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Cluster Munitions Hypocrisy
I am in Oslo, where I had the rewarding if intimidating experience of delivering two lectures to Brynjar Lia, Thomas Hegghammer and their fellow researchers at FFI yesterday. Today, meanwhile, I had lunch with some instructors at the Krigsskolen, where we discussed the challenges of teaching counterinsurgency to young officers.
Oslo is a good place to discuss cluster munitions, as the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) was signed about 500 meters from where I am sitting, drinking coffee and blogging. The United States, meanwhile, is trying to push an alternative convention -- the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) -- through the United Nations, to allow exemptions for certain weapons systems that would prove quite useful in, say, a defense of the Korean Peninsula.
There are two things about this whole exercise that make me angry. The first is that, obviously, none of the states that have signed the CCM have to defend South Korea in the event of North Korean aggression. But the thing that should make us all angry is the way in which the CCM defines cluster munitions. Guess which kinds of cluster munitions are exempted from the CCM? Surprise! Cluster munitions made by big European defense munitions corporations, such as Germany's Rheinmetall AG and the Diehl Group, makers of the SMArt 155mm artillery rounds, and France's Nexler Munitions and Sweden's Bofors AB, makers of the 155mm BONUS artillery round. The CCM is written -- and specifically, Article 2 of the CCM is written -- to give European manufacturers of cluster munitions a competitive advantage over U.S. manufacturers of cluster munitions.*
The whole thing stinks.
*Caveat Lector: whenever I write about the defense industry, which I rarely do, I cannot help but write about corporations that are often donors to CNAS programs. Although my own research has never been funded by defense corporations such as Textron, which makes the airborne cluster munitions prohibited by the CCM and exempted by the CCW, CNAS has received institutional support from these corporations. Unlike most think tanks, we advertise our donors on our website. I do not know how else to approach this subject aside from just being transparent with all of you and allowing you to decide whether I a) have a damn good point or b) am just being a shill for the military-industrial complex. I'll just be open about the conflict of interest here. Which is more than can be said for the cynical CCM.
Your caveat lector is
Your caveat lector is important and welcome. Transparency, at the outset, is the name of the game for things like this. Thanks, and keep it up.
http://defense.aol.com/2011/1
http://defense.aol.com/2011/11/17/u-s-military-is-scrapping-coin-focusin...
Bad news for you at the guys at CNAS. Where is the next bandwagon to jump on?
There is for sure a lot of
There is for sure a lot of hypocrisies around weapons treaties, but I think you leave out some important facts when it comes to your analysis:
The European cluster-bomb munitions you mention, which are exempt from the treaty, have exactly two bomblets (the small bombs that get emitted). These are "intelligent", as in actively choosing their targets and having self-destroy mechanisms in the case of malfunction. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155 and http://www.baesystems.com/ProductsServices/l_and_a_bof_bonus.html
According to the treaty, these bomblets have to be quite large (weigh more than 4kg), so that they can be easily identified if they prove to be duds ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munitions ).
The US in turn uses a completely different kind of cluster munition, if my research is correct (I found a list of cluster munitions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cluster_Bombs#United_States ). Two models that still seem to be stockpiled and used, CBU-100 and CBU-107, both disperse thousands of quite small bomblets, meaning that these are indefinitely harder to identify and cover a far greater area.
The point of the CCM is to ban weapons that indiscriminately target everybody who happens to frequent a certain area (in which it is comparable to the land mines treaty). If this is the assumed goal of the treaty, it makes sense to forbid weapons with thousands of bomblets and allow those who only have two.
Still I would of course agree that there probably was a lot of backroom arm-bending involved in the negotiations of the CCM. But you could make the same argument with any number of treaties, that include some details very favourable to US interests. I think as far as international treaties go, the CCM actually earns lot's of karma-points for good intent combined with real effectiveness.
I guess we'll ignore all the
I guess we'll ignore all the simmering insurgencies in the Pacific? Somehow I don't consider "AOLDefense" the most authoritative source for defense policy analysis (despite using them as an ISP since 1996). Think I will continue to study COIN since I fully expect to use those principles before I execute an opposed beach landing to establish an advance base in Micronesia.
Tresor Paris Jewellery,which
Tresor Paris Jewellery,which believed to aid recovery, advantageous for asthma, sufferers, and muscle cramps as well as being good for the skin.It is all handmade weave ,craft excellent.you will like it!
It's the Euro's. of course
It's the Euro's. of course it's hypocritical. That's the air they breathe. If it were against the treaty they'd do it anyway. hell democratic elections and the provisions of the EU *treaties* [couldn't get passed by referendum] mean nothing to them either.
I wish Progressives in this country would realize that's across the board, and the Europe they dream of is just that. We've just been treated to and dragged into our retarded Jurgathine Humanitarian intervention [Libya] the very second they thought their oil was at risk. That and Sarkozy wanted some tough guy points.
@caveat lector - like.
father of lies, heres my take
father of lies, heres my take as the daughter of wisdom.
America is descending into fascism.
Muslims are the New Jews.
As a student of history, you should get this.
Counter-insurgency is incompatible with democratic populist movements.
When it comes to
When it comes to non-classified info. Transparency = Valor. Keep it Coming. Julia Hugo Rachel
Yes, transparency is
Yes, transparency is important but so is correct information. The ban on certain cluster munitions has nothing to do with supporting European manufacturers over American ones. To believe this is simply to descend into paranoia. The Convention, as Peter Doerrie says, is about banning weapons which cause unacceptable civilian casualties and which have incredibly high rates of detonation failure upon impact. These weapons are not duds, they have just stalled in the detonation process. 98% of unexploded cluster bombs are civilians and one third are children.
I support the CCM as a humanitarian convention, not as one designed to discriminate against any particular country.
I endorse the well-expressed
I endorse the well-expressed view of Lorel Thomas. However, it seems that a key word was omitted from her statement: that of VICTIMS. Adding this makes it even more telling: 98% of victims of unexploded cluster bombs are civilians, and one third are children.
This fact alone should trump the commercial imperative expressed in the original blog!
I endorse the views expressed
I endorse the views expressed by Lorel Thomas. However, it seems that one word - that of VICTIM - was omitted, which would make her point even more telling. 98% of victims are civilians, and two thirds of them are children.
This fact alone should trump the commercial imperative expressed by others.
Oops - sorry! My original
Oops - sorry! My original comment seemed to be blocked by my mis-typing of the Capcha feature. In re-typing after this (with the previous comments obscured), I made a typo myself, in saying two-thirds of victims are children. This was wrong, and Lorel is right that one third of victims are children (there are official figures to say so, which I can't quote at present, but I think from Handicap International or UN).
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