{"id":135328,"date":"2017-11-30T22:36:02","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T03:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=135328"},"modified":"2017-11-30T22:36:02","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T03:36:02","slug":"us-putting-off-planned-ban-on-its-use-of-cluster-bombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/11\/30\/us-putting-off-planned-ban-on-its-use-of-cluster-bombs\/","title":{"rendered":"US putting off planned ban on its use of cluster bombs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Pentagon has put off indefinitely a planned ban on using certain cluster bombs, which release explosive sub-munitions, or bomblets. The U.S. military considers them a legitimate and important weapon, although critics say they kill indiscriminately and pose hazards to civilians. (Photo: “The Pentagon<\/a>” by David B. Gleason<\/a> is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON\u2014The Pentagon has put off indefinitely a planned ban on using certain cluster bombs, which release explosive sub-munitions, or bomblets. The U.S. military considers them a legitimate and important weapon, although critics say they kill indiscriminately and pose hazards to civilians.<\/p>\n

A 2010\u00a0international\u00a0treaty outlaws the use of cluster bombs, but the U.S. is not a signatory.<\/p>\n

The George W. Bush administration declared in 2008 that after Jan. 1, 2019 the United States would continue its use of cluster bombs only if they met a performance standard of failing to detonate 1 per cent or less of the time. That standard is important because armed and unexploded cluster munitions left on the battlefield pose a long-term hazard to civilians.<\/p>\n

Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman, said that despite efforts to develop more reliable, and thus safer, cluster munitions, the U.S. military has been unable to produce bombs with failure rates of 1 per cent or less. He said it’s unclear how long it might take to achieve that standard, and thus the Pentagon concluded in a months-long policy review that it should set aside the 2019 deadline and allow commanders to authorize the use of the weapons when they deem it necessary.<\/p>\n

The new policy drew immediate criticism.<\/p>\n

Mary Wareham, arms division director for Human Rights Watch, said there is no compelling reason for the use of cluster munitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. says it can’t produce ‘safe’ cluster munitions, so it has decided to keep using ‘unsafe’ ones,\u201d she said. \u201cWe condemn this decision to reverse the long-held U.S. commitment not to use cluster munitions that fail more than 1 per cent of the time, resulting in deadly unexploded sub-munitions.\u201d Her organization is chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, an\u00a0international\u00a0campaign seeking to eliminate cluster bombs.<\/p>\n

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, called it a shame that the U.S. \u201cwill continue to be a global outlier,\u201d and she urged President Donald Trump to reverse course.<\/p>\n

\u201cCluster munitions are indiscriminate, and as such, they frequently kill civilians and damage infrastructure long after conflicts end,\u201d Feinstein said. \u201cThe aftermath of the use of cluster munition use in Laos is particularly painful, with estimates of as many as 300 people killed every year, even 40 years after the war’s end.\u201d She was referring to Vietnam war-era U.S. bombing that left millions of unexploded cluster bomblets in Laos.<\/p>\n

A new Pentagon policy approved Thursday erases the 2019 deadline and asserts that the weapons are legitimate, not necessarily a humanitarian hazard, and important for wartime attacks on \u201carea targets\u201d like enemy troop formations.<\/p>\n

The new policy authorizes commanders to approve use of existing cluster bombs \u201cuntil sufficient quantities\u201d of safer versions are developed and fielded. \u201cSafer\u201d means meeting the 1 per cent failure standard or developing bombs equipped with a self-destruct mechanism or that can be rendered inoperable in 15 minutes or less by the exhaustion of their power source.<\/p>\n

The policy does not define what qualifies as \u201csufficient quantities\u201d of safer weapons, and it sets no new deadline.<\/p>\n

In practice, the U.S. rarely uses cluster bombs. The Pentagon says its last large-scale use was in the 2003 Iraq invasion. They could be considered important for use in a large-scale conflict such as a ground war against North Korea.<\/p>\n

In a memorandum signed Thursday, Deputy Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the U.S. remains committed to fielding weapons that are effective in war and that \u201cminimize unintended harm\u201d to civilians and U.S. and partner forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the (Defence) Department seeks to field a new generation of more highly reliable munitions, we cannot risk mission failure or accept the potential of increased military and civilian casualties by forfeiting the best available capabilities,\u201d Shanahan wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cCluster munitions are legitimate weapons with clear military utility,\u201d Shanahan wrote. He also asserted that cluster munitions \u201cmay result\u201d in less unintended harm to civilians and others than if other types of weapons have to be used instead against certain targets like massed formations of enemy troops and time-sensitive or moving targets.<\/p>\n

By law, the U.S. cannot provide cluster munitions to other countries unless they meet the 1 per cent failure standard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u2014The Pentagon has put off indefinitely a planned ban on using certain cluster bombs, which release explosive sub-munitions, or bomblets. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":135333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16],"tags":[36439,1277],"class_list":["post-135328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","tag-cluster-bombs","tag-pentagon","mauthors-robert-burns","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}