Wampum

Imagine having a cabinet level post for disarmament. New Zealand has one, Phil Goff is the current Minister for Disarmament, and he announced today that 82 of the 122 countries represented at the conference this week signed the draft treaty banning cluster munitions.

Now independent of whether or not the US inventory of cluster munitions are banned under both the Geneva Conventions Protocol I, Article 85 and Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, there is the assertion routinely offered, this week by Janine Burns, who does PR for the US embassy in Wellington, for military utility and legal necessity:

The United States shares in the humanitarian concerns that have been raised about cluster munitions but is opposed to any ban on them because of their demonstrated military utility,

The U.S. is concerned that any criminalization of cluster munitions would harm NATO and coalition joint operations and interoperability, and could adversely affect humanitarian missions by militaries.

The United States stockpiles over one billion submunitions in weapons currently in service. Nearly three-quarters of this stockpile of submunitions are contained in MLRS rockets and 155mm artillery projectiles. Given reported failure rates, a stockpile of that size creates the specter of well over 100 million explosive duds, each posing a danger to civilians similar to antipersonnel landmines.

A typical fire mission of 36 MLRS rockets could produce an average of 1368 unexploded submunitions. A battalion-2 (24 cannon firing 2 rounds each for a total of 48 rounds) with a 95 percent submunition reliability produces, on average, 212 unexploded submunitions, per football field sized area.

In a nutshell, cluster munitions are anti-personnel mine delivery systems. Anti-personnel mines are no longer legitimate weapons, so cluster munitions are also no longer legitimate weapons. That won't slow supermen like the current SecDef, but command level officers have to plan for manuver and tempo in an UneXploded Ordinance (UXO) environment, and some even think about the field after the battle moves on, or ends, and year after year, UXOs lop the limbs off of civilians.

Even the writers for The West Wing have worked the military value of landmines into their material. But what is the real value of an area denial munition? Does anyone think that US national policy is made, or unmade, but the presence or absence, of systems designed to scatter 3lb bomblets over 40 acres, leaving on the order of 1,000 unexploded bomblets per 40 acres of "area denied"?

What is Ms. Burns really saying when she refers to each of "joint operations and interoperability", and "humanitarian missions"? What do you think are the actual exculpatory circumstances, the legal use cases for, the real value of, an area denial munition?

There is a claim that this is a substantive issue where Obama is on the right side of the issue, and Clinton on the wrong side of the issue. Those who value such a claim may not want to reflect on whether the hypothetical executive Obama would sign, or veto, a bill to destroy an inventory of over one billion submunitions, and limit the role of MLRS rocket and 155mm gun tube artillery in combat arms. It is one thing to vote "correctly" as a Senator on treaty language that won't become law until Bush is a memory, and another to say "Open Season" to all the Iron Triangle lobbyists, elected or media-gifted, and meet them on the battlefield of ideas during the mid-terms, or on the re-elect calendar. Fundamentally, is a candidate of Wall Street really going to pull down the pillars of overwhelming firepower against dispersed soft targets? The defining characteristic of anti-colonial forces is the ability to field dispersed low armor, low armed forces.

How did Hillary's health care plan do in the first 100 days of Clinton I? Care to wager an arm, or a leg?