SourceUS: Trump Administration Abandons Landmine Ban
Reversal Means Its Forces Can Use Mines Indefinitely, Anywhere
(Washington, DC) – The Trump Administration’s decision to cancel a policy to eliminate all antipersonnel landmines reverses years of steady steps toward alignment with the 1997 treaty banning the weapons, Human Rights Watch said today. The new United States policy rolls back the US prohibitions on landmine production and use.
“Most of the world’s countries have embraced the ban on antipersonnel landmines for more than two decades, while the Trump administration has done a complete about-face in deciding to cling to these weapons in perpetuity,” said Steve Goose, director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch. “Using landmines, which have claimed so many lives and limbs, is not justified by any country or group under any circumstances.”
The new policy repeals a 2014 policy directive issued by the Obama administration, which banned US production and acquisition of antipersonnel landmines, as well as their use outside of a future conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The directive included a commitment not to assist, encourage, or induce other nations to use, stockpile, produce, or transfer antipersonnel mines.
The US participated in the Ottawa Process, which led to the creation of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The Clinton administration set the goal of joining in 2006. However, in 2004, the Bush administration announced a new policy rejecting the treaty. The 2014 policy by the Obama administration once again set the goal of joining the Mine Ban Treaty, but President Barack Obama never sent the treaty to the Senate recommending US accession.
A total of 164 countries are party to the Mine Ban Treaty, which entered into force on March 1, 1999. Human Rights Watch chairs the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate, together with Jody Williams.
“With this policy, the US is marching out of step with its allies,” said Goose. In recent years, landmines have only been used by regimes known for their human rights abuses in Burma and Syria, and by non-state armed groups like ISIS.
While the administration claims landmines are necessary for US forces, the US has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991, has not exported them since 1992, has not produced them since 1997, and has destroyed millions of stockpiled mines.
Similarly, in December 2017, the Trump administration announced a new policy ending a longstanding US policy not to use unreliable cluster munitions and to destroy its stocks, a move that completely disregarded the widely accepted international ban on these weapons. Cluster munitions typically open in the air, dispersing multiple bomblets or submunitions over a wide area. Many submunitions fail to explode on initial impact, leaving unexploded duds that can act like landmines for years to come unless cleared and destroyed.
“Trump’s new policy to use antipersonnel mines any time anywhere in the world is a retrograde action that should be condemned,” Goose said. “All presidential candidates should endorse the goal of banning landmines.”
sourceTrump lifts restrictions on US landmine use
US President Donald Trump has lifted restrictions on the deployment of anti-personnel landmines by American forces.
The decision reverses a 2014 Obama administration ban on the use of such weapons, which applied everywhere in the world except for in the defence of South Korea.
The Trump administration said Mr Obama's policy could put US troops "at a severe disadvantage".
Thousands of people are injured and killed by landmines every year.
US forces will now be free to use the weapons across the world "in exceptional circumstances", the White House said.
Where are the world's landmines?
The US is not a signatory to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which restricts the development or use of anti-personnel land mines.
What has changed?
The Obama-era ban applied to the US military everywhere but on the Korean Peninsula. That exception was made under pressure from military planners, to protect US troops based across the de-militarized zone from the North Korean military.
Mr Obama also ordered the destruction of landmine stockpiles not made to defend South Korea. But the Trump administration has now scrapped that policy, stating that the president was "rebuilding" the US military.
"The Department of Defense has determined that restrictions imposed on American forces by the Obama administration's policy could place them at a severe disadvantage during a conflict against our adversaries," a White House statement said, adding: "The president is unwilling to accept this risk to our troops."
Mr Trump has given the all-clear for the use of "non-persistent" landmines that can be switched off remotely rather than remaining buried beneath the ground.
Why is Trump doing this?
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said landmines were vital to its military.
"Landmines are an important tool that our forces need to have available to them in order to ensure mission success and in order to reduce risk to forces," he told a press conference.
"That said, in everything we do we also want to make sure that these instruments, in this case landmines, also take into account both the safety of employment and the safety to civilians and others after a conflict."
achel Stohl, an arms control expert at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, called the decision "inexplicable".
"I have no idea if it's posturing or a reality that the US is claiming back the right to use landmines," she told the BBC. "It's inexplicable given all we know about these deadly weapons and the amount of money the United States has spent demining around the world," she added.
Ms Stohl said the decision put lives at risk and was another example of the Trump administration "defining its own rules and ignoring global standards of behaviour".
A risk to civilians despite technical wizardry?
analysis by Jonathan Marcus
While the Obama administration refused to join the global ban on anti-personnel landmines, it broadly sympathised with the aims of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.
Senior military commanders believed the effect of these weapons - denying an area to enemy advance - could be replicated by other weapons less dangerous to civilians once a conflict was over.
Now landmines will be more widely available to US commanders, the argument being that their absence leaves them at a disadvantage in relation to likely adversaries - perhaps a reference to the fact that neither Russia or China have banned or placed any restrictions on such weapons.
The use of antipersonnel landmines by US forces will only be in exceptional circumstances, says the Pentagon, and only "non-persistent types" - ie. versions that disarm themselves after a period, will be used. But campaigners will see this as striking at the international norm outlawing these weapons, and will argue that for all the technical wizardry many mines may still fail, remaining live and risking injury to innocent civilians.
How destructive are landmines?
The use of anti-personnel landmines has been banned by 164 countries, and yet they're still being used in conflicts around the world. There are an estimated 110 million anti-personnel mines still in the ground with more being laid every year.
In 2017, more than 7,000 casualties were caused by mines and other explosive remnants of war, including nearly 2,800 deaths, according to the Landmine Monitor.
More than 120,000 people were killed or injured by landmines between 1999-2017, according to the same group. Nearly half the victims are children, with 84% being boys. Civilians make up 87% of casualties.
The true number is almost certainly higher due to cases going unreported
It's a frankly disgraceful move on every level, and it's more strong man saber rattling from Trump. The elimination of landmines is one of the extremely few things nearly every country in the world can agree on as a good thing (even the US, despite its refusal to sign up to the Ottawa treaty, has maintained a generally negative stance of landmines for the last three decades) but here we are.
