Anti-Personnel Landmines: A Just Means of War?

Security Dialogue

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 271-285

  Harpviken, Kristian Berg ^a   Fixdal, Mona ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0345909454     PISSN: 09670106     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0967010697028003003     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. The full name of the protocol concerned with landmines is Amended Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices (Amended Protocol II), CCWCONF.I/14, Geneva, 1 May 1996.
2. Critics describe these changes as cosmetic. By permitting unmapped use of self-destructing or self-neutralizing mines, the protocol can be seen to condone the development of new equipment for the remote delivery of mines, which would greatly increase the minelaying capability of conventional armies. Furthermore, by including in its definition only those weapons which are designed 'primarily' to be released by the victim, the convention opens the way for the development of new types of dual-purpose arms whose landmine function is only 'secondary'.
3. Against efforts to ban particular means of war, it has often been argued that banning contributes to legitimization of other means. However, to say that landmines are worse than most other types of weaponry is not to say that other types of weaponry are good. We would argue that if the current effort to delegitimize landmines succeeds, it will be a major breakthrough for arms control in general, as it would be the first time that a weapon with a wide application has been ruled out.
4. It is common to distinguish between anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines. This article applies mainly to anti-personnel mines, and it is those whose banning has been recently proposed in the context of a revision of the Inhumane Weapons Convention and the ongoing Ottawa Process. Recent trends in mine warfare, such as the development of hybrid mines (anti-tank mines that can be adjusted for release by a person) and minelaying equipment combining both types of mines, make the distinction increasingly blurred. Furthermore, weapons which are effectively landmines are sometimes categorized otherwise, such as the 'sub-munitions' used by the US army in Laos. See Rae McGrath, Landmines: The Legacy of Conflict (Oxford: Oxfam, 1994), p. 6.
5. It is disputed whether the Just War tradition provides arguments against developing or including a particular weapon in a military strategy. On one side are those who argue that specific types of weapons are intrinsically bad and should therefore be prohibited from use. An extreme variety of this argument is that modern war, with its technological sophistication, has consequences so severe that war must be avoided at any price. On the opposite side are those who argue that no weapon is intrinsically bad; only certain uses of weapons are. The latter position has informed most efforts at arms control, including the international regulations on nuclear arms and incendiary weapons. Few available technologies have been banned from all use; the exceptions are dumdum bullets and chemical and biological weapons.
6. The Just War tradition is commonly seen as Western, dating back to the writings of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. The tradition was further developed by Vitoria and Suárez in the 16th century and Grotius, often regarded as the father of international law, in the 17th century. We will not discuss the history of the tradition here. However, a major reason for using it as a starting point in analysing the ethical side of landmines is that it can be seen as representing a nearly universal debate about the ethics of war, summing up key aspects of war ethics in Western and non-Western societies. Furthermore, the principles of Just War become increasingly relevant through the ongoing global diffusion of international law.
7. For the first argument, see, for example, William O'Brian, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1981). The views of the Catholic Bishops are found in The US Catholic Bishops, 'The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response. The Pastoral Letters on War and Peace', in Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
8. For the first argument, see, for example, William O'Brian, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1981). The views of the Catholic Bishops are found in The US Catholic Bishops, 'The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response. The Pastoral Letters on War and Peace', in Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed., Just War Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
9. See Nicholas Fotion & Gerard Elfstom, Military Ethics (Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 200.
10. While we are here applying the concept of internal wars, so as to include both insurgency and counterinsurgency operations, others have made the distinction between regular armies and insurgent forces. One example of the latter is the US Department of State, which applies the terms 'Standard Usage' and 'Terror Mining', implying that the latter is a strategy used only by guerrillas and terrorists in anti-government campaigns (US Department of State, Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Landmines, Washington, DC: US Department of State, 1993, pp. 13-14). Practice reveals that this distinction is flawed.
11. Richard H. Johnson, 'Why Mines? A Military Perspective', in Kevin M. Cahill, ed., Clearing the Fields: Solutions to the Global Land Mines Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 33.
12. The International Committee of the Red Cross has recently investigated the use of anti-personnel (AP) landmine use in 26 conflicts from 1940 to the present, and concludes: 'Although the continued use of AP landmines is justified by the belief that they can be used "correctly", publicly available historical records do not support that case. On the contrary, such evidence as is available is most often of "incorrect" use, whether by intention or inadvertence or because of the impracticability of observing specific rules in the heat of battle. Nor do such sources provide analytical evidence of the military utility of AP mines in actual battle.' International Committee of the Red Cross, Anti-personnel Landmines: Friend or Foe? A Study of the Military Use and Effectiveness of Anti-personnel Mines (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1996), p. 26.
13. Kristian Berg Harpviken, 'Landmines in Southern Africa: Regional Initiatives for Clearance and Control', Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 18, no. 1, April 1997, pp. 83-108.
14. US Department of State, Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Landmines (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 1994), p. 1.
15. Shawn Roberts & Jody Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 1995).
16. Rogers has argued that landmines and other remnants of war do not always constitute an environmental threat, and may even contribute to preservation by hindering human access; see A. P. V. Rogers, Law on the Battlefield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 118. Rogers might be able to find cases that substantiate his point, but, in general, landmines do constitute a serious post-conflict environmental problem. Furthermore, who wants landmines to be an instrument of environmental protection?
17. Until recently minimal attention has been paid to humanitarian mine-clearance, while more has been invested in military clearance. Military and humanitarian clearance have different requirements, and equipment from the former is rarely applicable to the latter. In contrast to military operations, humanitarian ones (1) require that whole areas be cleared (not only a lane); (2) have a clearance rate approaching 100% (military clearance, down to 80%); and (3) require that costs be restrained. In addition, tempo is less crucial in humanitarian operations.
18. A partial exception is Kuwait, where Iraqi forces placed an estimated 9 million mines, most of which are now cleared. The Kuwait operation was facilitated by systematic and predictable patterns of landmines, easy terrain and plentiful financial resources. Even so, up to 500 civilians and 50 mine-clearers had been killed by April 1993. See Brian Haliwell & Lance Malin, 'Demining - An Operator's View', in International Committee of the Red Cross, Symposium on Anti-personnel Mines, Report (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1993).
19. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 'The Land Mine Crisis: A Humanitarian Disaster', Foreign Affairs, vol. 73., no. 5, September/October 1994, p. 11.
20. Rogers, note 15, p. 18.
21. Johnson, note 10, p. 25.
22. Former US Marine Corps Commandant Alfred Gray, Jr., is one example: 'We kill more Americans with our mines than we do anybody else. We never killed many enemy with the mines.... What the hell is the use of sowing all this if you're going to move through it next week or next month?... I know of no situation in the Korean War, nor in the five years I served in Southeast Asia, nor in Panama, nor in Desert Shield-Desert Storm where our use of mine warfare truly channelized the enemy and brought them into a destructive pattern.' Human Rights Watch Arms Project & Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), p. 339.
23. Stephen D. Biddle, Julia L. Klare & Jaeson Rosenfeld, The Military Utility of Landmines: Implications for Arms Control (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses 1994), pp. 70-71. The doubt about the effectiveness of landmines raises a question about why regular armies have proven so hesitant in accepting stronger restrictions on their use. The limitations to their effectiveness seem to be so strong that even a unilateral ban should be acceptable to many countries. If the limited utility of landmines is accepted, we see three possible reasons for the hesitation. First, it might reflect a general resistance to respond to public pressure by abstaining from certain means of warfare, with the perception that this could lead to increased pressure on other types of weapons. Second, there might be a certain inertia operating - insight into the human costs of landmines is relatively new, and insight into the limitation of military utility is even more recent. Third, there is a lack of alternatives with a proven battle record.
24. International Committee of the Red Cross, note 11, p. 32.