Opinion | No cluster bombs for Ukraine

Ukraine makes a good case for cluster bombs. The Pentagon’s alternative warhead, packed with 180,000 preformed tungsten fragments, also disperses lethal material over a wide area.

Alternative-warhead munitions might be more effective and they would satisfy one of the seven criteria for waging a war that is considered “just.” Such a war must meet the following criteria: a just cause, a just intent, undertaken as a last resort, having the approval of a legitimizing authority, constrained by limited goals, pursued with proportionality and ensuring noncombatant immunity.

Ukraine’s war to repel Russian aggression meets those criteria and is a “just war.” We need to keep it so. The United States should not send DPICMs to Ukraine but AWs instead.

James M. Truxell, Ashburn

Though Ukraine should be provided robust military assistance to defend itself until a negotiated settlement with Russia can be reached, the further use of cluster munitions would be tragic. There have been credible reports, including by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch (HRW), that Russia has used various cluster munitions since its invasion, killing or maiming hundreds if not thousands of civilians and damaging homes, hospitals and schools. HRW also reported that Ukraine has used cluster munitions, though to a far lesser extent.

A single cluster bomb typically contains hundreds of explosive sub-munitions designed to blanket a large area. They are among the most indiscriminate weapons — indeed the polar opposite of a precision weapon. Moreover, up to 40 percent of sub-munitions fail to detonate on impact and can pose a lethal threat for decades.

Clearance is dangerous and painstakingly slow. Case in point: Half a century after U.S. forces saturated Laos with cluster bombs, mainly to disrupt supply routes to North Vietnam, and despite heroic efforts by the government and people of Laos with international support, approximately one-third of the country remains contaminated and innocent people are killed or maimed on a regular basis.

More than 95 percent of cluster munition victims throughout the world have been civilians. It was with good reason that in 2007 and 2008, 108 nations negotiated the Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans the use of cluster munitions under any circumstances, for all time, and most regrettable that the United States was not among them.

Any immediate military benefit cluster munitions might afford would be nullified and far exceeded by their humanitarian impact over the longer term.

Earl Turcotte, Dunrobin, Ontario

The writer led the Canadian delegation in negotiations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions and was U.N. chief adviser to the government of Laos in its ongoing national program to clear unexploded ordnance.