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150 countries, but missing a lot of key ones like the US, Israel, Russia, and China. (They absolutely should sign this, though). I’m suspicious that all it wil

• cpgxiii 3y ago
  Definitely. Prohibitions on land mines and cluster weapons are pure political theater. Mines and cluster weapons don't exist to be cruel, they exist because they work, and the collateral damage caused by their persistence after a conflict is over is an unfortunate consequence. Essentially all of the countries that signed onto these bans either (1) did so in a moment of blinding post-cold war naivety, where they could spin downsizing their armed forces into a good thing for the world, or (2) are too small and/or uninvolved to matter. Anyone else who actually expected to need to fight a war again didn't sign, because they knew exactly how useful these weapons are. The US and SK will never accept a land mine prohibition that includes the minefields of the DMZ, since those minefields are an important speedbump against any sort of ground invasion. Likewise, a cluster munition ban is practically DoA because cluster munitions are the best weapons to attack columns of lightly/unarmored equipment and dispersed aircraft/helicopters. But until February 2022 in Ukraine, a whole bunch of countries (primarily European) had convinced themselves that the possibility of a ground invasion was a thing of the past.