Unilateral agreements to scrap certain munitions

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A popular cause these days seems to be the scrapping of certain munitions such as landmines and cluster bombs. Indeed, the UK has just announced it's to do away with the latter:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2044896/Gordon-Brown-Britain-will-scrap-cluster-bombs.html

Personally, I think this decision is irresponsible, and made purely for short-term political gain. What opinions do others here hold on the subject generally, and not necessarily relating to the UK?

Do you need cluster bombs? Morally, I would say it's the right thing to do. I suppose you could debate whether or not it's the best idea from a practical standpoint. But really, Britain doesn't face any real threat from an external enemy, at least not one that could be dealt with as a conventional war, so cluster bombs don't have any real value to them anyways.

I read recently they are talking about banning depleted uranium, and about time too, now there is a weapon of mass destruction for you, with a half life of 4.5 billion years, I bet those Iraqis are jumping for joy at that nice Mr Bush and his friend Tony Blair for saving them from that evil Saddam Hussien.

My sarcasm detector has detected Sarcasm in your post. It leads me to believe that Saddam Hussein was not an evil person as depicted by Blair and Bush. It appears that you would instead prefer to live under Saddam the Victorious' rule as opposed to TRUE tyrants like Bush and Blair.

I'd rather have Saddam in there for a few more years than have an entire region polluted for billions of years by DU and have every single person and animal born there henceforth affected by mutations, malformed babies, cancers, DNA damage, etc. Blair and Bush are the true evil ones in this scenario. Saddam was not a nice guy, he was evil and nasty and needed to be out, yes. So why did the US support him for so long? They've hardly fixed things for the area or the people of Iraq - they've stolen their oil, polluted them forevermore, and successfully destabilised the entire region. Nice. Well done guys, give yourselves a pat on the back.


Anyway.

Good. Get rid of cluster bombs, it's about time. I just hope the US, China and Russia abide by the deal.

LeKiwi has put his finger right on the button, sure, Saddam was not a very nice man at all, hence in view of the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction, our Tony changed the spin too saving those poor Iraqis from that tyrant Hussien.

Just seems a funny way of saving a people, by destroying thier country for all eternity.

Saddam looks like Saint Hussein of Bagdad in comparison.

I think this sort of thing is pandering to people who don't know any better. To the man on the ground, I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of difference if he's blown up by a cluster bomb or disintegrated by a precision munition. I feel the same way about hollow point ammunition and the tumbling bullets. This is war we are talking about, there are no rules.

Yeah, "all's fair in love and war." I really do find concepts like rules of engagement, Geneva conventions, and such to be rather humorous. In a real war, no one is actually going to abide by any of that stuff.

They where no banned because of the way they kill.
It was because over 90% of those killed by such munitions are civilians who use the land years after the bombs have landed and failed to detonate.

I actually do know that, I was just being a little facetious in my original post. If the US does in fact stay out of the treaty, I'd hope we'd at least improve our quality control a little bit. What's the point of a bomb that doesn't go off, to bean some guy in the head with a bomblet? It gets into some really ugly calculations, when you start tallying the cost of better made bombs against civilian casualties in some third world hell hole across the globe. Personally, I'd take the better bombs, as the USA we're probably going to have to pay to clean up the hell hole anyway, might as well not add bomb disposal to the check we're going to pick up. War is always an ugly business though, and always will be. Trying to "civilize" warfare is ultimately futile.

Civilizing war is oxymoronic, but OTOH we do use some limits. One way to 'pacify' an area would be to poison the water supply, use bio/chem-weapons willy-nilly, but we don't seem to do that.

Maybe the notion of 'war' is a concept our brains evolved when humans were in small groups out on the tundra. Our gray matter allowed us to build weapons that have implications evolution didn't set us up to deal with on an instictual level. I.e. WMD's, mass death of non-warriors, weapons that make the land itself hostile (mines, poison, etc.). Maybe it's nuts, but drawing some lines, as nutty and arbitrary as it seems maybe is necessary, because our instincts are "total war." (Which maybe works fine when power is limited to small numbers and just clubs, rocks, spears, arrows, etc.)

Like with guns; when angry someone might feel like they want to 'destroy' someone, but with bare hands they could be exhausted and 'over it' before they accomplished that. OTOH, with a gun, one finger squeeze and it's done.

The problem with civilizing war is that it gives an edge to the uncivilized. Most of the banned weaponry is both effective and cheap, an irresistible combo for third world strong men who want to annex their peaceful neighbor. A treaty only works if people abide it, and most of Africa, South America and the Middle East won't, so why even bother? It's the usual suspects who want to be seen doing "something", even if all it is is wasting time.

This is exactly nothing to do with international weapons bans or moral high grounds. Its because our government is cutting corners and saving money.

"Where can we grab some cash to prop up our ailing economy?"

"We dont really use those bombs.. they must be worth a bit.."

"Agreed. We dont really need body-armour.. or proper light armoured vehicles either, when you really think about it.."

"Yes. Meat is cheap. Armour is heavy, so it must be expensive."

""If we keep those Nimrods that arent airworthy instead of paying to make them actually safe.. we'll save a fortune."

"So what do we spend all this money on?"

"Expenses. I need a tumble-dryer, the minister for lying and thieving wants a carribbean holiday, and the minister for getting the best soldiers in the world DEAD has a hot mistress he needs to keep"

"Yeaah".

Actually, there are munitions that have successfully banned during a war. For example, poison gas. In World War Two, it was never used in combat -both sides deemed it to horrific. Even the gas used in concentration camps killed relatively peacefully, nothing like the horrible deaths and disabilities caused by the poison gasses used in the First World War.

There are a few reasons beyond the humane aspect, I'll admit. Gas-masks had gotten much better by WW2, so it wouldn't have been as effective. WW2 was also a much more mobile war, without people sitting around in trenches for weeks being very good targets for the realtively slow moving gas clouds. Gas also had a tendancy to backfire if the wind changed, coming back onto your own troops.

But it would have been a very effective weapon for bombing cities. Drop some convential bombs to get people to huddle together in bomb shelters, then drop some gas bombs. This would be be a great terror weapon, though not very effective for sheer destruction - it would primarily kill the very young and the elderly, people who aren't all that useful to the war effort anyway. It would also create disfiguring disabilities in some, requiring others to take care of them instead of contributing to the war.

But neither side used it, because the only way to make it effective was just too horrific to contemplate. So there obviously are somethings unfair in war.

And, of course, there is the ultimate hydrogen bomb. No doubt that is amazingly effective. If all's fair, well, hell, the USA has lots of those around just aching to be used on the came civilians that cluster bombs are slowly maiming and killing except, in their own way, they are a bit neater.

Poison gas wasn't used in WWII because everyone was afraid of th retaliation, not out of some sort of sense that it was too terrible a weapon. Hell, the Germans invented nerve gas during the war, they were just afraid that if they used it, the Allies would use something even worse on them. This was an early example of the MAD principle at work, successfully in this case. When the situation was asymmetrical, Saddam and the Kurds, Iranians, and his own people, there was no hesitation in employing gas. The only way to prevent someone from using a weapon, is to have a bigger, scarier weapon to threaten him with.