On July 7, 2023, President Biden announced that the United States
would transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.
This came with a fair bit of controversy because many countries ban the use of such weapons.
Thus, today, we are going to discuss
what cluster munitions are and why they are helpful for the current situation in Ukraine,
why there was a push to ban them in the late 2000s,
and how a perfect storm of factors led this
to be the time that the United States began transferring them.
But we kick things off with some background on cluster bombs.
They are what they sound like.
Here we see a test run of one being dropped from a plane,
though Ukraine’s will likely be fired from land. If we stop the video here,
all of these white dots are called “bomblets”. They are the things that actually explode.
Restarting from the top, as the device approaches the ground, it breaks apart and disperses the
bomblets. They then explode over a much larger area than a single, normally sized bomb could.
From a tactical perspective,
you can see why Ukraine would be interested in having them.
Though many initial battles were either defined by urban combat or ambushes,
with the notable exception of Bakhmut,
much of the war in the east has shifted to a traditional battle in the trenches.
Historically speaking, it is advantageous to clear large swaths of an opposing trench
without having to execute an over the top raid.
But doing that properly
requires a ton of standard artillery shells. And that’s a resource constraint.
Meanwhile, the bomblets from a few cluster bombs can get
the job done cheaply and in one fell swoop.
This is especially attractive to Ukraine because of its reliance on artillery.
If the United States were in this situation and
about to attempt an offensive against an entrenched enemy,
the Air Force would begin with a shock and awe style campaign to soften up the enemy positions.
Afterward, the army would come through in what the soldiers would hope are just mop up operations.
Ukraine, in contrast, does not control the skies.
As a result, Kyiv has been forced to substitute U.S-style shock and
awe air strikes with standard artillery.
Of course, there is a limit to Ukraine’s artillery supplies.
Currently, Ukraine has focused its strikes on hindering Russian supplies and logistics.
But it needs to keep some amount in reserve for the trench runs it plans to execute later.
An influx of cluster munitions not only makes the trench run column look better,
it also frees up the existing artillery to target supplies and logistics.
The smaller nature of bomblets make them poor weapons for hardened targets,
so Ukraine will want to save them for the trench purposes.
Okay, that is the upshot for Ukraine. Now let’s
talk about why many countries have banned the use of cluster munitions.
The central problem is duds. Not all of these bomblets explode upon impact.
The problem is that “dud” does not mean “not explosive”.
It just means “did not detonate at the appropriate time”.
If someone comes along months or years later and touches a dud,
then just losing a hand might be a good outcome.
If your manufacturing is bad, the dud rate can range
between 10 and 40 percent,
with that high end reflecting estimates of Russia’s stockpile.
In contrast, the rate that the U.S. hopes for in its shipments is just 2.35 percent.
Even so, that means if you drop a single cluster bomb with one hundred bomblets,
two are going to stick around.
That is better than forty but still not exactly reassuring.
This draws a parallel to land mines. Countries lay untold numbers of them
during a war, and unfortunately they stay in the ground afterward.
Then one day a civilian is wandering around,
minding their own business, and boom suddenly there is no more civilian.
That is why diplomats gathered in Ottawa in 1997 to draft the
“Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling,
Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction”.[breath]
I suppose there is a reason people just call it the Ottawa Treaty
or the Mine Ban Treaty.
Anyway, 164 countries are now a party to the convention.
Notably absent is the United States
because of the extensive use of land mines to seal the border between North and South Korea.
Incidentally, this is my favorite world border because it is a 100%
apparent line on a map without the need to artificially draw it.
Regardless, come 2008, diplomats decided to apply the same principles to cluster bombs.
They met in Dublin and drafted the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Credit to them for keeping the name simple this time.
111 countries are party to the treaty,
apparently undeterred by the fact that this, the official printed version of it,
looks like it came from a 1950s typewriter.
One reason that it gained so much traction is because of their best use.
Cluster munitions are meant for fighting land wars over wide open
plains,
like in World War I
or what people feared that the Cold War could devolve into.
But it was 2008, Obama had just been elected president,
Bitcoin was being invented,
I was wee lad who had just begun drawing his first line on a map (true story),
Putin was doing that whole Prime Minister switcheroo thing,
and, hey, land wars in Europe were a thing of the past and would absolutely never return again.
Might as well sign the document and dispose of your stockpile if you have no use for them.
Notably absent from the treaty are Russia, which has used cluster munitions
during its invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine, which had a small
stockpile at the start of the war, and of course the United States.
Thus, pure use of cluster munitions is not illegal for those countries
by international law precisely because none of them have opted in.
It is also worth noting the standard proviso that all international laws are
“laws”
in the sense that no police force will arrest a powerful leader for breaking them.
Regardless, the United States is sympathetic to the issues with cluster munitions.
That is why almost 500 days of war passed before they got the green light.
But the thinking goes that if Ukraine is willing to use them—
and it is Ukrainian land, so future Ukrainians will be the ones who bear the consequences—
then maybe it is okay.
So what changed Biden’s mind over those 500 days? Well, it was the perfect storm of three factors:
excess stockpiles,
a shift in Ukraine’s offensive, and poor planning from the West.
Regarding the stockpiles, the Pentagon has 10,000 bombs just sitting in
Europe that could immediately be sent over.
Meanwhile, there may be upward of three million bombs residing stateside.
This is why Congressional Republicans sent a letter to Biden in March 2023 recommending
the transfer specifically of cluster munitions.
After all, there is just not much that the U.S. can do with them
given that most of its NATO partners are members of the ban.
If they are not appropriate for the situation in Ukraine, then when will they be appropriate?
Second is the apparent change in dynamics of Ukraine’s offensive.
We have discussed before the progress that Ukraine has made
along the Zaporizhzhia axis,
in Bakhmut, and perhaps in Kherson.
However, the more time passes,
the more it appears that the operation will lie on the attritional side of the spectrum.
Success in attritional warfare requires a ton of artillery.
That does not inherently mean that cluster munitions are necessary,
but it does takes us to the third point:
that this is the West’s own doing.
At the start of the invasion,
U.S. strategic advisors were helping Ukraine plan a successful insurgency.
Artillery was not a part of that.
However, after a few weeks of fighting, it became clear that Kyiv was not going to fall.
Despite that, both the United States and Europe did not get their artillery production in order.
The exact reasons why are complicated and could warrant their own separate video,
but the key point is that everyone in the West is shell hungry.
That may finally be changing, but something needs to hold over Ukraine in the meantime.
And the solution is cluster munitions,
even if they are banned in 111 countries.
Hey, do you know what isn’t banned in 111 countries? My book on the causes
of Russia’s invasion. At most, it’s probably banned in like ten.
Check the video description for more information on that.
And if you enjoyed this video, please like,
share, and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Take care.
Quick update: Gerasimov apparently has been found.
As such, today’s video will be the last time he participating in #wheresgerasimov.
Nevertheless, #wheressorovikin and #wheresprigozhin are still in play,
even if the latter allegedly and inexplicably had a meeting with Putin post-mutiny.
That is all the more intriguing given that it seems he could not even force Gerasimov from
power with his Moscow thunder run. But good luck finding him!