Ukraine and the U.S. know exactly what they’re getting into here. In fact, both Russia and Ukraine not only use cluster munitions, but the same cluster munitions (mostly Soviet PFM-1 petal mines — particularly nasty). So arguing that we ought to save Ukraine from itself, as a country which is intimately familiar with mass civilian casualties (and the risks of UXO for the better part of a decade), as a country locked in an existential struggle against a democidal (at best) regime, and as if the resulting cost-benefit analysis by the Ukrainian government hasn’t already been considered, smacks of condescending paternalism to me.

Nonetheless, “cost-benefit analysis” is a flimsy euphemism for “how many civilians are we willing to accidentally kill so that we can save our country.” In any other context, alarm bells should be ringing at the thought. But this is a real shooting war, where cluster munitions used against static, dense fortifications in overwhelmingly rural settings (like the Russian defensive lines in the south) is perfectly reasonable. If the West was actually concerned about civilian casualties caused by Ukraine’s hamfisted arsenal, it’d be sending fighter jets and CAS!

The above also doesn’t consider that neither the U.S. nor Ukraine are party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and that Russia’s been using cluster munitions the whole time!