The land mine treaty is a problem

In this video I discuss why a number of countries are withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty that bans the use of anti-personnel mines, and why more countries probably should follow suit. It is a deeply problematic arms control arrangement that hurts the countries that are concerned about a Russian invasion.

Watch the video here or read the transcript below.

--Anders

Transcript:

In this video, I want to talk about land mines. A number of countries have announced that they are leaving the Ottawa Treaty that bans the use of anti-personnel mines, and this has created quite a debate. But I think there is a misunderstanding of what land mines are, why they are important in warfare, and what the problem is with landmines. So, let's talk about it.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there's been a discussion about some of the conventions that ban the use of specific types of weapons. Most recently, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have announced that they are withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the use of anti-personnel land mines.

This was followed by an announcement by Ukraine that they will also be leaving the Ottawa Convention so they can use anti-personnel mines. That's a bit of a symbolic move because Ukraine has been using them and basically breaking their commitment to the Ottawa Convention since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. But that also goes to show some of the problems with this convention.

Land mines are an important weapon, and perhaps the biggest shortcoming in all this is that Russia has not signed the Ottawa Convention. It creates an asymmetry when one side can use these weapons and the other side can't.

I want to start by quickly explaining the background. When we're talking about mines, then land mines are, of course, used on land as opposed to naval mines that are used at sea. There are essentially two different types of landmines. One type is anti-personnel mines, which are smaller and designed to hurt people. And the other type is anti-vehicle or anti-tank mines, which are designed to take out vehicles.

The problem with landmines is that you deploy a lot of them during the war, and many of them will still be there once the war is over. It's not such a big problem with anti-vehicle mines because they are quite large, and that makes them easier to clear and also they're not particularly dangerous to humans or animals because you need to apply a significant amount of weight on them before they can detonate.

But anti-personnel mines are a big problem because they will be scattered around in nature and they will be hidden and designed to be triggered by a human who passes by that land mine. This has meant that historically, many civilians have been hurt by land mines that were left after the war was over but were still active.

This led to significant work and a big movement in the 1990s about achieving a global ban on anti-personnel mines to avoid these cases. The anti-land mine agenda was very strong in the 1990s. For example, Princess Diana was very engaged in this issue, and it culminated in 1997 with the Ottawa Convention. This convention states that countries that have signed it cannot use or stockpile or produce or transfer anti-personnel mines.

So that's a bit about the history and why it might be a good idea to have a global ban on anti-personnel mines. Now I'm going to turn to why the Ottawa Convention is then also problematic and why we see countries withdrawing from it and why it's probably also a discussion that more countries actually should be having.

The first problem is that the idea of a global ban on a specific type of weapon is good if it is actually global. The problem is that if only some countries sign the treaty, then it undermines the whole idea and it creates an unfair advantage for those countries that don't. The countries you might say are the bad actors in this are those that don't enter it in good faith, and they are rewarded for that bad behavior.

In the case of the Ottawa Convention, then none of the major military powers in the world have signed it. Russia has not signed it. The United States has not signed it. Neither have China or India or Pakistan or Iran. None of these countries have signed the Ottawa Convention.

So we have ended up in a situation where the strongest military powers insist on continuing to use anti-personnel mines, whereas the weaker military powers have agreed not to use them. And that is, of course, an asymmetry that is not sustainable when the stronger power then invades the smaller one, as in the case of Russia invading Ukraine.

The second problem is that there's been a lot of technical development on how land mines work since the Ottawa Convention was signed. Many of the problems that led to the debate about landmines back in the 1990s are not really present with modern land mines, or at least they don't have to be if the countries that use them make sure to buy land mines with safety mechanisms.

What created the uproar about anti-personnel mines back then was not really how they were used in war, but the fact that they were left all over the place when the war was over. So civilians would be hid when they accidentally stepped into a minefield that they did not know was there.

But today you can solve that problem technically by designing the land mine in a way where it disables itself after a set period of time. For example, you could have a small battery inside the mine and once the battery runs out, it doesn't work anymore. That would be a very simple way of ensuring that it only works for a couple of days or a couple of months, depending on the size of the battery.

Once you start having land mines with those kinds of self-neutralizing features in them, then the whole point of the Ottawa Convention actually starts becoming rather difficult to see. Because the problem that the Ottawa Convention was designed to solve doesn't exist anymore.

On the contrary, and this is the third point, the technical developments have actually meant that the utility of anti-personnel mines has been expanded since the 1990s. With the development of unmanned systems, mines will get a new role on the battlefield where they will be used much more actively.

It used to be that to lay a minefield, you would have to send out people somewhere and place the mines. And that meant that it was something you would do well in advance of the enemy approaching so that the minefield could be prepared and you could lay the mines without putting your soldiers in danger. Or maybe you could shoot out some mines in an area with a special artillery grenade that was designed for that, but that was not super precise.

In the future, we will have unmanned ground vehicles that can lay mines. And that means that it is something that you can do much more dynamically on the battlefield. We're in fact already seeing this being implemented in some places in Ukraine.

This means that you can begin thinking about mines not as just a defensive weapon that you can use as a barrier against enemy attacks, but also something that you can use offensively to support your own attacks. The military commander can, during the planning phase of an attack, decide that it would be really smart to have a barrier over here so that our attacking forces are not suddenly facing the enemy that has come around from the side. Then overnight, before the attack, you can have unmanned ground vehicles deploying those mines so that they are ready for your attack when you need it.

And if you combine that with what I talked about before, that mines technically today can be designed to have a very short lifespan so that the minefield you put up could be active for, let's say, 48 hours and then it just turns itself off, you can see how it becomes possible to use this weapon very dynamically during the military operations. So instead of thinking, thinking of it as something that you put out there and then it will just be a static area for many years into the future where no one can enter, then it can be a dynamic tool in the tactical planning.

So these are my three explanations of why the Ottawa Convention has become so problematic and countries are looking into leaving this convention so they can use anti-personnel mines again. The first reason is that Russia has not signed this convention and that would give Russia an unfair advantage in the case of an invasion of a European country. The second reason is that technical developments in how landmines are constructed mean that you can build self-destruction mechanisms into them and solve the problem with civilian casualties. And the third reason is that with the developments in unmanned technology, we are moving into an era where mines will play a totally different role in military operations. We're going to see them becomes something that is used dynamically to create ad hoc minefields to support not only defensive operations, but also offensive ones.

So what I'm saying here is that I think that from a practical, a technical point of view, the Ottawa Convention does not really make sense anymore. It solves a problem that was very important with the weapons technology that existed 40 or 50 years ago, but it does not need to exist today because we have different technology. And it gives an unfair advantage to those countries that have not signed this convention. Those who did sign it are at a disadvantage in case of war.

That leads to the obvious question, why is there then so much controversy about some countries leaving the Ottawa Convention? And I think it's, the concern is that if we start going down this path of rolling back some of these treaties about limitations on weapons technology and arms control, then one thing can lead to the other. I think that's the main argument against leaving the Ottawa Convention.

I don't really think that those who criticize European countries for making this step are truly concerned about minefields lying around in Lithuania or Estonia or Finland. There will be an assumption that these countries have these things under control and can manage the technology.

But the concern should be seen in a bigger perspective. It's about what kind of signal this sends and what it can incentivize other countries to do. And suddenly, some of those significant victories that were made in terms of achieving international agreements about arms control are at risk of being rolled back. More countries may leave this convention on anti-personnel mines. And if this convention is up for debate, why not other conventions? So it can suddenly lead to discussions about other weapons types as well.

I think that is the big concern about all this and why it's so controversial that a number of European countries have now taken this step. These arguments against leaving the Ottawa Convention, I think they're valid. We're living in a time when international law and international cooperation are under pressure, and that is concerning. So I do think this argument of a slippery slope does have validity. It's an important discussion that we need to have about how we can preserve as much as possible of these things that have also done good for humanity.

But at the same time, I think it's important in all this that we don't get into a framing of this discussion where the whole discussion about anti-personnel mines and also other weapons systems such as cluster munitions, for that matter, that it becomes a question of there being somehow a morally superior position. That the morally right thing to do is to stick to our principles and stay in the convention.

Because what that argument ultimately means is that we are willing to sacrifice more of our own soldiers who will die if there is a war, and also that we're willing to risk losing some of our territory and having some of our people living under Russian occupation with all the things that that entail.

So I don't buy the argument that this is somehow a discussion between military necessity on the one hand and morality on the other. If you send soldiers into battle, then you have a moral obligation to give them the tools they need to solve the task and return alive. So I also think there is a strong moral argument to be made for leaving the Ottawa Convention and giving our soldiers access to these weapons that the enemy has and that have proven to be so important in the war in Ukraine.

That was my explanation about the Ottawa Convention and anti-personnel mines. I think it's a convention that has largely lost its purpose as an arms control agreement. It hasn't been adopted by enough countries, and it creates an obstacle for those countries that are afraid of a Russian invasion. And in the meantime, the technical developments in this type of weapon have more or less solved the problem that the convention was originally designed to address.

But that said, I do acknowledge that we live in an age where things often go the wrong way when it comes to discussions about arms control and international law. It would be good if we could find a way to reverse that trend, or at least not make it worse. So I do understand the slippery slope argument as well.

All right, I'll end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, please give it a like. And also remember, you can subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon so you get notifications when I upload new videos. And if you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter and get access to some bonus videos on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.