Emily's Worldview

I'm working on a paper for class on the feasibility of elimination of landmine injuries worldwide. In case anyone was looking for another reason that the current administration is the worst ever, you can add to their faults their landmine policy. Basically, there is the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which 80% of all the countries of the world have ratified; in the Western Hemisphere, only us and Cuba haven't. This treaty has been successful in getting many countries to stop producing, trading, and using landmines, and it has mobilized funds for humanitarian demining in affected communities.

Clinton administration, of course, should have ratified at the outset, but they complied with some of the key provisions and planned to ratify by 2006. Bush and co changed that plan, and want to spend millions to research so-called "smart" mines. Their new policy is to increase money for humanitarian demining, phase out persistent mines, and stop using and exporting non-detectable mines. The State Department white paper on this policy claims that it is actually following a higher standard than the Treaty sets, because their self-deactivating mines are safer and the treaty does not allow anti-vehicle mines with anti-handling devices. (This last part is just a lie--the definition of anti-personnel mines in the treaty clearly applies to that type of anti-vehicle mine.)

Humanitarian demining of course is extremely important, and the US government is the largest funder of these projects in the world, but let's face it; that money goes directly to American private contractors and not to landmine victims. The problem with self-deactivating mines is that they malfunction at an unknown rate, and their components can be harvested and used to create improvised explosive devices like the ones which have been so deadly for US soldiers in Iraq (and which the treaty also bans). But the real problem is that the very fact that they are snubbbing this international treaty is detrimental. Even if the US can produce self-deactivating mines that never malfunction, can other countries? Will they claim that they do and then not do it? That's why the treaty calls for a ban, that's why there are no exceptions. The US government has the third largest stockpile of landmines in the world--after China and Russia, other non-parties to the convention--a fact that is surely not lost on the four governments and dozens of non-state actors that deployed landmines in 2005.

If the US is concerned that the treaty sets an insufficient standard, they should ratify it and then apply their own more stringent standards to their stockpile. That would be a consistent policy that sends a clear message that the US thinks that the 20,000 people who lose limbs, eyes, and hearing every year due to landmine explosions are an unacceptable tragedy.