Ihis decision, assures Joe Biden, was ” very difficult ” to take. By announcing the addition of cluster bombs to its new military aid to kyiv, Washington has indeed taken an ethical step. The principle of these bombs is to disperse tens or hundreds of lethal, anti-personnel or anti-tank devices over a given territory. Formidably effective on the battlefield, cluster bombs have a major flaw. When they do not fully explode at the moment of impact, they permanently infect the targeted areas, striking civilian populations in a completely indiscriminate manner.
These ravages have been perfectly documented, and many countries have also rightly decided, in 2008, to refrain from using them. This is notably the case of the overwhelming majority of European countries which support, including militarily, kyiv. Others, like Russia, China, India or the United States, have refused to take this step.
Pentagon doctrine continues to view cluster bombs as ” legitimate weapons whose military utility is obvious ». The United States has barely conceded that it wants to perfect them, so that they no longer represent a threat once the conflict in which they were used is over. According to official figures, to be taken with caution, between 2% and 6% of the explosives remain active after the initial strike. Still according to the United States, these rates would be more than ten times higher on the Russian side.
A fight that can only be on equal terms
We can only deplore this escalation in principle. Even if one can coldly consider that Ukraine can only fight against Russia on equal terms, the dangers incurred are obvious. Because the war is being fought in Ukraine, Ukrainian civilians will be permanently exposed to munitions that will weigh lastingly on reconstruction where they have been used.
As the White House has admitted, the intensity of the ongoing conventional fighting has strained American reserves, to the point of paving the way for these controversial deliveries to counterbalance Russian superiority in artillery. This admission of weakness concerns all of Ukraine’s Western allies. More than a year after the start of the Russian invasion, it shows that the latter are still struggling to take full measure of the conflict.
In doing so, Washington is stepping onto perilous ground. Russia’s attitude during the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime against its people in 2013 attests to its total lack of moral considerations when its interests are at stake. Moscow will never impose any limits on itself, unlike democracies, in the conduct of war.
Its strategy of systematic strikes against residential areas, tested over the past quarter century in many theaters of operations, also proves it. Today, it plunges Ukraine into dread, day after day, night after night. This cynical strategy makes the debate on the indiscriminate character of cluster munitions almost secondary. Vladimir Putin does not sort between military targets and civilians. When the latter are struck, it is knowingly. This war of cowards against Ukrainian cities is the most obvious war crime of which the master of the Kremlin is guilty.