A
Cluster Bomb Treaty: Again,
It's The U.S. v. The World
By Scott Stedjan
& Laura Weis
27 March , 2007
Foreign Policy In
Focus
On
March 6, 2007, the U.S. Department of State released its Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices for 2006. This annual report to Congress details
the human rights practices of foreign governments, from restrictions
on free press in Iran, to extrajudicial killings in Pakistan, to spiraling
violence in the Darfur region of Sudan. The Country Reports do not,
however, “purport to assess any human rights implications of actions
by the United States Government or its representatives.” If they
did, the reports would expose the grave consequences of U.S. policies
in a world where the use and sale of inaccurate and unreliable weapons
tends to trump humanitarian concerns.
Consider last summer’s
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel’s
irresponsible use of cluster bombs in and around civilian areas in southern
Lebanon has been widely documented and condemned. Israel bought the
majority of these weapons from the United States. Demining groups estimate
that they contained some 2.6
million to 4 million bomblets, around 90 percent of which were fired
during the last 72 hours of the conflict. As of February
14, 2007, the UN Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC) in South Lebanon
had identified 847 cluster bomb strike locations, contaminating a total
of 34 million square meters of land. Since a UN-brokered ceasefire went
into effect on August 14, UNMACC has reported 216 civilian and demining
casualties in southern Lebanon –30
deaths and 186 injuries.
The disproportionate number
of civilian casualties resulting from cluster bombs used during Israel's
war with Hezbollah prompted the State Department to investigate the
use of U.S.-made weapons in the conflict. Subsequently, in January 2007
the State Department notified Congress in a classified report that Israel
may have violated end use agreements when it used the U.S.-made cluster
bombs in Lebanon. Yet while the State Department’s Country Report
on Lebanon acknowledges the aftermath of Israeli cluster bomb strikes,
any mention in the report of the U.S. role in providing Israel with
these weapons is glaringly absent.
Article 51 of the UN Charter
acknowledges the right of all states to individual or collective self-defense
and to raise armies and procure armaments to that end. Thus, it is not
surprising that the U.S. and Israel use weapons that they see as militarily
useful to defeat an enemy in the shortest time possible. However, Article
51 is not absolute; international humanitarian law calls for a balance
to be struck between the military utility of a particular weapon and
its humanitarian consequences. In the recent history of warfare, the
use of certain weapons, such as antipersonnel landmines, incendiary
weapons, and biological weapons, were limited or banned because a judgment
was made that the humanitarian consequences outweighed the military
utility of the weapon. Cluster bombs should be added to the list of
unacceptable weapons.
A cluster bomb consists of
a canister designed to open in mid-air and disperse smaller submunitions,
often referred to as bomblets. Cluster bombs are area weapons, meaning
they are not designed to attack a precise target, but rather to destroy
all potential targets in a target area. Depending on the type of munition
and the delivery system, the footprint of one cluster bomb can be as
large as one square kilometer (about 250 acres). Cluster bombs were
originally designed to attack enemy forces lined up on a battlefield.
Instead of sending a sortie of fighters to drop dozens of unitary bombs,
a fighter pilot could limit his or her exposure to anti-aircraft fire
by dropping one cluster bomb.
The humanitarian suffering
that continues in Lebanon and numerous other countries plagued by the
lasting effects of cluster munitions should compel governments to examine
the military utility of cluster bombs. Trends in warfare show a shift
from war-fighting against symmetrical forces on open terrain to asymmetrical
fighting in civilian areas. The wide dispersal pattern of bomblets makes
avoiding civilian casualties when the weapons are fired on populated
areas nearly impossible. A 2003 “lessons learned” report
by a U.S. Army Infantry Division labeled its cluster munitions as “losers”
and suggested they were “a Cold War relic.” This report
also noted that cluster munitions were “not for use in urban areas.”
The long-term effects of
a weapon on populations must also be part of the equation when governments
consider military utility. While designed to explode on impact, cluster
bomblets typically fail to detonate as intended approximately 5 percent
to 30 percent of the time, leaving behind large numbers of hazardous
explosive “duds” that are akin to landmines, injuring and
killing civilians and contaminating the land long after conflicts. The
United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center in South Lebanon estimates
that as many as 40 percent of Israeli cluster munitions used during
the conflict failed to explode, leaving anywhere from 563,200 to 1,126,400
unexploded bomblets in the southern part of the country. If Lebanon’s
future mirrors that of other countries affected by cluster bombs, civilians
will be impacted by these weapons for years to come. The last cluster
bomb was dropped on Laos in 1973, and people in that country are still
affected by their use. In the past 30 years, 12,000 Laotian civilians,
many of whom were not born when the bombs were dropped, have died from
contact with an unexploded cluster dud.
Thankfully, the international
community is taking action. In an historic step forward, Norway hosted
the Oslo Conference on Cluster Munitions in late February 2007, where
49 countries met to discuss how to address the indiscriminate and lasting
effects of cluster munitions on civilians. At the conference, 46 countries
agreed to a landmark declaration detailing their goal to conclude by
2008 a legally binding treaty prohibiting the use, production, transfer,
and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to
civilians. Half of the world’s 34 producer countries, one-third
of the world’s stockpiling countries, six users or former users,
and six affected states signed the Oslo declaration. Countries will
meet again to determine the details of the treaty in Lima, Vienna, and
Dublin over the next two years. The Bush administration did not send
a representative to the Oslo meeting and, absent a policy change, is
unlikely to participate in subsequent meetings.
While administration officials
dawdle, some policymakers are beginning to pay attention. On February
14, 2007, Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA), Patrick Leahy (VT), Barbara
Mikulski (MD), and Bernie Sanders (VT) introduced the Cluster Munitions
Civilian Protection Act of 2007 (S. 594). This far-reaching legislation
would ban the use of cluster munitions in or near civilian populated
areas, and prohibit funds for the use, sale, and transfer of cluster
munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent. While all newly
procured U.S. cluster munitions must have a failure rate of less than
1 percent, the Pentagon has yet to produce any of these new weapons.
Instead, the U.S. uses and transfers from its stockpile of about 1 billion
old cluster bomblets that fail to detonate as designed 2 percent to
as high as 23 percent of the time. Were the U.S. ever to use these unreliable,
indiscriminate bomblets in or near civilian populations, or transfer
them to a country that would use them in such a way, the humanitarian
impact both during and after the conflict would likely dwarf the humanitarian
threat posed to populations by antipersonnel mines. At least 74 other
countries also have similar unreliable and inaccurate cluster munitions
stockpiles. Unlike landmines where populations are currently experiencing
their deadly effects, the billions of cluster bomblets in the stockpiles
of the world have yet to be used. By adopting S. 594 and supporting
the Oslo Process, the U.S. can prevent the next large-scale humanitarian
catastrophe before more countless innocent people are injured or killed.
The introduction of the Department
of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights states: “Our
democratic system of government is not infallible, but it is accountable--our
robust civil society, our vibrant free media, our independent branches
of government, and a well-established rule of law work as correctives.”
Let’s hope this description proves true, as the momentum builds
among humanitarian, advocacy, and arms control groups, an emerging grassroots
movement, and courageous members of Congress calling for responsible
U.S. policy on cluster munitions.
Scott Stedjan is the National Coordinator of the United
States Campaign to Ban Landmines and works on arms control
and conflict prevention for the Friends
Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Laura Weis is
a Legislative Program Assistant for FCNL.
Click
here to comment
on this article