'Flawed and troubling logic': NYT Editorial Board condemns sending cluster bombs to Ukraine

10 July 2023

President Joe Biden's Friday, July 7th invocation of the Foreign Assistance Act to unilaterally supply Ukraine with cluster bombs — which are banned by more than a hundred countries — has received mixed reactions across the American political spectrum. On Monday, The New York Times Editorial Board heavily criticizes the "flawed and troubling logic" behind Biden's decision.

"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 a nation with the power and influence of the United States should be spreading," the Board writes. "However compelling it may be to use any available weapon to protect one's homeland, nations in the rules-based international order have increasingly sought to draw a red line against use of weapons of mass destruction or weapons that pose a severe and lingering risk to noncombatants. Cluster munitions clearly fall into the second category."

Notably, the Board recalls, Ukraine, the United States, China, and Russia — whose President, Vladimir Putin, illegally invaded Ukraine more than five hundred days ago — have yet to join the one-hundred-twenty-three nations that signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which outlawed most forms of these indiscriminately dangerous explosives.

Although the Board acknowledges Ukraine's right "to choose what weapons it uses in its defense," it believes that "there is considerable risk" underlying the US enabling the deployment of cluster munitions. "At least dozens of civilian deaths and serious injuries, according to a Human Rights Watch report published Thursday," have occurred through their use by Ukraine and Russia. "Specifically, the report said Ukrainian cluster-munition rocket attacks on Russian-controlled areas around the city of Izium in 2022 'caused many casualties among Ukrainian civilians.' (Ukraine denied that cluster munitions were used there)."

The Board warns that "sending cluster munitions to Ukraine amounts to a clear escalation of a conflict that has already become far too brutal and destructive. But the greater issue here is sharing a weapon that has been condemned by a majority of the world’s nations, including most of America's close allies, as morally repugnant for the indiscriminate carnage it can cause long after the combatants have gone."

While Ukraine undoubtedly "needs and deserves help," the Board stresses, "providing weapons that much of the world justifiably condemns is wrong" and "encouraging the use and proliferation of these weapons could weaken the support of allies who until this point have rallied behind American leadership."

The Board concludes that whatever temporary advantage Ukraine may gain by receiving American cluster bombs "would not be decisive, and it would not outweigh the damage in suffering to civilians in Ukraine, now and likely for generations to come."

The Editorial Board's piece continues at this link (subscription required).

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