US supply of cluster bombs to Kyiv is morally shaky

The Biden administration announced on 7 July that it would send cluster bombs to Ukraine – a deeply controversial move given the munition is prohibited by more than 120 countries because of risks to civilian populations.

- ROBERT GOLDMAN

The U.S. has been here before. It provided Saudi Arabia with cluster munitions – which contain bomblets that can scatter across a wide area, often not exploding until later – during the kingdom’s military intervention in Yemen.

Washington suspended sales of cluster bombs to the Saudis in 2016 following mounting concern over the toll they were taking on civilian lives. But the U.S. is still holding out from joining an international ban on cluster bombs.

As a scholar of the law of war, I know that cluster bombs highlight a reality about the use and regulation of weapons, even those that can cause widespread civilian suffering: These munitions are not in themselves illegal, but their usage can be. Furthermore, the decision by the U.S. to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs could weaken the argument against others’ doing likewise. And that, in turn, could increase the chances of cluster bombs’ being deployed illegally.

Cluster munitions have been part of nations’ arsenals since World War II. Delivered by air or ground artillery, they have been used by the United States in Laos and Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Israel in southern Lebanon, the U.S. and U.K. in Iraq, Russia and Syria in the ongoing Syrian civil war, and the Saudis in Yemen. And now they are being deployed in Ukraine.