By Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard

In an escalation of the war, the decision by the Biden administration to send cluster munitions to Ukraine indicates the U.S. knows that the war on the front lines is becoming a failure for Ukraine.

Ukraine is running out of artillery ammunition at the front, in spite of the fact that Washington has sent Ukraine two million artillery shells, and these have not meant any meaningful advance in the Ukrainian summer offensive (previously called the spring offensive).

Zelensky’s regime has demanded these weapons for months, and now wants long range missiles to reach deep into Russia, as the war has stalled.

Representative Barbara Lee, who lives in Oakland, California, and supports the U.S. war, warned that deploying cluster munitions will harm the U.S.’s moral standing in the world. She was joined by 19 other representatives in congress who signed a letter opposing Biden’s act.

Washington’s moral standing in much of the world, especially in the Global South, is already in tatters, due to the killing and maiming of millions of civilians by the U.S. in its wars since the end of WW II, including most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. used cluster munitions.

2008 treaty ban

Cluster munitions explode in the air and scatter small bomblets to kill people over a wide area including any civilians present. Some bomblets do not explode presenting an ongoing danger, long after the war finished, to civilians, including children, who come across them and handle them, setting them off.

This is why a treaty banning their use, the Convention on Cluster Munitions was signed in 2008. To date 123 countries have signed the treaty, including Germany, France, Britain and 15 other members of NATO. The U.S., Russia and Ukraine have not signed, and the U.S. actively opposed the treaty in 2008.

Canada, Britain, Germany and Austria have said they will abide by the ban, and Spain said the cluster munitions should not be used by Ukraine under any circumstances.

The Convention not only prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transferring the munitions, it has strong provision prohibiting assistance to others in their use. Will the NATO countries that have signed the treaty buckle under U.S. pressure?

The NATO summit, held in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 11-12 did not mention the cluster munitions, an indication differences remain on this issue. Otherwise, Biden would be crowing that NATO supports his decision.

Cambodia and Laos, which are still cluttered with unexploded cluster bombs the United States dropped on them during the Vietnam War, have also raised alarm. The Laotian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday it opposed Biden’s move, “as the world’s largest victim of cluster munitions.” And the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said, “It would be the greatest danger for Ukrainians for many years or up to a hundred years if cluster bombs are used in Russian-occupied areas in the territory of Ukraine.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that in Laos alone, 11,000 people were killed or maimed during and since the war ended 48 years ago, and seven to 27 million unexposed bomblets remain today.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, plus 36 other human rights organizations, have also condemned the U.S. decision.

The Pentagon says less than three percent of the bomblets will remain unexploded when they hit the ground but gives no evidence for this claim. Many previously published reports, including by the Pentagon, say the figure is 14 percent – higher when the ground is muddy. Many of the munitions the US will send have been in long term storage – a factor known to make these explosives less reliable.

Mary Wareham, from Human Rights Watch told Democracy Now! that both sides have already used cluster munitions during the war. For example Ukraine fired them into the eastern city of Ilium “over a period of nearly six months during 2022”.

“Last year the White House said that the use of cluster munitions [by Russia] deserved to be in the category of a war crime.” Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told the same program. He claimed the U.S. used “1.8 to 2 million bomblets in the first few weeks” of the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Is the New York Times getting cold feet about the Ukraine war?

A major editorial in the New York Times by the whole editorial board is titled, “The Flawed Moral Logic of Sending Cluster Munitions to Ukraine”.

Reviewing the administration’s rationale, the editorial says, “This is a flawed and troubling logic. In the face of the widespread global condemnation of cluster munitions and the danger they pose to civilians long after the fighting is over, this is not a weapon that a nation with the power and influence of the United States should be sending….”

The Times noted U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s 2022 comments that the “aim of the United States in the war in Ukraine is to weaken Russia”. The editorial says, to that end, since the conflict began, “Line after line has been crossed” … “with Washington and its allies agreeing to provide sophisticated weapons like the Patriot air defense system, the HIMARS long-range rocket launcher, the Abrams tank and soon the F-16 jet fighter.”

“There is legitimate debate about whether this amounts to the sort of mission creep that occurred in conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan [both disastrous U.S. losses – ed]. Sending cluster munitions to Ukraine amounts to a clear escalation of a conflict that has already become far too brutal and destructive.”

The editorial concluded, “The rain of bomblets may give Ukraine a military advantage in the short term, but it would not be decisive [in turning the tide against mounting Ukrainian military defeats – ed], and it would not outweigh the damage in suffering to civilians in Ukraine, now and most likely for generations.”

Cold feet on the pro-war left?

Writing in Counterpunch, Ron Jacobs says, “When certain lines are crossed, the nature of things becomes clearer. Providing cluster bombs to the Ukrainian military is such a rubicon.

“I cannot help but wonder what those liberals, progressives and leftists who have supported Ukraine’s military since the Russian 2022 invasion are now thinking. As this war drags on I wonder if those who consider Ukraine’s nationalist war to be one of national liberation and therefore deserve to get any kind of weapons are okay with this addition [cluster munitions] to Ukraine’s arsenal.