The Biden Administration is so insane that not only do they make the provision of cluster munitions to Ukraine into yet another silver bullet that’ll supposedly turn the war around on the ground in Ukraine’s favor—none of the previous silver bullets have done this so far—but make it out to be a humanitarian gesture that will save the lives of Ukrainian civilians from the evil Russians. And besides that, these “humanitarians” point out, the U.S. is running low on non-cluster bomb munitions.
“We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance. This is why we’ve deferred—deferred the decision for as long as we could,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House yesterday, using his best PR consultant-crafted language. “But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us.”
At the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl echoed this nonsense. “I’ll also say that it’s not a good thing for civilians in Ukraine or the humanitarian situation in Ukraine for Ukraine’s counteroffensive to be unsuccessful, or for the Russians to be more successful. That seems like a recipe for more humanitarian suffering,” he said. “So to the degree that there’s a utilitarian calculus in this, I think it’s worth thinking that through.”
But the Kiev regime has promised, in the form of written assurances, that it is going to use these in a very careful way that is aimed at minimizing any risk to civilians, Sullivan said. “And, by the way, Ukraine—the democratically elected government of Ukraine has every incentive to minimize risk to civilians because it’s their citizens,” he claimed.
But the other reason for supplying cluster munitions is that supplies of regular 155mm artillery ammunition are running low and production still hasn’t caught up to the actual usage rates. “We have provided Ukraine with a historic amount of unitary artillery rounds, and we are ramping up domestic production of these rounds,” Sullivan said. “We’ve already seen substantial increases in production, but this process will continue to take time, and it will be critical to provide Ukraine with a bridge of supplies while our domestic production is ramped up. We will not leave Ukraine defenseless at any point in this conflict, period.”
The third reason for supplying cluster munitions to the Kiev regime is that Russia has allegedly been using its own cluster munitions all over Ukraine. “Russia has been using cluster munitions with high dud or failure rates of between 30 and 40%,” Sullivan said. “In this environment, Ukraine has been requesting cluster munitions in order to defend its own sovereign territory. The cluster munitions that we would provide have dud rates far below what Russia is doing—is providing—not higher than 2.5%.” (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/07/07/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-5/)
