Hasn’t Russia been using these munitions and worse all along? Screw them, let them reap what they sow.
Issue isn’t Russia reaping them. It never is with cluster munitions. In fact given the battle field is Ukraine, it will be Ukrainian civilians repair the harvest on this. Problem isn’t “ohhhh cluster munitions are nasty to enemy soldiers”. No those are free target, we rip them, tear them. Huge 155 mm shrapnel HE shell will tear flesh just as nastily as a cluster sub munitions, if not worse even.
The issue is submunitions in effect ending up being anti-personnel mines, since not all of the submunitions detonate properly and then end up teetering on their fuse and then some civilian stumbles upon them later, knocks it and boom, there goes civilians hand/leg/life.
All munitions have a fault percent of not detonating (fuses fail, the safety self-destructs fail). Issue is cluster sub munitions are small and there is lot of them.
It is pretty obvious should there be 155 mm dud HE shell sticking from the field soil. sub munitions, not so much. It’s a small hand grenade sized thing.
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!
I would rather give them a higher amount of higher-cost and more accurate weapons. I know why the US wouldn’t, and why Ukraine accepts this. It’s their choice in the end.
I don’t think we particularly need to celebrate this though.
