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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Well this article's a pro-Putin load of shit. The reason cluster munitions are banned under so many treaties is that they tend to fail to detonate and then kill civilians after the war, requiring a long and horrible cleanup process. But Russia has already been using cluster munitions in huge quantities, so that cleanup process already needs to happen, and this article is handwringing over Ukraine being able to use them on Ukrainian territory in response. And if Ukraine loses this war, Russia has already made it perfectly clear through their actions in occupied territory that the result will be genocide - something the article curiously decides to omit, while quite happily pushing a false equivalence between Russia's use (pre-emptive, offensive, and murdering civilians of the country they're invading) and Ukraine's use (in response, defensive, and accepting some deaths to stop Russia from killing more).
i noted this downthread but: just because you're the good guy doesn't mean everything you do is a good thing. there is a reason so many countries consider cluster munitions criminal, and that's because there's no circumstance in which the use of cluster munitions is a good thing—"they've already been used so there's no downside to using them more" is torturous logic in more ways than one. cumulative usage will obviously make it cumulatively more likely bombs will harm people long after the war ends.
separately: i think it'd behoove us all to not fall into this trap of pretending that Ukraine is completely morally unimpeachable in what it chooses to do militarily just because it's fighting on its own soil. you don't want to go down that route. if you do that you will—inevitably, because wars aren't pretty—find yourself justifying Ukrainian war crimes one of these days, and you will look like a monster for doing that.
I don't think anything I said implied that Ukraine was morally unimpeachable on the military side. If we were talking about whether or not Ukraine should be able to torture Russian POWs or impersonate medics or firebomb Russian apartment complexes then this would be a very different conversation and I would be saying very different things. I also don't think anyone is saying that use of cluster munitions is a good thing, only that it's the lesser of all available evils.
I do think that under all circumstances it's very unhelpful and even paternalistic for us to tell Ukraine what they can and can't do for their own good. Ukraine is not fighting the Iraq war or Vietnam here. They're not lunatics, they're not children, and they're not fighting because they've been lied or manipulated or bullied into it by their leadership. They're fighting a defensive war of annihiliation in which they either win or die, much of the civilian population included. Given that, they are the only ones who should be allowed a say on what risks they are prepared to take and what costs they consider acceptable, and our role in this should be to shut up and help them unless they are genuinely violating international law. There might one day come a time where the Ukrainian people start disagreeing with the Ukrainian leadership on how far to go, and if that ever happens then I'm happy to weigh in on the side of the people, but we're not there yet - last I heard Zelenskiy was still incredibly popular.
I also didn't say there was "no downside" to using cluster munitions more. I would instead say that most of the downside is already there thanks to Russia's extensive use of them. Obviously the more bombs are present the more likely it is that someone is killed, but AFAICT the deaths are not the worst part of unexploded munitions because they are typically rare. The problem is that the reason deaths are rare is that the instant the immediate threat is over, the government has to designate huge swathes of the country as de facto minefields, unsafe for everyone including the people who used to live there until they can be painstakingly cleared. Even afterwards, the risk is never entirely gone and the population has to live with that - people don't feel safe walking in the countryside they grew up in for decades after the fact. That, to me, would be the worst part, and past a certain point increasing the number of munitions used in a given engagement makes very little difference to it.
if this is our line then: even people in this very thread are freely admitting that most uses of cluster munitions are war crimes or disproportionately harm civilians (which can be said to violate international law). there is an entire international treaty revolving around the prohibition of cluster munitions and their manufacture which more than half of the world is a signatory to. most countries don't have cluster munitions and even fewer manufacture them. the case that these aren't a violation of international law would rest pretty heavily on the obstinance of a handful of countries who disproportionately use them—Russia being one of them, and the U.S. being another.
You're conflating some quite different things here. Most uses of cluster munitions are war crimes, yes, because most of the time they're used in exactly the same way Russia is using them - by an invading army who is at best eking out a military advantage and heedless of the long-term damage done to the civilian population, and at worst as part of active terror tactics to try and kill civilians and force a surrender. That's a war crime, no two ways about it, and the fact that they're so widely used that way is an excellent reason to have treaties in place banning their use. But this is a very different statement to use of cluster munitions being against international law or a war crime in and of itself. They're not chemical weapons or nukes. The problem with them isn't that they're inherently worse or more evil or inhumane than any other weapon in their effect on enemy troops, but that it's very easy to use them in evil ways against civilians and that the damage they do extends long past the end of the war. In this very specific situation it would be insane for Ukraine to use them in evil ways, most of the long-term damage has already been done, and that small part of it that hasn't should be Ukraine's own decision.
You yourself admitted in another post that it's very unusual for cluster munitions to be used by a defending army. Given that, I don't think "most uses of cluster munitions are war crimes" is a good argument, and it's still coming down to this idea that we should stop the Ukraine government from having cluster munitions in order to protect Ukrainian civilians. The same Ukrainian civilians who are now half-soldiers themselves by necessity and who desperately want those cluster munitions to stop the Russians from killing them, throwing them into re-education camps, and stealing their children to send to Russian "orphanages" whether their parents are alive or not. Do you understand why I think that's so fucked?
If Ukrainian use of cluster munitions would inherently constitute a war crime or violate international law, then I can see a coherent argument for not sending them - as awful as the situation is, further weakening international law has the potential for even worse consequences down the line in future conflicts between other powers. But if that's true, I'd like to see some actual evidence in the form of e.g. a statement from a respected bipartisan legal organisation saying so. So far I haven't seen anything of the kind in the media, or even from bipartisan organisations calling for America not to provide them - for example, while Amnesty International is against the US supplying cluster munitions, they certainly don't say it would violate international law or be a war crime. The argument I've seen from organisations like this is that using cluster munitions here is a retrograde step away from one day making these treaties global and banning cluster munitions worldwide - this is true as far as it goes, but nowhere near enough for me to ignore the clear and present harm that using them here would help to avoid.
If instead there's no war crimes or violation of international law, then to convince me sending the munitions is wrong you'd need to prove that giving Ukraine the weapons they're asking for to defend themselves is going to do significantly more harm to them than a Russian victory, and that's a very high bar to clear.
this took but a handful of seconds to find: Amnesty International explicitly says with respect to why they oppose cluster munitions that "Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons; launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians constitutes a war crime.". they consider cluster munitions to be indiscriminate. the position of Human Rights Watch is likewise that "the use of cluster munitions in areas with civilians makes an attack indiscriminate in violation of international humanitarian law, and possibly a war crime.". HRW and the UN have in fact previously documented at least one Ukrainian cluster munition attack from 2022 that killed a substantial number of civilians.