Ukraine Needs Cluster Bombs: So STFU and Stop the Moral Grandstanding
"What is more dangerous to the Ukrainian population, unexploded ordinance or unexploded Russians?"
There has been controversy lately over whether the US should give cluster munitions to Ukraine: However, all of this controversy comes from a mindless tendency to follow moral rules instead of concretely weighing the pros and cons of a decision. I have yet to see one even remotely convincing argument for not supplying them: The other side has done more emoting than arguing. Let me describe why, in the context of Ukraine, the moral grandstanding against cluster munitions is so ill-founded:
There is a big difference between employing cluster munitions in an offensive war, i.e. one on foreign territory, and employing them on your own territory as Ukraine would be. Imposing a cost on another country’s civilian population, let’s say Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, is very different morally and politically from imposing this burden on your own. It is Ukraine’s territory, and if Ukraine feels the trade off between long term harm and short term military gain is worth it, well, that is their decision to make.
Russia deployed cluster bombs at the very outset of the war. It is absurd to tell Ukraine to tie its hands while Russia continues to deploy them. Moreover, the fact that Russia has already been using them means that there should be few concerns about the move being escalatory.
Both sides have already been using them for some time. In short, the cat is already out of the bag.
An expensive cleanup of Ukraine is already necessary: The country is filled with landmines and various munitions, including bomblets from cluster bombs. So, regardless of whether or not we give Ukraine cluster bombs, Ukrainians are going to have to adapt culturally to the reality of unexploded munitions. Little Dmitry will have to learn not to play hacky sack with unexploded ordinance either way. And if Russia takes more Ukrainian territory, this clean-up will be more costly: Defending Ukraine does more good for the cause of protecting Ukrainian civilians, both from the war itself and its aftereffects, than the harm that would come from a few more scattered bomblets.
Ukraine is planning to deploy these weapons against Russia’s defensive lines, meaning that the affected areas will be easily determined after the fighting is over and the impacted area will be, all things considered, rather small. The US is insisting Ukraine keep detailed records of where they are deploying these systems to facilitate future cleanup efforts.
Unlike Russia, Ukraine is not planning to use this in highly populated areas or their immediate surroundings.
Ukraine needs these weapons to suppress enemy fire while they clear minefields. It is very likely many, many more Ukrainian soldiers will die if they are not used than Ukrainian civilians will if they are.
It is directly in US interests to give them to Ukraine: A) If the US refuses to give Ukraine cluster munitions, it is tacitly admitting that their use is immoral, which would require not only eating crow about their past use but acceding to the ban. Unless we are willing to disregard the Pentagon’s advice on this matter, we should give Ukraine the weapons simply to preserve our own power to deploy them. B) The US is low on artillery. Relatively speaking, we have more cluster munitions to spare. Supplying Ukraine with cluster bombs will allow us to retain more of our much needed artillery while we ramp up production.
They will shorten the war. These munitions might someday kill Ukrainian civilians but not at anything like the rate the Russian military is. Using existing estimates, which are likely to be low, 10,000 civilians have already died in the fighting. If we look at places affected by clusterbombs, like Iraq, we can see that the threat posed to civilians by Russia’s continued aggression is far greater than the threat posed by cluster bombs. If cluster bombs shorten the war by even a few months, it will, on net, prove beneficial to Ukraine’s civilian population. Dud clusterbombs may eventually at worst kill a few hundred Ukrainians: About the number that die during two weeks of fighting.
Ukraine has agreed to a number of controls (Some of which I have mentioned above):
A) Not to use them on Russian territory even though Russia is using them on Ukrainian territory. B) To record carefully where they are being used. C) To prioritize these areas for demining. D) To give allies reports on their use. With these controls in mind, the risk to civilians is actually less than that associated with prior US use.
The opposition to cluster bombs, unlike the opposition to nuclear weapons, seems hard to formalize. In short, it amounts to this: “You can use small bombs, you can use big bombs, and you can even use lots of small bombs and big bombs, but you better not use a big bomb that contains a bunch of small bombs. That is uncivilized.” What is uncivilized about cluster bombs is their failure rate, that the clanging of the munitions together in flight tends to produce duds that still have the potential to go off: But, in principle, if they were engineered to have a low enough failure rate, there would cease to be any reason to oppose their use. However, it is bizarre to think that the manufacturing defects that have characterized cluster munitions in the past are an intrinsic characteristic, unlike, let’s say, the radiation produced by an atomic weapon. Moreover, all bombs, including grenades, produce duds that could represent a threat to civilians. It is not clear why having a higher dud rate than other forms of explosives should outweigh all other moral concerns and lead to an outright ban. Instead of banning cluster bombs, it would make more sense to insist that bombs have a dud rate that is below a certain threshold; however, even this ignores the moral context under which a war takes place. After all, if cluster munitions had a dud rate that was lower than that of the grenades we give soldiers, then the people looking to ban cluster bombs would also need to call for a ban on grenades—a ban no one envisions happening.
American cluster bombs have a lower dud rate than Ukraine’s (or Russia’s). So, by giving them our cluster bombs, we are mitigating the risk to civilians that would come from Ukraine continuing to use its own—at least on a per use basis. The US cluster bombs have a dud rate of 2.5% while Russian made ones (which includes the ones Ukraine uses) has a dud rate of roughly 40%. So, they can use ten times as many American cluster bombs and still be better off than if they used their own: In short, the decision to give Ukraine cluster bombs will, ironically, still reduce future Ukrainian casualties. Ukraine would never agree not to use them, given the tactical circumstances, but agreeing to use ours is easily done. The US decision could easily reduce civilian casualties over the alternative.
I do not think the arguments against granting Ukraine cluster munitions are very strong. I have yet to hear a single argument that specifically addresses the situation in Ukraine and does not come from an Amnesty International pamphlet published fifteen years ago. They all precede along universalist lines forgetting that we are not arguing about whether the world would be better off without cluster bombs but whether Ukraine would be better off with only the Russians having them.
Even the strongest of gun abolitionists would still pick one up if he was being shot at by a criminal—he must use only a knife because the world would be better off without guns. Of course, no sane person would argue this: But yet that is exactly what we have here with the Amnesty International types, an adamant refusal to consider context.
William Spaniel's Video on the Topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV28wHc-TrM&ab_channel=WilliamSpaniel
Ryan McBeth's video no the topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4E4H9mZJbU&ab_channel=RyanMcBeth