate” — referred to as the “dud rate” — has varied from 10% to 40% in recent conflicts. “Large-scale use of these weapons has resulted in countries and regions being infested with tens of thousands, and sometimes millions, of unexploded and highly unstable submunitions,” the organization said.
Civilians are the primary victims of cluster bombremnants, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor, a group that does research on behalf of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines-Cluster Munitions Coalition. In 2021, the latest year for which data was published, the group said that of the 141 casualties from cluster bomb remnants, 97% were civilians, and two-thirds of those were children.
The decision by President Biden to provide a weapon the use of which is considered a war crime by countries like Afghanistan, Somalia, and Uganda smears any moral authority the United States has in the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s numerous war crimes are well documented. This move by the U.S. shows that it is also adept at fostering criminal war field tactics. The effects of cluster bombs, when initially dropped or in their aftermath, are lethal for civilians and undermine our moral standing, thus sabotaging our credibility as a world power that other nations can hope to trust.
