Considering how much the US intelligence community knows about Russian intentions and plans, this just tells me that Russia is about to do something awful and the US is trying to give Ukraine some nasty stuff in preparation.
This isn’t really that nasty necessarily, it’s just really good at one specific thing–clearing light infantry out of big areas of really rough terrain. Like an elaborate trench system for example.
Otherwise you have to send guys with guns to do it the old fashioned way, who themselves suffer casualties.
The reason we don’t like them is a portion of the submunitions will not detonate, but remain live. These will cause innocent civilian casualties in the area for decades to come, if not cleaned up with extreme care. It’s not too different from landmines that get left behind. Kid goes wandering off years from now, loses a leg.
If it were up to me Ukraine would be given a freaken aircraft carrier or whatever else they want.
If you ask me, at this point give them all they need to level Moscow into a mile deep crater.
War is inhumane business regardless, and the objective should always be to bring the conflict to an end as swiftly as possible. If cluster munitions do so, then we should be handing them over to Ukraine as fast as we can ship them.
They don’t.
I suspect this decision is the result of some complex political calculus that determined a decisive win for Ukraine against Russia is better for America politically, even with a humanitarian concern like this, than that Ukraine’s counteroffensive fail.
It’s like that line from Avatar: “Killing the indigenous looks bad, but you know what looks worse? A bad quarterly statement.”
Despite humanitarian concerns
One wonders if the people now throwing the term “humanitarian concerns” around ever bother to look at images of Bucha, Mariupol, Bakhmut, Kherson, etc. Images of destroyed hospitals, schools and parks in Kyiv and elsewhere. Images of the ecological and humanitarian CATASTROPHE that was the Nova Kakhovka dam. The sign on top of that Mariupol theater saying “CHILDREN HERE”.
There is an ongoing EMERGENCY in Ukraine that is superseding any and all other arguments. Clutching pearls after all this makes one a useful idiot for the kremlin.
Are we just going to completely ignore the legacy cluster munitions leave behind for future generations? Are they the only option we have left to send to Ukraine?
Considering how much of a humanitarian crisis the ongoing occupation of East and Southern Ukraine is, with Russia actively killing Ukrainians on an ongoing basis, it is the much, much lesser of two evils. Cluster munitions are incredibly effective at clearing large areas of hostile troops.
Now is how fast can Ukraine gets them? I hope they were already on route before the public announcement.
