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[Reelya]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we have superweapons we don't use because they work too well. We stop using Napalm and cluster bombs because they're too effective and terrifying.

I also remember reading something about the types of weapons/tactics that get banned (or heavily ostracized) tend to be ones that are effective for the smaller nations. For example, there's a landmine ban, and landmines can be used as a form of resistance against a powerful invading nations. Much more destructive aerial bombing of civilian targets is never banned, or considered a war crime, because it is a key tactic in the arsenal of the leading world powers.

I'd argue a big reason they agreed to the anti-cluster-bomb ruling is that cluster bombs in fact aren't effective. They tend to be small and cheap bombs with an individual low chance of exploding. That leads to expensive clean-up operations taking years, and is a risk factor for an army coming in to secure the bombed area. I'd argue that the risk to civilians wasn't but a blip compared to the logistical issues the bombs caused.

[Madman198237]

Um....correction: Developed nations do not bomb civilian targets because there's no point, see the Gulf Wars. It's not formally banned? I have no idea why, but I do know that no nations do it intentionally anymore, since it's a terrible plan.

[hector13]

Doesn’t the Geneva Conventioncover some of that?

[Reelya]

I think you've got blinkers on about that. While we don't see the WWII-level total destruction that the USA inflicted on Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they still have no problem at all dropping heavy explosives into civilian areas. It's not necessarily direct targeting, it's just a complete amoral regard for life. However, as for individual soldiers/operators you can definitely find plenty of examples of ones who would blow up a bunch of civilians happily if given the chance.

[smjjames]

Some could argue Israel does it intentionally (though that one is a massive grey area because Hamas) and look at Syria. Then theres the murky area when dealing with terrorist groups.

Though really, if you're playing by 'the gentlemans rulebook of war' and nukes., theres no point in targeting civillians. Bombs in WWII were dumb as a rock for the most part (though there were experiments in guided bombs) and so, carpet bombing was really the only viable tactic then.

[smjjames]

I think you've got blinkers on about that. While we don't see the WWII-level total destruction that the USA inflicted on Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they still have no problem at all dropping heavy explosives into civilian areas. It's not necessarily direct targeting, it's just a complete amoral regard for life. However, as for individual soldiers/operators you can definitely find plenty of examples of ones who would blow up a bunch of civilians happily if given the chance.

Not when we're fighting an actual State enemy, like say Iraq.

Though we did bomb the heck out of Baghdad, dunno how much of that was civillian vs military.

edit: you changed the post before I realized you did.

[Reelya]

Also, I'll point out that my point in the prev. post wasn't that USA bombs civilians. It was that bombing civilian targets isn't a war crime for the reason that air-power is the leading power's main advantage. They won't sign into any treaty that restricts that, or makes choice of targets from the air be a war-crime. That's the reason they can only gripe about it if Putin's force in Syria bombs anti-government civilians, they can't call him a "war criminal" over it. The very legal framework that protects USA from being called war-criminals over Dresden and Hiroshima (the Nuremberg stuff) also protects other nations powerful enough to have their own air-superiority doctrine.

However, something like IED/land-mines (and by extension, cluster bombs, since they act like a minefield) are a direct challenge to that monopoly on power, so they're banned.

[smjjames]

Pretty sure stuff like intentionally bombing hospitals and schools and other clearly and undeniably civillian is considered a war crime, or otherwise very taboo. Theres a reason why Hamas and others used schools and hospitals as bases, they know that most countries would be reluctant to target those.

[Lord Shonus]

I also remember reading something about the types of weapons/tactics that get banned (or heavily ostracized) tend to be ones that are effective for the smaller nations. For example, there's a landmine ban, and landmines can be used as a form of resistance against a powerful invading nations. Much more destructive aerial bombing of civilian targets is never banned, or considered a war crime, because it is a key tactic in the arsenal of the leading world powers.

I'd argue a big reason they agreed to the anti-cluster-bomb ruling is that cluster bombs in fact aren't effective. They tend to be small and cheap bombs with an individual low chance of exploding. That leads to expensive clean-up operations taking years, and is a risk factor for an army coming in to secure the bombed area. I'd argue that the risk to civilians wasn't but a blip compared to the logistical issues the bombs caused.

This is absolute nonsense.

The cluster-bomb ban (which the US has not signed) did have to do with the danger of unexploded bomblets. That is the only correct statement here.

Cluster bombs are an extremely effective weapon system. The dud rate is extremely low (the UXO problem is a combination of the massive numbers of bomblets dropped by a single cannister, as well as the relatively low terminal velocity of something that size (at those speeds the difference between "wind buffeting" and "hit the ground" is pretty narrow, especially when the ground has been softened by other explosions) and is under 1%), and the destructive power is almost impossible to match with conventional weapons. This is why Russia's been fitting cluster warheads to everything over the last couple of decades. Pound-for-pound, no other warhead option is better for area attack.

The landmine ban was put into effect due to the massive cost in lives and treasure inflicted by the minefields of the Bosnian and Yugoslav Wars. There is no Machiavellian "monopoly on power" nonsense, and IEDs generally do not fall under the ban in any case (the ban only covers buried antipersonnel mines - IEDs are generally not buried, and are rigged to be set off by vehicles.)

Napalm (and other incendiaries) is not banned. There are heavy restrictions on when fire weapons can be used, but they have been deployed in recent conflicts, with the consensus being that this is not a violation.

Actual banned weapons and tactics are generally those that favor the great powers, not those that can only be used against them. Weapons designed to maim rather than kill (blinding lasers, for example) are an inconvenience to a great power with an excellent medical system, but are devastatingly effective against a small power that is sharply limited on medical supplies, manpower, and equipment. Any decent chemical factory can easily turn out nerve gas or asphyxiants in literal carload lots, while an insurgency or small nation would find it difficult to respond in kind.

The Geneva and Hague conventions are among the greatest achievements of mankind. Shitting on them is not a good idea.

[Reelya]

Blinding lasers are seen as a threat to air-power however, so banning those fits in with what i said about focusing on maintaining air-superiority. For example there's an article "Chinese fishing boats are blinding US military pilots with lasers". That's more than an inconvenience, you could lose an aircraft worth 10s of millions of dollars to a relatively cheap blinding device on some stupid fishing boat or held by some rebels in some hills in Afghanistan or something, if those proliferate. Similar with chemical and biological weapons, they're things that can plausibly be developed and deployed by smaller groups or nations.

IEDs are also in fact banned, just being an example of a landmine. Being improvised or targeting vehicles doesn't change the designation as a landmine.
https://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2017/04/03/illegal-weapons-global-guide

As for cluster-bombs detonation rate, it's estimated than over 1 million out of 4 million Israeli cluster-bombs failed to detonate, effectively leaving 1 million land-mines scattered around. However, remember that a prominent non-signer of the treaty was the USA (along with Russia), because these are two of the biggest air-superiority nations, so restricting their choice of air-deployed weapons isn't allowed to be an option on the table.

Sure, there's a humanitarian effort to weapons-banning efforts, but which ones the USA decides to sign, vs the ones it refuses to sign, follow a predictable pattern. Is this weapon more useful for us vs against us? If so, don't sign, if not, sign. USA will sign treatings banning certain weapons that are useful to it, as long as there are clauses excluding the US in the treaty, such as the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That helps the USA by preventing more nuclear rivals from existing. Similarly, test-ban treaties hurt other nations more than the USA, since the USA has plenty of test-data already and very fast computers to simulate future tests.

Another example:

Barrel bombs
...
They’ve also become something of a hallmark of the Syrian war, with the Syrian Network for Human Rights reporting that al-Assad's government forces dropped 12,958 barrel bombs in 2016 alone, killing more than 650 civilians.

“[Barrel bombs] are not particularly effective militarily but they do have a psychological effect. They scare people to death,” explained HRW’s Hiznay. “Any time you hear a helicopter, you're wondering whether this thing is going to throw out a barrel bomb out the back and land in your neighbourhood.”

The weapons present a legal quandary, and despite their long history of use (and abuse), there is no specific treaty or law banning them.

well, they're terrible and destructive, but there are no talks of a treaty to ban them, unlike similar things. The only difference is these are dropped from the air.

[Karnewarrior]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but we have superweapons we don't use because they work too well. We stop using Napalm and cluster bombs because they're too effective and terrifying.

I also remember reading something about the types of weapons/tactics that get banned (or heavily ostracized) tend to be ones that are effective for the smaller nations. For example, there's a landmine ban, and landmines can be used as a form of resistance against a powerful invading nations. Much more destructive aerial bombing of civilian targets is never banned, or considered a war crime, because it is a key tactic in the arsenal of the leading world powers.

I'd argue a big reason they agreed to the anti-cluster-bomb ruling is that cluster bombs in fact aren't effective. They tend to be small and cheap bombs with an individual low chance of exploding. That leads to expensive clean-up operations taking years, and is a risk factor for an army coming in to secure the bombed area. I'd argue that the risk to civilians wasn't but a blip compared to the logistical issues the bombs caused.

That is 100% NOT the reason landmines are banned. Landmines are banned because in a lot of cases they end up being more dangerous to civilians than to militaries, since even if you know where the minefield is, unless you can keep track of literally every mine in the field, you're stuck just throwing up a fence and hoping some dumb kid doesn't decide a jaunt through a minefield sounds like a good idea. Or that 20 years later, some unrelated military in the country either as occupiers or allies or whatever, don't jump the fence themselves in some ill-advised test of "courage".

Landmines are banned because unrelated people end up blown up, while any decently well equipped military goes around the minefield instead of just plowing through it screaming about SPEHSS MAHREENS.


Gas and shit is banned because it's indiscriminatory and is subject to the weather, which few can predict well and none can control. So even if you're perfectly moral and only dropping canisters on military targets, a stray gust of wind could still cause civvies to start puking up their liquefied lungs. Fire isn't generally employed for similar reasons, but fire has the benefit of being more controllable and highly visible, unlike nerve gas which is invisible to the naked eye and difficult to contain in large areas. It's not like you can just dump water on it to neutralize the agent - you just have to pray the wind doesn't carry it to civvies.

The Rules of War were designed to protect the smaller countries, and more importantly civilians, from the major powers and war in general, not to cement some assholes power. Recall that people at the end of World War Two were really, really fucking tired of all the killing, war, and destruction. They didn't have the same ideological hang-ups or bitter, cynical selfishness we do. Not in enough force to make significant headway against the tides of "Let's stop shooting unarmed people and gassing civilians".

[Madman198237]

What is banned, IIRC, are VICTIM-ACTIVATED weapon systems, which can kill people who have no relation to the conflict other than being in the wrong area. Landmine-type devices such as remote-detonated IEDs are not banned because they're buried. They might be banned for a different reason, like being used in civilian environments, but they're not actually illegal because of their buried nature.

So, cluster weapons. Terrifyingly effective, banned due to reasons explained before my post.

Barrel bombs sound like regular bombs except improvised and dropped from helicopters, so your point is sort of useless. Nobody's going to ban them because everyone uses bombs, it's pretty much the main way to attack the ground from the air.

Gas is banned less because it's indiscriminate and kills civilians (though it is and can) and more because it's horrible. Absolutely horrible. It kills your own men just as easily (if not easier due to proximity) as the enemy, and some forms are invisible (though many, like chlorine gas, are visible). Most people wouldn't deploy gas in a city anyway, not one that was still occupied by civilians. And if they ARE the sort who would do that, treaties aren't likely to stop them regardless.

[Reelya]

That is 100% NOT the reason landmines are banned.

That's not what i'm saying. The point is that USA signed up to the treaty because they lose very little. Landmines are a ground weapon, USA has a longstanding air-superiority doctrine. This is why they signed that and not the cluster-bomb ban, which almost all other nation signed onto.

The point is, you can monopolize air-power, you can't monopolize laying mines. And landmines have been a huge PITA for the Bush-era wars, haven't they? So naturally, they're all "yeah ok that sounds good" when the anti-landmine treaty came around. None of that assumes that they started the treaty or that the anti-landmine campaigners aren't legit. but there are campaigners against every class of weapon, and the USA is highly selective of which campaigners it listens to.

So yes, the reason that landmines are banned is 100% the reason i said. It's the reason USA isn't signed up to a tactical nuclear weapon ban or a cluster-bomb ban, or bans on any number of things that kill far more civilians per year than landmines. Without the government agreeing to it, the ban would still be a petition.

[Madman198237]

Ummmm….they lose little because the US does not plan to fight a defensive war, for one thing. We have air superiority but we also work very hard to ensure we have superiority in land and sea warfare as well.

You are concluding that because your interpretation is the one that makes the US sound the most evil, it must be right because the US is evil (or some shade of evil-ish). However, it could ALSO be that cluster bombs are no more likely to kill civilians that regular bombs (they're just dropped more often) whereas landmines are EXTREMELY likely to be left behind and kill civilians.

The reason they signed or didn't sign each ban could ALSO be because the people in power decided that "yeah landmines kill civilians and that's bad" and the military had to suck it up and develop non-victim-operated devices, or devices that can be easily tracked and removed after a conflict.

[Lord Shonus]

That is 100% NOT the reason landmines are banned.

That's not what i'm saying. The point is that USA signed up to the treaty because they lose very little. Landmines are a ground weapon, USA has a longstanding air-superiority doctrine. This is why they signed that and not the cluster-bomb ban, which almost all other nation signed onto.

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, or often simply the Mine Ban Treaty, aims at eliminating anti-personnel landmines (AP-mines) around the world. To date, there are 164 state parties to the treaty. One state (the Marshall Islands) has signed but not ratified the treaty, while 32 UN states, including the United States, Russia, China and India are non-signatories, making a total of 33 United Nations states not party.

The US is not a signatory of the landmine ban. All of the countries you claim the ban is targeted at are. How does that fit into your theory?