Is It Time to Ban Explosive Weapons?
UK-based NGO Landmine Action says yes. In a recent report, the organization points out that we do not consider explosive bombs an acceptable tool in police operations, and proposes they be stigmatized as tools of counter-insurgency and military operations other than war as well – at least when used in populated areas.
The report cites evidence of the civilian consequences of explosive violence used in populated areas, an argument with which it’s easy to agree from a human security perspective. Whether the exact percentage of civilian deaths from explosives are 83% as the report concludes or marginally lower, it is clear that when you drop 500 lb bombs in urban areas, collateral damage levels will be unacceptably high. One of the great strengths of the report, however, is that it doesn’t limit itself to direct civilian casualties but also documents the long-term developmental consequences of destroying civilian infrastructure with explosives.
Explosive weapons have a high capacity to damage the social and economic infrastructure on which civilian populations rely. The destruction of housing, power supplies, water and sanitation systems, health facilities, schools, markets, roads and transport links, and energy infrastructure present direct humanitarian problems, deplete local and national capacity for production and growth, and necessitate high levels of reconstruction expenditure, diverting scarce resources from investments necessary to achieving developmental targets.”
Finally, the report also suggests that the appropriation of such violence by non-state actors gives governments an incentive to seize the moral high ground in order to better distinguish themselves from their illegitimate foes:
A stigma against theuse of explosive weapons in populated areas would provide a basis for better differentiation between those acting on their common responsibility to protect
civilians and those subordinating civilian protection in the pursuit of other goals.
This is an intriguing argument because it counters the conventional wisdom among some scholars and policy-makers – that states must increasingly use heavy-handed means to counter enemies who themselves have little respect for civilians. So I’ll be interested to see how this argument plays as Landmine Action presses its claims. But it sure is good to see members of the NGO community – as well as the United Nations Secretary General – framing explosive weapons as the humanitarian travesty they are.
In analytical terms, this report constitutes an example of “problem definition” – what scholars of agenda-setting would consider an early step toward the development of a global prohibition regime. Yet it’s interesting that Executive Director Richard Moyes, who authored the report and also maintains a blogsabout explosive violence – isn’t calling for an outright ban on the state use of explosive weapons. Instead what is suggested here are baby-steps: states should more clearly articulate the circumstances under which they would be allowable, develop better mechanisms for determining the consequences of their use, and compensate civilians who are harmed by explosions.
What do readers think? Should explosive weapons go the way of landmines in global “civil” society?
I doubt that any air force in the world would sit still for such a measure, as right as it is.
Which is a good argument against the legitimacy of having an air force.
> Should explosives go the way of landmindes?
You mean, should the join the list of weapons that civilised states don’t use, except when we want to, of course.
Also, you mean, another treaty for USA not to sign?
normative pressure can be exerted through the development of new weapons norms also on states that do not formally join a treaty regime. the US in particular, has changed its landmine policy and recent developments are most encouraging…
I’ll take “Things that Will Never Happen” for $100, Alex.
No nation in the world would sign such a treaty, and I actually have a hard time imagining any two countries negotiating such a treaty between themselves.
I’m not defending the use of explosive weapons in a lot of places where they are carelessly used (counterinsurgency being a prime example, where they do as much harm as good in my estimation, even as a tool of warfare), but it’s not much crazier to suggest whether it isn’t time to ban the use of small arms in warfare.
Question is: considering that explosive weapons cause blast and fragmentation effects in an area around the point of detonation, can these weapons ever be used in populated areas (e.g. a market, village centre, IDP camp) in a way that does not expose civilians to an unacceptably high risk of being injured, killed or having their houses destroyed? let alone, the risks posed by explosive remnants of war left behind…
The alternative for taking out bunkers would be what, poison gas?
Fuckin’ A, man. Next thing, you’ll want to take tasers away from the police, you dirty commie ratbag.
I think it’s a great idea to give insurgents even stronger incentive to remain in heavily populated areas. There would be no down side since passersby hit by automatic weapons fire, prisoners shot in the back of the head, random people shot by snipers for picking up an object, children shot when ground forces storm a room and so forth don’t count.
If explosive weapons are banned, we should also discontinue the Nobel Prizes, as Alfred Nobel’s sin would be fully absolved.
i hate to be the one to break the news to you, but warfare doesn’t operate by the marquess of queensbury rules. a weapon, once deployed and proven effect against its target will, absent some compelling reason, be deployed again.
ever since sherman developed the concept of “total war”, civilians engaged in the pursuit of growing or producing war materials & supplies have been considered fair game, as well as their farms and factories. to not target them would be folly, since they provide the means of war for the military.
many of the weapons described serve those exact purposes. once you become part of the war machine, directly or indirectly, you accept the target painted on your back.
had the germans or japanese developed a long-range bomber, capable of hitting targets on either coast, we’d have expected them to go after war industry, regardless of where it was located, as we did their’s.
those are the harsh realities of war.
ever since sherman developed the concept of “total war”, civilians engaged in the pursuit of growing or producing war materials & supplies have been considered fair game, as well as their farms and factories.
Sherman hardly invented the concept of “total war” as any resident of, among many, many examples, Magdeburg 1631, or Melos 416 BCE, or Troy, ca. 1250 BCE, could tell you.
I think the point is that explosives in populated areas usually aren’t killing civilians in service to the military, but rather civilians who have the bad luck of living across the street (or under, or above) a safe house for various militants.
That being said, your blending of actual innocents with Germans and Japanese from the 1940s, your invocation of the “Marquess of Queensbury” when it comes to war, and your reference to Sherman when it comes to modern warfare all make me believe that your actual position is somewhere between “Kill all the brutes” and “More Rubble, Less Trouble”. Is this just about accurate?
Look if we stopped bombing civilian population centers in the name of protecting them from terrorists, how else would we kill huge numbers of innocent people while annihilating their infrastructure?
While a thought-provoking proposition, this will never happen. First off, look at Afghanistan. The early Special Ops actions would have been impossible w/o JDAMs and other assorted items designed for breaking things and hurting people in job lots. What would those operations be? They weren’t counter-insurgency, but they might easily be considered ‘other than war.’
Also, a semi-random thought: the survivors of MOVE might disagree with the bit about explosives not being seen as appropriate for police work. If the target is sufficiently marginalized or stigmatized, very few weapons are seen as beyond the pale for police operations.
they should be banned but they should be only used for a good cause.