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There is no legal reason the US can’t supply cluster bombs to Ukraine – but that doesn’t justify Biden's decision to do so (theconversation.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s going to be military targets which will be fucked up.

unless you have data i don't, the article seems to pretty definitively refute this point. overwhelmingly the people impacted by cluster munition use are civilians (97% of casualties were civilians in 2021) both in and outside of Ukraine, and their usage has a very long tail of fatalities.[^1] there is no reason to think that even if they're tailored specifically to nebulous military use against Russian soldiers that won't also be the outcome here, because it is literally everywhere else they get used.

[^1]: Vietnam and Cambodia are the poster children for this: the countries still have have dozens of civilian fatalities a year from cluster bombing ordinance, and it's been 48 years since the Vietnam War ended.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From your linked pdf:

Ukraine is the only country in the world where cluster munitions are being used as of August 2022.

• Russia has used cluster munitions extensively since invading Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

• Ukrainian forces appear to have used them at least three times during the conflict.

• There were no reports of new cluster munition use in any other country during the reporting period (from August 2021 to July 2022).

149 cluster munitions casualties recorded in 2021; a 59% decrease from 2020 total (360).

• Civilians accounted for 97% of all casualties.

• Children accounted for 66% of all casualties where the age was known.

• 2021 was the first year in a decade that there were no new casualties resulting from cluster munition attacks.

• Cluster munition remnant casualties recorded in: Azerbaijan | Iraq | Lao PDR | Lebanon | Mauritania | Nagorno-Karabakh Sudan | Syria | Tajikistan | Western Sahara |Yemen

• Preliminary data indicates at least 689 civilian casualties during cluster munition attacks in Ukraine during the first half of 2022.

So to summarize:

Nearly every cluster bomb being used worldwide is being used by Russians in Ukraine
Nearly every cluster bomb casualty is a civilian

Considering that Russia has an extremely well-documented history of specifically targeting civilians, regardless of munitions type, this seems like more of a Russia problem than a cluster bomb problem (at least to the point that it renders these specific statistics moot in a discussion about the general risks of cluster munitions, when used by militaries that are not as barbarous and murderous as the Russian military)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

And no, seeing how cluster ammunition is practically used, russian civilians are not going to disproportionately harmed. It’s going to be military targets which will be fucked up.

The issue with cluster munitions isn't how they're used, but what happens when a bomblet fails. Cluster bombs release hundreds to thousands of submunitions, and when one bomblet fails, it can remain armed and ready to detonate if/when someone comes by and bumps it, picks it up or runs over it with a tractor.

This can lead to issues long after the war is finished, as people are doing their own thing and get hurt or killed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yours is the only plausible rebuttal I've seen in this thread. I'm aware of how inhumane Russian military has been but I've also seen few (a small number) of stories when Ukranian military did something questionable.

Can you expand upon how the cluster munitions might be used and if there's any oversight regarding their usage? (Which seems fair given how things turned out in Afghanistan).