Banning Cluster Bombs: A Glass 2/3 Full

This year Congress passed and the president signed into law a permanent ban on exports of cluster bombs.

In addition, the Pentagon, under pressure from domestic legislation and other countries, last summer issued new rules requiring the highest ranking officers in the military to pre-authorize any future use of cluster munitions. These regulations make it unlikely the U.S. military will use cluster bombs again.

But Pentagon planners don't want to take these weapons out of their arsenal. "We believe that cluster munitions are an integral part of our and many of our coalition partners' military operations," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in explaining why the United States has so far refused to join more than half of the nations of the world in a global treaty banning cluster bombs.

The world's tolerance for the use of weapons that kill and injure more civilians than soldiers has run out. At a meeting in Dublin, Ireland in May 2008,leaders of more than half the countries of the world concluded a treaty banning the use, stockpiling, and export of cluster bombs.

The treaty was opened for signature in December 2008, and nearly all of the United States' treaty allies have signed. It should come into force in early 2010. The main problem now is that the world's largest user of these weapons -- the United States -- has so far refused to join.

The Bush administration boycotted the treaty negotiations, and the Pentagon has argued that it needs another decade before it can stop using the weapons, which its closest allies have already started decommissioning.

The United States used cluster bombs in three countries -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia -- in the past decade. U.S. cluster munitions that failed to explode on impact when dropped in Laos and Vietnam more than thirty years ago are still killing people there today.

For more than two years FCNL's nationwide community's contributions, emails, and public protests have helped educate the media, encouraged others to join in this work, and built Congressional support for legislation to prohibit cluster bombs. As coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs, FCNL has led efforts to build a coalition for U.S. ratification of the cluster bomb ban treaty.

Before the November 2008 presidential elections, FCNL worked to persuade Barack Obama's top advisors that the United States should sign the global cluster bomb treaty. Ninety-six countries have already done so, including Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and Germany.

Last December, following a series of meetings with Obama's presidential campaign staff, a speakers' tour with cluster bomb survivors through key mid-west states, and intensive lobbying here in Washington, President Obama's transition team agreed to re-examine U.S. policy on cluster munitions. "As president, [Obama] will carefully review the new treaty and work closely with other countries to ensure that the United States is doing everything feasible to promote protection of civilians in conflict," a spokesperson for the Obama transition team told a Chicago newspaper.

But the president has a lot on his plate, and this issue is not high politics in the United States. In addition, the new president may not be ready to challenge the Pentagon on this issue.

To help encourage him to take action, in February 2009 FCNL organized a letter from the heads of 67 national organizations asking President Obama to launch a balanced review of U.S. diplomatic, humanitarian, and military interests related to the use of these weapons. Signatories to that letter ranged from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the Women's Refugee Council, as well as the heads of many of the major religious denominations in the United States. As of late May we have received no reply.

Even more recently, our team organized a request that President Obama himself meet to discuss the impact of these weapons with Soraj Ghulam Habib, Raed Mokaled, and Lynn Bradach -- all three of whose lives were devastated by cluster munitions.

Our best hope for convincing the Obama White House to take this issue up is by building support in Congress for legislation that bans U.S. use of cluster bombs. So far this year, with your help, we have persuaded 24 senators to cosponsor a bill that would prohibit the U.S. military from using any of its vast arsenal of cluster weapons that leave behind widespread minefields of dud submunitions. The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2009 (S. 416, H.R. 981) also prohibits all use of cluster weapons in areas that are normally populated by civilians.

If Congress passed this bill, there would be no reason for the United States to avoid signing the global treaty, since U.S. forces would already be banned from using the weapons. Passing the bill could be difficult. Yet if our movement can persuade one-third of the Senate to co-sponsor this legislation, the White House may be persuaded to challenge the Pentagon on this issue and launch a formal review of U.S. policy. We at FCNL believe that any balanced review of this issue would conclude that the United States should join its closest allies in signing and then ratifying the global treaty to ban cluster munitions.