Killer Machines – Cluster Bombs: Supporting Matters to the Dublin Ban
by This work discusses the vexed issue of banning entire weapons systems from national military inventories, and the inherent problems with doing so.
Conclusions
The apparently dispiriting tone of this paper is a reflection of 21st Century zeitgeist, and the mood of unshackled militarism that prevails, in what is apparently an ‘ …[I]nternational and European scene [that] is as complex and uncertain as it has been since the end of the cold war.’ The paraphernalia of war is operational, active and functioning in the fragmented wastes of Afghanistan, in Iraq, and further abroad, as the last remaining superpower practises realpolitik on a truly global scale. Quite where this adventure takes us may be unclear at this time; the outcomes remain opaque, but it is almost certain that innocent non-combatants will become enmeshed in a conflagration not of their specific making, and over which they exercise little, if any, control.
Similarly, the NGO community, apparently the ‘world’s new superpower’ and putative caller for restraint (if not outright proscription) in arms control matters, appears now to have little or no voice in the august corridors of Washington or London. However, the impetus for meaningful change is as relevant and imperative as ever. The seemingly critical issue is that of powers calling for ‘freedom and democracy’ in a new war in which they exercise their own rules of engagement, including the instruments they use to this end.
As the case studies briefly discussed here illustrate, the dangers of using indiscriminate weapons in pursuit of objectives breaches at the very least the universal notion of morality and a normative polity that seeks civilised (in the non-value sense) management of conflict, the opposite of which should not be hidden behind the hobbling obscurantism of so-called ‘embedded’ journalism. The point is: a farmer cannot practise sustainable agriculture in a field infested with unstable, highly volatile CB and related weaponry; a child cannot play in an area littered with bright yellow canisters for fear of a premature demise; women and children (who usually perform these tasks in many parts of the world) cannot fetch water from a well that is seen as a ‘militarily-efficacious’ target that may be useful to terrorists.
What is certain at this juncture remains the question of ends and means; whilst morality remains a ‘difficult’ concept when applied to national security, then the defence of ‘freedom’ becomes meaningless when ring-fenced for the benefit of the world’s relatively wealthy minorities. In the final analysis, the types of weapon under discussion display similar, if not exact, properties to APM when live and yet unexploded on impact with the ground. From this perspective, the weapons are of dubious legality. The law, however, as Cicero again would have it, remains conspicuous by its absence in war, and that the exercise of overwhelming force provides the justification for a sledgehammer approach to diplomacy and peacemaking. It is difficult to imagine just how peace can be constructed and maintained when cluster weapons effectively inhibit post-conflict development, and the institution of a viable civil society amidst the ruins of a dismembered and cluster-bomb infested country.
However, with the Dublin Accords of 2007, the issue of cluster bomb/sub-munitions proscription seems to be settled. But, as is the case with APMs, there are still a number of countries that refuse, for ‘strategic’ reasons, to inclusively join the majority of countries that want to ban these weapons. This list of non-participants includes Israel, that is currently engaged in military operations in the crowded enclave of Gaza, and which has littered Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of sub-munitions, and which are killing civilians to this day. Moreover as the situation with landmines shows, having a ban does not equal enforcement; Angola, a signatory state to the Ottawa Treaty, returned to laying landmines during an upsurge in civil conflict due to ‘operational necessity’; so, in the final analysis, much depends on the political will of the international community to not only bring about a ban on indiscriminate weapons platforms, but to ensure absolute and enduring compliance.
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