Cluster Bomb Math

In his Washington Post column yesterday, Max Boot made a persuasive argument supporting President Biden’s decision to supply cluster bombs to Ukraine. Many progressives have criticized Biden for ceding the moral high ground with this decision. Cluster bombs are very effective in the kind of military engagements taking place between Ukrainians and Russians, but a significant percentage of them don’t go off, and these can pose a lethal hazard.They become like land mines. They can kill farmers ploughing fields and children playing long after the war is over. That’s true, but that’s a risk Ukrainians are willing to take, and use of this horrible weapon will be restricted to Ukrainian territory. Mr. Boot points out that the war will drag on longer, and more people will be killed in the process, if cluster bombs are withheld from the Ukrainian military forces. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my guess is that Mr. Boot has the math right.