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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Politics
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unless you have data i don't, the article seems to pretty definitively refute this point. overwhelmingly the people impacted by cluster munition use are civilians (97% of casualties were civilians in 2021) both in and outside of Ukraine, and their usage has a very long tail of fatalities.[^1] there is no reason to think that even if they're tailored specifically to nebulous military use against Russian soldiers that won't also be the outcome here, because it is literally everywhere else they get used.
[^1]: Vietnam and Cambodia are the poster children for this: the countries still have have dozens of civilian fatalities a year from cluster bombing ordinance, and it's been 48 years since the Vietnam War ended.
From your linked pdf:
So to summarize:
Considering that Russia has an extremely well-documented history of specifically targeting civilians, regardless of munitions type, this seems like more of a Russia problem than a cluster bomb problem (at least to the point that it renders these specific statistics moot in a discussion about the general risks of cluster munitions, when used by militaries that are not as barbarous and murderous as the Russian military)
The issue with cluster munitions isn't how they're used, but what happens when a bomblet fails. Cluster bombs release hundreds to thousands of submunitions, and when one bomblet fails, it can remain armed and ready to detonate if/when someone comes by and bumps it, picks it up or runs over it with a tractor.
This can lead to issues long after the war is finished, as people are doing their own thing and get hurt or killed.
Yours is the only plausible rebuttal I've seen in this thread. I'm aware of how inhumane Russian military has been but I've also seen few (a small number) of stories when Ukranian military did something questionable.
Can you expand upon how the cluster munitions might be used and if there's any oversight regarding their usage? (Which seems fair given how things turned out in Afghanistan).