The COVID-19 pandemic has become the focal point of world affairs and relegated other pressing matters to the background. One item that has not gained the attention it deserves is the decision of the U.S. government to revise their anti-personnel landmine (APL) policy. On the 31st of January 2020, the U.S. Secretary of Defense announced the withdrawal from Barack Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive 37 (PPD-37)[1], which had largely prohibited the usage, production, stockpiling, and transfer of APLs outside of the Korean peninsula.[2] In this article I will express strong reservations towards this policy shift, arguing that the Trump administration has made a short-sighted and unnecessary decision which will have dangerous repercussions.
Over the past few decades, numerous anti-mine lobby initiatives (often led by prominent figures) and international agreements have strived to put a ban on these devastating hidden-killers, and with steady success. Since the ratification of the Ottawa Treaty – to which 164 countries are party, the highest number of any disarmament agreement – in December 1997, the number of innocent people maimed or killed by mines and other explosive remnants of war has been in serious decline, from an estimated 24,000 victims in 1996 to roughly 7,000 casualties in 2018.[3] However, these humanitarian accomplishments and the overall objective to attain an APL-free world are now at serious risk due to this shift in American policy. Not only is it morally reprehensible, but it also sends a dangerous signal to the rest of the world, giving other states the green light to exploit APLs. But what is most curious about the reform is that the motivations lying behind it are remarkably weak.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defended their decision on the grounds of strategic and military necessity.[4] A bankrupt argument, to say the least, because history evidences that the effectiveness of mines as a warfare instrument is peripheral at best, and in some instances even counterproductive. Take the Gulf War, for instance: out of the estimated 9 million mines sown in Kuwait, few – if any – resulted in damage to armed forces. Similarly, numerous high-level U.S. commanders have long argued that APLs are no real ‘force multipliers.’[5] Former U.S. Marine Corps four-star general Alfred M. Gray Jr. stated aptly: “I know of no situation in the Korean War, nor in the five years I served in Southeast Asia, nor in Panama, nor Desert Shield-Desert Storm, where our use of mine warfare truly channelized the enemy and brought him into a destructive pattern. I’m not aware of any operational advantage from the broad deployment of mines.”[6] Similarly, the International Commission of the Red Cross already established in 1996 that the APL only delays missions and ‘has become less relevant to modern armoured warfare’.[7]
Even stronger objections can be levelled at the DoD’s technical justification to reemploy APLs. The Department claims that their so-called “smart mine” with a self-destructive mechanism will be ‘more protective of non-combatants.’[8] This oxymoron reminds me of another controversial U.S. policy supported by the Trump Administration: the U.S. government once euphemistically termed torture practices as ‘enhanced interrogation.’[9] It sounds appealing, but is not: APLs destroy innocent lives rather than protect them. They are not « smart » either, at least not intelligent enough to distinguish soldiers from civilians. Besides, their self-destructive feature has been heavily contested because of their inaccuracy and malfunctioning.[10] This is not to say that their performance matters: my point is that mines are inherently dangerous and sugar-coating them will inevitably lead us down a slippery slope. In fact, their long-term nature is undeniable, as APLs planted during World War II and the Vietnam War, for example, still injure and kill people today.[11] Moreover, designating mines as “smart” is nothing more than a poor attempt to justify an unnecessary and dangerous policy. Smart mines do not build a safer world; only abandoning them does.
Although APLs have not become any smarter, modern mine technology has made them far more lethal and harder to detect. For example, the U.S. M16 has a casualty radius of up to 30 meters and is partly buried underground, which makes it extremely difficult to spot with the human eye.[12] In light of this, I cannot stress enough that to this day half of all mine victims are children. Consider the tragic story of Sot Tol: he lost his left leg to an APL when he and three of his friends, who all died from the incident, had mistaken it for a toy.[13] But APLs can have more devastating effects, as they are usually employed from the air, covering large territory: they create widespread “death-zones” in which human life has become impossible. The use of minefields therefore results in mass migration that, in turn, sparks conflict elsewhere.[14] Additionally, the devastating effects of APLs – these are not limited to physical injuries, they also include the agonising psychological suffering – often overburden the healthcare systems in countries where mines are deployed on a massive scale.
Furthermore, in policymaking it is vital to make a trade-off between the benefits and the drawbacks of a policy, something that has clearly been overlooked with the 2020 revision of the APL ban. The doubtful strategic advantage of APLs is not, however, worth the severe human suffering they bring about. It must also be noted that imposing the American sense of morality on the world comes with far-reaching responsibilities. This is to say that the U.S., in its self-designated role as the world’s moral leader, should not always fight fire with fire. This means that President-elect Joe Biden has to, besides tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, another important mission to pursue, give the world a strong signal to exterminate APLs. Obama’s PPD-37 was an important move in the right direction; unfortunately, the Trump administration took a dangerous turn for the worse. It is now up to a new U.S. government to help build a safe and APL-free world.
Sources
[1] In the Barack Obama Administration, the directives that are used to promulgate Presidential decisions on national security matters are designated Presidential Policy Directives (PPDs). Retrieved at: http://the-monitor.org/en-gb/reports/2015/united-states/mine-ban-policy.aspx
[2] Memorandum for Secretaries of the Military Departments of January 31st, 2020, DoD Policy on Landmines. Retrieved at: https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jan/31/2002242359/-1/-1/1/DOD-POLICY-ON-LANDMINES.PDF
[3] Monitor, Landmine, Ban Policy and Mine Action. “Landmine Monitor 2018.” Concord: International Campaign to ban Landmines (2010).
[4] DoD Policy on Landmines, p. 1.
[5] Blagden, Paddy. "Anti-Personnel Landmines-Friend or Foe." A Study of the Military Use and Effectiveness of Anti—Personnel Mines (1996), 44.
[6] Ibid., 41.
[7] Blagden, Anti-Personnel Landmines-Friend or Foe, 42.
[8] DoD Policy on Landmines, 2.
[9] See for example: https://thesecuritydistillery.org/all-articles/why-torture-is-ethically-unjustifiable-1?rq=maarten
[10] Blagden, Anti-Personnel Landmines-Friend or Foe, 59-60, and see also John Ismay, 13 November 2018, The U.S. Army Is Trying to Develop New Land Mines — Ones That Don’t Harm Civilians, New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/magazine/army-landmines.html
[11] Roberts, Shawn, and Jody Williams. After the guns fall silent: The enduring legacy of landmines. Oxfam (1995), 5-6.
[12] Pike, John. M14/M16 Anti-personnel Mines (AP), Military Analysis Network https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/apm.htm
[13] Perry, Mark. Not Even the Military Thinks Landmines Are A ‘Vital Tool’, The American Conservative https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/not-even-the-military-thinks-landmines-are-a-vital-tool/
[14] Larsen, Kaj. Op-ed: Reversing the landmine ban will explode on Us, Navy Times https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/02/17/op-ed-reversing-the-landmine-ban-will-explode-on-us/