{"id":1769,"date":"2008-05-30T11:04:35","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T15:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2008-05-30T11:04:35","modified_gmt":"2008-05-30T15:04:35","slug":"cluster-bomb-treaty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=1769","title":{"rendered":"Cluster bomb treaty"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the Associated Press, 111 nations have pledged to abide by a measure that bans cluster bombs from warfare. The AP article headline reads “111 nations adopt cluster bomb treaty, but not US<\/a>“.\u00a0 Reading down further in the article, one finds that the US isn’t the only nation who didn’t sign it;<\/p>\n

Twelve days of negotiations ended after diplomats from scores of nations delivered speeches embracing the accord. It requires signatories not to use cluster bombs, to destroy existing stockpiles within eight years, and to fund programs that clear old battlefields of dud bombs.<\/p>\n

However, the talks did not involve the biggest makers and users of cluster bombs: the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. And the pact leaves the door open for new types that could pick targets more precisely and contain self-destruct technology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the 111 nations that approved the treaty probably don’t even have an Air Force that they can use to deliver the munitions. It’s like non-smokers regulating smoking.<\/p>\n

They hope to discourage other nations from using them using some sort of international peer pressure;<\/p>\n

Norwegian Deputy Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide, whose nation launched the negotiations in February 2007, said he was confident that the treaty would discourage the United States, Russia, China, Israel and other proponents of cluster bombs to use the weapons again.<\/p>\n

“The reality is that states do care about not only the legality of their actions, but also the perceived legitimacy and appropriateness of their actions,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The United States has used the cluster bombs sparingly and only against armies in the field, however the nations who are lucky enough to live under the umbrella of the protection of US military want to distance themselves from the application of US military might. But cluster bombs save US troop’s lives. That might not seem like a big deal to some linguine-spined diplomat from Norway.<\/p>\n

I drove my Bradley over a cluster bomblet after the Gulf War – it took a week for my driver to get over the shakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Associated Press, 111 nations have pledged to abide by a measure that bans … Cluster bomb treaty<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-support-the-troops","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}