this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Socialism
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I think Ukraine, specifically, has a huge incentive to show as much restraint in their use as possible here. If you have evidence that defending militaries using cluster munitions typically fail to do so, then I'd be interested to see that.
ironically the best recent example of this is Ukraine (most sovereign states being invaded at this stage of history don't have or aren't known to have cluster munitions)—it is exceedingly likely that in the past 9 years Ukraine has used them without much restraint. Georgia also admitted to using them pretty freely when they were being invaded by Russia in 2008.
As far as I can tell from a quick skim, that article is about firing cluster munitions into populated areas. I think we can both agree that this is a war crime and the people responsible should be in prison. I don't think it would have been any less of a war crime if either Ukraine or Russia had been firing conventional munitions into populated areas, though. I also don't think it has much bearing on Ukraine's likely actions in this war, since it's a conventional war rather than an insurgency with most fighting taking place inside major cities - even ignoring basic decency, there is simply no reason for them to brutalise their own population that way. I was more interested in evidence of a defensive use of cluster munitions which hadn't been properly cleaned up, which was the direction of the conversation to that point.