SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – This week, it was revealed that the U.S. would provide Ukraine with a controversial type of artillery called cluster munitions. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the decision was delayed as long as possible.
What are these weapons and why are they so controversial? Thomas Henriksen, Emeritus Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford University, joined KCBS Radio to explain.
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He said that a cluster bomb is basically a large container of smaller bombs.
“The thing that makes them so controversial is all of them don’t necessarily explode when they hit the enemy trenches,” said Henriksen. “So some are scattered around – they could be there for years. And invariably, it’s civilians,” that are killed by them.
In 2018, the Convention on Cluster Munitions was formed due to these concerns about cluster bombs. Though 111 nations have joined the convention (including much of Western Europe as well as Canada, Mexico and Australia) in agreeing not to use cluster munitions, the U.S., Ukraine and Russia have not.
Indeed, since Russia began an invasion of Ukraine last February, Russian troops have been utilizing cluster munitions. According to the Cluster Munition Coalition’s August 2022 report, there had already been “extensive use of cluster munitions by Russia,” leading to “hundreds of civilian casualties” as well as property damage.
“Civilians remain the primary victims of cluster munitions at the time of the attacks and after conflict has ended, with children particularly at risk,” said the coalition. Sullivan said Friday that Russia has been using cluster munitions with dud or failure rates of between 30% and 40%.
“In this environment, Ukraine has been requesting cluster munitions in order to defend its own sovereign territory,” he said. “The cluster munitions that we would provide have dud rates far below what Russia is doing – is providing – not higher than 2.5%.”
KCBS Radio’s Brett Burkhart and Patti Reising asked Henriksen about the strategic value of the U.S. providing Ukraine with cluster bombs in light of the civilian casualties.
“The Russians, dating back from the Red Army to the Soviets right forward have almost been masters of artillery,” he explained. “They use large numbers of artillery. That’s how they beat the German army during the second World War. And as a consequence, the Ukrainians don’t have the same ability. They don't have the same number of artillery pieces. And so, as a substitute, they want these cluster bombs so which they can rain down on the trenches and fortifications of the Russian forces.”
Sullivan said that the U.S. is already planning to “assist Ukraine with de-mining efforts no matter what,” since there will be remnants of Russia’s cluster munitions to remove even if Ukraine never used them.
“There’s a certain desperate-ness to this… providing these cluster weapons,” Henriksen said. “The United States and many people do not want to see Ukrainians lose or even a stalemate.”
Sullivan said as much Friday when he addressed the issue.
“We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance. This is why we’ve deferred – deferred the decision for as long as we could,” he said. “But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us.”
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