Why Team Biden is Shrugging Off Moral Concerns and NATO Divisions Over Cluster Bombs

NATO allies have pledged more financial and military support to Ukraine at the Vilnius summit but seem divided over Washington's provision of deadly cluster munitions to Kiev.

The NATO summit in Vilnius particularly aimed to show the bloc's unity on Ukraine. The US and its allies made a vow to provide more weapons to Kiev, with Germany announcing a €700 million ($770 million) military package that will include two surface-to-air MIM-104 Patriot missile systems.

Nonetheless, US President Joe Biden's decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine triggered concerns about Washington's moral standing in the ongoing conflict and de facto confirmed the failure of Ukraine's counteroffensive.

"First of all, cluster bombs are really, really nasty," journalist and author Daniel Lazare told Sputnik's podcast By Any Means Necessary. "The problem is that they contain a lot of unexploded submunitions, as they're called. And therefore, they can keep on causing havoc for decades, literally decades. In Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, some munitions continued to kill or wound hundreds of people per year. So this is the kind of nightmare that the US is now going to put in place in Ukraine."

"The second thing that stands out is the hypocrisy of the US move. It's just stunning. I mean, Jen Psaki, the administration's spokesman a year ago, accused Russia of engaging in war crimes because it was allegedly using cluster bombs. It's only a war crime of Russia, isn't it? If America does that, it's okay," Lazare continued.

On February 28, 202,2 then-White House Press Secretary Psaki openly dubbed the use of cluster shells a "war crime." On July 7, 2023, 19 members of the House of Representatives issued a critical statement on the White House’s decision to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine: "The White House’s announcement runs counter to Congress’s restrictions on the transfer of these weapons and severely undermines our moral leadership," the statement said.

The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) signaled last Friday that it was "appalled" by the US plans to transfer banned cluster munitions to Ukraine. The use and transfer of this weapon is prohibited under the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Still, the US (along with another seven NATO member states) is not a signatory to the convention.

For its part, Just Foreign Policy, an independent and non-partisan membership organization, has calculated that "if [the] US provides at least 100,000 cluster bombs [a]nd each one has at least 4 duds[,] Ukraine will be littered with at least 400,000 unexploded bomblets" which could lead to massive civilian casualties.

The US left-leaning media and scholars have raised the question of what else is on Washington's table given that it has just okayed sending banned munitions into an active war zone.

US Taps Cluster Munitions as Ammo Stockpiles Depleted

Most NATO member states have previously banned cluster munitions, and some of them have expressed their dissatisfaction with the Biden administration's decision. Still, the US is most likely to ignore these concerns, according to Serbian military expert Ljuban Karan.

"[The US will ignore these critics] not out of stubbornness, but because (…) the ammunition depots have been depleted and Ukraine needs [weapons] to continue to fight," Karan told Sputnik Serbia. "The Americans are now frankly saying that Western countries have no more 155 mm ammunition. They are using this situation to empty their stockpiles of cluster bombs, which they have in abundance," Karan said.

The expert highlighted that the US cluster shells will not change the situation on the front line and will not increase the effectiveness of the Ukrainian army.

"As for the risks for the Russian operation, [cluster munitions] won't cause problems here, given that the Russian Army has built defensive fortifications and does not need to move as intensively as the attacking side," explained the Serbian military expert. "I do not expect that the use of cluster bombs will change anything in the conflict in Ukraine, just like Western modern weapons previously transferred to Kiev."

Karan warned that cluster bombs will "do more harm to the civilian population than to the military." The expert recalled that the US and NATO used cluster bombs during their campaign against Yugoslavia. According to some estimates, NATO forces dropped 1,765 cluster bombs containing around 295,000 submunitions on the country in 1999. The area of Yugoslav territory which had to be cleared of cluster bombs amounted to a whopping 2.5 million square kilometers.

Is Team Biden Desperate?

One of the reasons why Team Biden resorted to using cluster munitions is that the Ukraine counteroffensive is not going at all well and the White House is getting increasingly worried, according to Lazare.

The journalist noted that the Biden administration "has got a lot riding" on the Ukrainian counteroffensive ahead of the 2024 presidential election. In April, Biden publicly tossed his hat into the ring and it's getting clearer that it would not be possible for him to capitalize on Ukraine's victory because the counteroffensive has stalled.

"The Afghan-style debacle of Ukraine means essentially that we wouldn't see another Democrat elected to the White House for another 25 years," Lazare said. "Basically, that's what would happen. I mean, the disgrace, the embarrassment, the humiliation would be such that the Democratic Party name would become poisoned. (…) But number two is that there's no way out of this morass. The US can't pull out. It started this [proxy] war. It provoked this war, certainly. And it can't back away. (…) The US, as you know, it's got itself in hot water and there's no clear exit."

"When politicians lose wars, they lose respect, they lose standing, and they lose popularity. The public gets very angry and wants to punish them. And we already saw the US' incompetence on full display in Afghanistan, and Biden was desperate to avoid a Vietnam-style pullout, people hanging from the helicopter rails. But that's exactly what he wound up with. And he's facing a similar debacle in the Ukraine. And there's no easy solution. The US, he will pay an enormous price and the Democrats will generally. And so groups like Democratic Socialists of America and countless other so-called radicals who backed this NATO war effort will reap the rewards, deservedly so," Lazare concluded.

For more of Dan Lazare's exclusive analysis on Team Biden's proxy war in Ukraine, check out the full episode of the By All Means Necessary podcast.