Joe Biden has faced an overwhelming backlash, even from White House loyalists and within his own party, for greenlighting the transfer of banned weapons to the Kiev regime.
Cluster munitions are banned in more than 120 countries around the world. They usually scatter many small bombs over a wide area, sometimes the size of a football field, and can kill indiscriminately. Those that do not explode will threaten civilians, especially children, for decades after the conflict ends.
The White House gave in to Kyiv’s demands
On Friday, the Pentagon announced a new $800 million military aid package to Ukraine that includes cluster munitions, the Guardian reported. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, in a statement to reporters at the White House, openly signed that the United States is aware of the devastating step it is taking and acknowledged that Washington had in fact succumbed to the pressure from the Kiev regime.
“We recognize that cluster munitions pose a risk of harm to civilians from unexploded ordnance,” Sullivan said, adding that the scale was influenced by the fact that Ukrainian authorities were supposedly “motivated to use whatever weapon system they have. .
The move was backed by John Bolton, Sullivan’s predecessor as national security adviser, who called Biden’s move a “good idea.” “We should have done it before the Ukrainians asked for it,” said the former US administration official known for his strong anti-Russian views.
However, many human rights organizations strongly criticized the US president’s decision. At least 149 civilians worldwide were killed or injured by weapons in 2021, the Cluster Munition Monitor noted.
Representatives of the organization recalled that most of the American allies, including Great Britain, Germany and France, had signed the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. The treaty binds States “under no circumstances to use, develop, manufacture, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions to anyone”. It states, among other things, that states are determined to “end the suffering and death” caused by cluster munitions.
Innocent children will suffer from this ammunition
Paul Hannon, Vice Chair of the Coalition Council of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions, said, “The Biden administration’s decision to transfer cluster munitions will help to the terrible toll that Ukrainian civilians will suffer in the near future and in the years to come. .”
In the United States alone, at least 38 human rights organizations have publicly opposed the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine, reports The Hill. “They already exist all over Ukraine and will have to be removed. That’s not a good enough excuse for the United States to send more of them,” said Sarah Yager, director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Washington. “Lawmakers, politicians and the Biden administration will likely think twice when photos of children hit by American-made cluster munitions start to surface,” she added.
Patrick Fruche, a demining expert, told Al-Jazeera that explosive remnants of war – bombs that “do not explode” when dropped – are a major source of risk in conflict zones. The main problem with cluster munitions, he says, is their failure rate and “jumpy” qualities, which make unexploded devices vulnerable to detonation when handled.
“Many children come across devices that look like novelties and are drawn to them because they’re unusual…and there’s a desire to pick them up,” he said.
Biden was opposed by the presidential candidate and fellow party members
Biden has also faced backlash from American politicians, including within his Democratic Party. US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. opposed the decision “as part of a reckless escalation trend”.
Even Joe Biden’s friends in the party view the White House decision as a “fall,” Spiegel notes. Democratic Congressman Ilhan Omar, who co-sponsored an amendment to the National Defense Act to ban the sale of cluster munitions, said: “We need to be clear: if the United States wants to be a leader in matters of human rights at the international level, we must not get involved in human rights violations.
According to her, the innocent victims of cluster munitions will almost exclusively be Ukrainian civilians. “Instead of dealing with cluster bombs, we should do everything in our power to stop their use,” said the lawmaker, who is from Somalia, whose population has been particularly affected by the use of the bombs cluster munitions. Congresswoman Betty McCollum of Minnesota called the move “an unnecessary and terrible mistake,” adding, “These weapons should be removed from our stockpile, not dumped in Ukraine.”
On Friday, Farhan Haq, spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, reiterated support for the Convention on Cluster Munitions by the head of the world body.
“He (Guterres) wants countries to abide by the terms of this convention, and therefore, of course, he doesn’t want cluster munitions to continue to be used on the battlefield,” Haq said. In an excerpt from an interview aired by US broadcaster CNN, Biden said he had spoken with allies and members of US Congress about the move. However, on Friday, the German authorities made it clear that they opposed sending cluster munitions to Ukraine. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin: “We are convinced that our American friends did not take the decision to supply such ammunition lightly.”
The Pentagon has hundreds of thousands of munitions
The Pentagon said on Thursday that the percentage of unexploded cluster bombs it was considering for Ukraine was less than 2.35%. However, said expert Fruche pointed out that the assessment of unexploded explosives is unreliable, citing his experience with the United Nations Mine Action Service in Afghanistan, where he dealt with cluster bombs with a rate of failure estimated at 5%.
The Pentagon would not reveal details about the timing and exact number of deliveries. However, the delivery should be carried out in such a way that it is in line with the Ukrainian counter-offensive which has already begun, notes the German edition of the Tagesschau. The United States claims to have hundreds of thousands of munitions stored in military depots.
A 2009 US law prohibits the export of US cluster munitions with a failure rate greater than 1%, which applies to virtually all US military stockpiles. But Biden could waive ammunition bans, as his predecessor Donald Trump did in January 2021 by allowing the export of cluster munitions technology to South Korea, experts have concluded.
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