Cluster Bombs Are Terrible. Ukraine Still Needs Them.

The Biden administration’s decision to transfer dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICMs, to Ukraine as part of a new assistance package has provoked a series of diplomatic rebukes from Washington’s long-standing allies and security partners, including Britain and Canada, which reiterated their opposition to the weapons banned by 123 countries.

U.S. President Joe Biden conceded that it was a “very difficult decision” to send DPICMs, better known as cluster bombs, to Kyiv but defended the transfer to CNN, saying: “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.”

Speaking as a British Lebanese conflict journalist, I have seen firsthand the impact of these horrific munitions on the civilian population of my own country, with unexploded submunitions causing death and injury decades after these weapons were last fired. It was partly Israel’s use of cluster bombs in the 2006 Lebanon war that pushed states to draft the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), banning the use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions.

This is a treaty I have long advocated for, and I took pride in Lebanon becoming the first Middle Eastern state to ratify the CCM in 2010. In more recent years, I have documented countless instances of Russian war crimes using cluster munitions against civilian targets in Syria and the devastation these indiscriminate bombs have on human life. Yet I find myself reluctantly supporting the Biden administration’s decision.

I understand the impact these weapons have on civilian populations better than many of the decision-makers in Washington and, in an ideal world, still wish that the United States, Russia, and Ukraine had signed and ratified the CCM and eradicated all remaining stockpiles.

But we don’t live in that world. Not only has Russia used cluster munitions extensively in its invasion of Ukraine, but it has repeatedly used these indiscriminate weapons on civilian targets, which amount to war crimes under international law.

With a heavy heart, and in a decision that weighs heavily on me as both a journalist and a human rights activist, I must put my own ideals aside and support the decision made by the White House. I stand respectfully in disagreement with my allies and colleagues working in the human rights community, including at Human Rights Watch.

This was not an easy decision to come to but one I made based on my professional assessment of the war in Ukraine as it stands at the time of writing. Under these strict and deeply tragic conditions, I believe that it is both militarily necessary and morally justified for Kyiv to receive these weapons.

The 21st century has seen largely asymmetric, low-intensity conflicts and insurgencies, and as such many of the signatories of the CCM could not ever imagine finding themselves, as Ukraine is today, fighting a 20th-century trench war. It is admirable that so many states opted to ban these weapons outright, but just as they could not ever imagine finding themselves in Ukraine’s position, many, too, fail to understand the existential nature of Ukraine’s struggle or the consequences for the Ukrainian people should that struggle fail.

While I agree with the vast majority of the arguments made regarding any use of cluster munitions, in the context of the war in Ukraine I have come to the same conclusion as Jack Watling and Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), who laid out their arguments for approving the transfer of DPICMs in a recent commentary.

It helps to fully understand why so many states have banned these weapons. DPICMs are not inherently more dangerous than other conventional weapons used on the battlefield. There are far more deadly and devastating weapons used in conflicts across the world that are not banned by international conventions, such as the Russian “bunker buster” KAB-1500L-Pr and the U.S. GBU-43/B MOAB, called the “Mother of All Bombs,” notably employed by former U.S. President Donald Trump in Afghanistan.

There are three main arguments against sending U.S.-manufactured DPICMs to Ukraine, and they are strong ones often made in good faith by principled people. Broadly speaking, they are related to three areas: the indiscriminate nature of submunitions, failure rate and unexploded ordnance, and arms proliferation.

Firstly, there are many different types of cluster munitions, with four main delivery methods: tube-launched (e.g., artillery shells), air-dropped container, aircraft dispenser, and conventional missiles. Given that Ukraine is currently only requesting and receiving 155 mm DPICM artillery shells, we can ignore the other types of cluster munitions also banned by the CCM as being irrelevant to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Unlike traditional artillery shells, which explode on impact, DPICMs disperse dozens of submunitions, spreading the explosive impact across a wider area.

They are, by their very nature, indiscriminate, in the same way firing a shotgun from a distance is, causing damage across a widespread area from just one artillery shell. It is this characteristic that makes these weapons such powerful tools on the front line against entrenched concentrations of infantry. It is also what makes their use in civilian residential areas, as Russia has done throughout this war, undoubtedly a war crime.

Given how Kyiv has prosecuted this war since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022—taking care to avoid collateral damage, trying to protect the lives of Ukrainian troops, and respecting the Geneva Conventions with regard to Russian prisoners of war—Kyiv’s usage will be far different from Russia’s. I think it is reasonable for Washington to conclude that it can trust the Zelensky government’s word that it will not use these weapons to commit war crimes on its soil or on Russian soil, which would answer the first argument against providing DPICMs to Ukraine.

The next major issue, and the strongest argument against these weapons existing at all, is unexploded ordnance. Cluster submunitions have a failure rate, which means that sometimes they do not explode on impact. Instead, they can lie dormant on the ground for years until they are disturbed by an unsuspecting civilian, leading in many cases to serious injury or death.

While all munitions have a failure rate, and unexploded ordnance remains a significant problem even in post-conflict regions that have not seen the use of cluster bombs, the sheer quantity and small size of cluster bomb submunitions mean that even DPICMs with very low failure rates can render large swaths of land where these weapons have proliferated uninhabitable without extensive demining operations. Children are particularly vulnerable to picking up unexploded submunitions in post-conflict areas.

This alone is a strong enough reason to advocate for a total ban on DPICMs, but in the context of their continued existence and their widespread proliferation during the Russo-Ukrainian war, there are clear military and humanitarian justifications for providing an exemption for Kyiv.

The context of the war as it stands in the summer of 2023 is critical to understanding why these justifications exist.

To begin with, large parts of Ukraine’s territory are occupied by Russian troops, stretched across more than 745 miles of an active front line. The tens of thousands of square miles of land in between those military forces is currently uninhabited, covered with trench lines, and littered with months of unexploded ordnance from the most intense artillery war in Europe since World War II.

There are no civilians in these areas; in fact, some have been bombarded so heavily that there are barely even any trees. While Russia clearly failed to conquer Kyiv in 2022, it has no intention of abandoning the areas it has occupied since last year, and it is heavily dug-in, hoping that the current lines of control at the very least become the new de facto borders of Ukraine.

While unexploded ordnance will be a significant problem for these tens of thousands of square miles of Ukrainian land for years to come, regardless of the outcome of the conflict, it will only become a threat to civilian life once the people themselves return. But if Ukraine fails in its goal to push Russia out of the land it currently occupies, these areas will remain permanently unoccupied, scarred by many more years of warfare.

This is not only a possibility; this is Russia’s overall goal in this phase of its war against Ukraine—to create new realities on the ground and to prevent Ukrainians from ever returning. Without a decisive Ukrainian military victory over Russia, there will be nobody left in these areas for unexploded ordnance to impact.

The final argument against the transfer of DPICMs is that by ignoring the CCM, the United States and Ukraine risk legitimizing the use and proliferation of cluster bombs in conflicts throughout the 21st century. My response to that is simple: The consequences of legitimizing a Russian fascist victory over Ukrainian democracy would be far worse, and that catastrophic scenario is significantly increased if Ukraine cannot overcome its artillery deficit.

That deficit, of both artillery and ammunition, is the gravest and most pressing issue for Ukraine and the reason Biden cited for sending the weapons. Ukraine already has an artillery disadvantage against Russia. Artillery ammunition stocks in the West among Ukraine’s partners have rapidly dwindled, and the failure to ramp up production of ammunition to meet Ukraine’s needs has resulted in a bottleneck for the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukrainian forces cannot advance without artillery, and they are running out of artillery ammunition to build on their advances, with no alternative supplies to replenish those stockpiles available anytime soon. The arguments made by human rights groups against Ukraine receiving DPICMs do not reflect an understanding of that shortage. If Ukraine had an unlimited supply of 155 mm ammunition, then perhaps this situation would not have arisen at all. And perhaps, as Biden implied, when the supply of 155 mm ammunition is no longer running critically low, further such transfers will not be necessary.

Furthermore, as Watling and Bronk wrote in their commentary, DPICMs are far more effective than traditional 155 mm shells at clearing the kinds of entrenched positions Ukrainian forces are coming up against right now. Every inch being fought for here in Ukraine costs Ukrainian blood to liberate, and every trench that can be effectively cleared using artillery saves the lives of Ukrainian troops. In response to the transfer’s announcement, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said as much: “The more losses we inflict on them the more lives of Ukrainian people we will be able to save.”

Ukraine is experiencing significantly more artillery ammunition shortfalls than Russia, and DPICMs can have a decisive impact on a critical stage of the conflict over the next few months. There are no readily available alternatives to their use, and the risk of collateral damage from Ukraine’s stated intention of use is fundamentally low.

Reznikov made it clear that Ukraine will not use DPICMs in inhabited areas, that it will keep strict records and logs of their use, and that it will undertake extensive demining operations to deal with unexploded ordnance in areas liberated from Russian occupation. It is reasonable for Ukraine’s international allies to trust that Kyiv will use these weapons responsibly and that it can be trusted to protect its own population from the unintended collateral damage of unexploded ordnance. Even without these transfers, these areas will need to be extensively demined.

The consequences of refusing Kyiv’s request for DPICMs during an artillery ammunition deficit, however, cannot be overstated. Ukraine is facing an existential threat from a Russian genocidal war of conquest, and the best way to protect Ukrainian civilians going forward is to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to win this war against its much more powerful foe.

While I empathize with the Western capitals criticizing the Biden administration’s decision, from the military context of this war the consequences for Ukraine of not overcoming this artillery deficit are too terrible to be ignored.

The signatories of the CCM are not powerless to change the situation facing Ukraine. The first thing they can do is dramatically ramp up the domestic manufacturing of 155 mm artillery shells to finally solve the ammunition shortfall. The next thing they can do is start pledging the billions of dollars and the years of support that will be required to assist Ukraine’s postwar demining programs. The last is to finally start understanding that Ukraine’s fight for its survival is existential and that questions about what a postwar Ukraine will look like are completely irrelevant if there is no postwar Ukraine.