In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech this week, President Barack Obama offered an impassioned defense of international humanitarian law – the norms and codes that govern the use of force in armed conflict to prevent undue suffering of civilians, prisoners of war, injured soldiers and vulnerable people.
“Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct,” he argued. “And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war.”
Yet only two weeks ago, the Obama Administration announced that it would not join the international ban on anti-personnel landmines. It has also made no public effort to join the cluster munition ban.
Both treaties are considered by most countries in the world to be important safeguards, protecting civilians in current and former war zones from the impact of landmines and other unexploded munitions that have killed or injured some 74,000 people in over 100 countries in the last 10 years.
No one should feel their next step should be their last. But around 14 people a day fall victim to the thousands of landmines, cluster bomblets and dud shells strewn across their cities, farmland, roads and playgrounds in countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Cambodia and Angola. More than 70 percent of these victims are innocent civilians and a third are children.
While the US has avoided using landmines and cluster munitions in recent years, it still has sizable stockpiles of both and retains the right to use them. This unilateral stance, contrary to the opinion of many NATO countries and Western democracies, undermines American moral leadership on the international stage and gives Russia, China, Iran and North Korea an easy excuse for also refusing to comply with the bans.
In his Nobel speech, Obama said he believed “that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere to standards that govern the use of force.” He said “America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention – no matter how justified.”
I couldn’t agree more. But it is not enough just to use such expansive rhetoric if our actions as a country do not measure up to it. We must act as if we believe in it, and the landmine and cluster munitions bans are a good place to start.
