Chief negotiators of a landmark treaty banning cluster bombs forecast on Friday that the US would never use them again, even though the devastating weapons provide a critical component of US air and artillery power.
The treaty formally adopted on Friday by 111 nations, including many of the US’ major NATO partners, would outlaw all current designs of cluster munitions and require destruction of stockpiles within eight years. It opens the possibility that European allies could order US bases to remove cluster bombs from their stocks.
The US and other leading cluster bomb makers — Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan — boycotted the talks, emphasized they would not sign the treaty and publicly shrugged off its value.
All defended the overriding military value of cluster bombs, which carpet a battlefield with dozens to hundreds of explosions.
But treaty backers — who long have sought a ban because cluster bombs leave behind “duds” that later maim or kill civilians — insisted they had made it too politically painful for any country to use the weapons again.
“The country that thinks of using cluster munitions next week should think twice, because it would look very bad,” said Deputy Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide of Norway, which began the negotiations last year and will host a treaty-signing ceremony on Dec. 3.
“We’re certain that nations thinking of using cluster munitions won’t want to face the international condemnation that will rain down upon them, because the weapons have been stigmatized now,” said Steve Goose, arms control director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, who was involved in the talks.
However, the treaty itself envisions their future use — and offers legal protection to any signatory nation that finds itself operating alongside US forces deploying cluster bombs, shells and rockets.
The treaty specifies — in what backers immediately dubbed “the American clause” — that members “may engage in military cooperation and operations” with a nation that rejects the treaty and “engages in activities prohibited” by the treaty.
It suggests that a treaty member could call in support from US air power or artillery using cluster munitions, so long as the caller does not “expressly request the use of cluster munitions.”
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said US policy was not changing because of the treaty and cluster munitions remain “absolutely critical and essential” to US military operations.
He said US officials in the state and defense departments were studying whether the treaty would eventually oblige US bases in Europe to withdraw cluster munitions from their stocks.
Goose said this decision would be up to individual US allies.
The treaty, he said, requires nations that ratify it to eliminate all cluster weapons within their “jurisdiction or control.”
He said most NATO members were likely to conclude that US bases were operating under their jurisdiction and order US cluster munitions to be removed or destroyed, while Germany and Japan were most likely to permit the weapons stocks to remain.
US defense analysts doubted that the treaty would force a US retreat on the matter, noting that a majority of US artillery shells use cluster technology.
“This is a treaty drafted largely by countries which do not fight wars,” said John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org. “Treaties like this make me want to barf. It’s so irrelevant.”
“Completely feel-good,” he said.
Asked whether US forces would ever ban or restrict cluster-bomb technology, Pike said: “It’s not gonna happen. Our military is in the business of winning wars and using the most effective weapons to do so.”
Ivan Oelrich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said he expected US forces to keep using shells, rockets and bombs that break apart into smaller explosive objects because they have 10 times or more killing power than traditional munitions, particularly against troops in exposed terrain or in foxholes.
Government and military spokesmen in other cluster bomb-defending nations were similarly dismissive of the treaty.
“Russia will not ban cluster bombs and land mines,” Lieutenant General Yevgeny Buzhinsky said earlier this week in Moscow.
“We stand for evolutionary development of these weapons. Russia’s defense ministry objects to radical and prohibitive measures of this kind,” he said.
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