The Biden administration's recent decision to provide cluster munition projectiles for use in Ukraine represents yet another diplomatic and military failure for an administration that cannot seem to shoot straight in the arena of foreign policy.

By definition, a cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions.  Commonly, this is a cluster bomb, which ejects explosive bomblets designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles.  Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines, disperse chemical or biological weapons, or scatter land mines.

Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterward.  Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians and/or unintended targets long after a conflict has ended and are costly to locate and remove.  The so-called failure rate of this unexploded ordnance, or "UXO" in military parlance, can range from 2 percent to 40 percent or more and can remain active for many years, perhaps indefinitely.

Cluster munitions are currently prohibited for those nations that ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin, Ireland, in May of 2008.  The Convention entered into force and became binding international law on August 1, 2010, six months after being ratified by 30 states.  As of February 10, 2022, a total of 123 states have joined the Convention, as 110 states parties and 13 signatories.  Among those who have not signed and ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions are Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.

As the leader of the free world, this action truly sickens my stomach and is morally repugnant.  Having seen children in Asia with limbs missing due to cluster bombs strewn during the Vietnam conflict, this short-sighted action will haunt us for generations, and rightly so.  Another generation of children will have to suffer because of the ineptitude of decision-makers far removed from the field of battle, who take no responsibility for their callous and misguided actions.

It is ethically and morally wrong to provide or even sanction the use of cluster munitions by a third party, just like chemical and biological weapons.  Once the genie is out of the bottle, he is hard to put back in.  As a nation, we can do better than this, but I have come to expect nothing less than this current "cluster" from an administration that has lost its way.

The words of SECDEF Robert Gates, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades," continue to apply.  One only wonders what new cluster will follow...

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.