The Anti-Landmine Campaign Begs the Question: How Much MOre Arms Abolitionism Can the US Military Afford?

(Washington, D.C.): The latest salvo
in the international campaign to prohibit
the use of anti-personnel landmines
(APLs) features statistics culled from
Pentagon archives. These data indicate
that as many as 64,000 American troops
were killed or injured in the Korean and
Vietnam wars by landmines, the vast
majority when U.S.-made mines or other
“components” were used against
them. Like so many of the other arguments
advanced by partisans of such a landmine
ban, there is some truth to such
statements — but they obscure other,
more important truths, and induce
misleading and dangerous conclusions.

No one knows better than servicemen
who have been involved in ground combat
the toll that has been inflicted on their
units by enemy use of landmines,
including “liberated” U.S.
weapons or components (such as
hand-grenades) used in booby-traps. Like
those who have suffered the terrible
effects of friendly fire, soldiers and
Marines who have been forced to retreat
through their own minefields are all too
aware of the tragic toll such an action
can entail.

Expert Opinion

Still, the U.S. military
— including many of the Nation’s most
respected senior commanders with
distinguished records leading troops in
ground combat — has forcefully
argued that the continued use of
short-duration, self-destructing
anti-personnel landmines (as
opposed to long-duration ones, currently
used by our armed forces only in the
Korean demilitarized zone) remains
critical to the survival and mission
effectiveness of the Army and Marine
Corps. In an unprecedented
appeal, every one of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and each of the regional
Commanders-in-Chief wrote Senate Armed
Services Committee Chairman Strom
Thurmond on 10 July opposing a proposed
unilateral ban on anti-personnel
landmines. They said, in part:

“Until the United States has
a capable replacement for
self-destructing APL, maximum
flexibility and warfighting
capability for American
commanders must be preserved. The
lives of our sons and daughters
should be given the highest
priority when deciding whether or
not to ban unilaterally the use
of self-destructing APL. ⁽¹⁾

The judgment of these sixteen senior
military leaders has been seconded in a
separate letter sent to President Clinton
on 21 July by twenty-four illustrious
retired four-star generals, now retired
from the Army or Marine Corps. Among the
signatories were: former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff John Vessey, former
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (and
Secretary of State) Alexander Haig, six
former Marine Commandants (Generals
Leonard Chapman, Louis Wilson, Robert
Barrow, P.X. Kelley, Alfred Gray and Carl
Mundy) and two former Army Chiefs of
Staff (Generals William Westmoreland and
Gordon Sullivan).⁽²⁾

These distinguished soldiers and
Marines called attention to the fact
that:

“U.S./allied studies suggest
that U.S./allied casualties may
be increased by as much as 35% if
self-destructing mines are
unavailable — particularly in
the ‘halting phase’ of operations
against aggressors. Such a cost
is especially unsupportable since
the type of mines utilized by
U.S. forces and the manner in
which they are employed by those
forces do not contribute to the
humanitarian problem that impels
diplomatic and legislative
initiatives to ban APLs.”

Banning Landmines Will
Translate Into Additional U.S. Casualties

In other words, the result of
prohibiting U.S. troops from continuing
responsibly to use short-duration
anti-personnel landmines for their own
defense would be to add to —
not reduce — the number of casualties
American forces will likely sustain in
combat. This will be
particularly true if, as there is every
reason to believe will be the case, other
nations capable of mass producing
inexpensive but highly lethal landmines
continue to do so. As the retired
four-stars wrote to President Clinton:

“The unverifiability and
unenforceability of a ban on
production of such devices,
however, virtually ensures that
this practice will continue in
the future. Only the U.S.
military — and those of other
law-abiding nations — will be
denied a means, through the use
of marked and monitored
minefields, of reducing the costs
and increasing the probability of
victory in future
conflicts.”

Noblesse Oblige Arms
Control Delusions

Proponents
of banning anti-personnel landmines
(either unilaterally or multilaterally)
seem generally untroubled about this
reality. They are fond of pointing out
that “97 governments, including many
that have produced, exported or used
mines” have promised to sign a
treaty banning such weapons. Evidently,
the arms abolitionists believe the United
States should disregard the fact that
this number currently does not include
some of the largest landmine producers
(for example, Russia and China) and the
fact that such nations will assuredly not
adhere to such an unverifiable commitment
even if they were to make it.

In the final analysis, advocates of
prohibiting anti-personnel landmines
subscribe to what might be called the noblesse
oblige school of arms control: They
determine that a given weapon system
violates what they perceive to be
“international humanitarian
law” and should, therefore, be
banned. Everyone can agree that
long-duration landmines irresponsibly
sown by non-U.S. combatants for the
purpose of inflicting terror and
casualties on civilian populations are
reprehensible.

But the arms abolitionists refuse to
acknowledge the important distinctions
between types and methods of employment
of anti-personnel landmines. Moral
equivalence is the order of the day to
such partisans. Uncertainty
whether others will comply with the ban
is immaterial. It is enough — at least
for starters — that the United States
helps to create a moral standard or
“norm” to which it can
encourage other states to adhere.

This logic has already induced the
United States to agree to unverifiable
and violated bans on biological weapons,
blinding lasers, booby-traps and, most
recently, chemical weapons. After
landmines, the arms abolitionists have
set their sights on “ridding the
world” of nuclear weapons and the
production of fissile material that can
be used to manufacture them. The
government of Switzerland has even
formally proposed to prohibit what it
calls “fragmenting bullets” —
a category that would evidently include
all conventional bullets other than a
so-called “non-fragmenting”
type that happens to have been
patented by a Swiss inventor.

The Bottom Line

It is deeply offensive to hear those
favoring an anti-personnel landmine ban
declare that “the U.S. military is
incapable of giving up a weapon, no
matter how marginal its utility.”
Such a statement demeans America’s armed
forces and their leaders, both present
and retired, who have concluded that
short-duration, self-destructing
landmines are weapons of very
considerable utility. In the words of the
retired 24 generals: “In our
experience, [the] responsible use of APLs
is not only consistent with the Nation’s
humanitarian responsibilities; it is
indispensable to the safety of our troops
in many combat and peacekeeping
situations.”

Fortunately, the American people have
been known to reject noblesse oblige arms
control nostrums as naive, ill-advised
and unsupportable. But for these
sorts of seductive initiatives to be
rejected, the public needs to be informed
about all the relevant facts and
to receive the unvarnished, expert views
of their military leaders. It is
to be profoundly hoped that the recent
public declarations by forty of our
Nation’s most eminent general officers
will mark the beginning of the end of the
effort to impose a landmine ban that will
actually jeopardize the safety of untold
thousands of American troops and their
ability to prevail in future conflicts.

– 30 –

1. For the full
text of this letter see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Celestial
Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why
The U.S. Cannot Agree To Ban All
Landmines ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_97″>No. 97-D 97, 14
July 1997).

2. The full list
of the twenty-four signatories and the
entire text of their letter are attached
to the Center’s Press Release
entitled Many Of Nation’s
Most Respected Military Leaders Join
Forces To Oppose Bans On Use Of
Self-Destructing Landmines
(No. 97-P 101,
21 July 1997).