The Return of the Cluster Bombs
Only a few days ago I wrote about the government brokering a deal to ban the use of cluster bombs. A treaty, signed by 108 other countries, which I applauded because cluster bombs are abhorrent.
Yet it appears that all cluster bombs haven’t been banned. Gordon Brown has actually negotiated a loophole for Britain to continue using cluster bombs, despite announcing support for “a ban on all cluster bombs, including those currently in service by the UK”. Let’s read that again “a ban on all cluster bombs”.
Except some new anti-tank cluster bombs, which have conveniently been recategorised as outside the definition of a cluster bomb.
Brown’s intervention in Dublin does mean an end to Britain’s two existing “smart” cluster munitions. The M85 artillery shell, which splits up into 49 bomblets and was last used in Iraq, will be taken out of service immediately. The M73 rocket, fired from the army’s Apache helicopters, contains nine bomblets and is deployed in Afghanistan. It will be phased out over eight years. By then the new ballistic sensor fused munition shell will be in service. The shell splits into two bomblets that descend on small parachutes, which make them particularly attractive to children if they do not detonate. (The Times)
Since when does a ban on cluster weapons not mean a ban on cluster weapons? When they’re Gordon Brown’s cluster weapons. Signing a treaty to ban cluster bombs, and then taking eight years to phase out the current ones - which they originally wanted to exclude from the treaty anyway - and ordering an entirely new batch is just unbelievable.
If they didn’t want to stop using cluster bombs immediately, they shouldn’t have signed the treaty.
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I’m afraid that ethics don’t really enter the military arena unless there is a military need for a particular course of action. For example, exploding bullets were expressly banned a hundred years ago but are lawful if fired at equipment or vehicles. If someone in the vehicle is struck with an cannon shell that was an unintended action. But they still die. I blogged on cluster bombs at http://listeningblogger.blogspot.com/2008/05/gordon-browns-new-defence-policy.html