The move essentially goes back to a 2014 policy introduced by the Obama administration that banned the use of landmines against personnel other than in defense of South Korea. The Trump administration eased those restrictions in 2020, citing a new focus on strategic competition with large powers with large armies. Human rights groups have long condemned land-based anti-personnel mines – small explosive devices usually fired after being hit by an unsuspecting victim – as the main cause of preventable civilian casualties. Landmines kill thousands of people every year, many of them children, often long after the end of the conflict and ammunition forgotten. A White House statement on Tuesday said the move would reunite the United States with the “vast majority of countries around the world committed to curbing land use of anti-personnel mines” and closely align US policy with a treaty. 1997 signed by 133 countries. to completely ban weapons. The United States never signed the treaty, known as the Ottawa Convention, and the White House stopped saying it would seek to accede to the pact. One reason is that the Biden government maintains an exception for landmine use along the demilitarized zone, the 2.5-mile-long isolation that has divided North and South Korea since 1953. The United States has placed thousands of landmines there during of the Cold War to prevent an overwhelming land invasion from the north. South Korea took over the minefield in October 1991, according to a U.S. military spokesman. However, some proponents of a landmine ban say that if the United States were a party to the Ottawa Convention, they would face restrictions on their cooperation with the South Korean military as a result of the presence of mines in the region. These supporters hoped for faster action on Biden’s campaign promise, which was postponed due to a review of Pentagon policy dating back to at least April 2021. In 2020, Biden’s campaign told Vox that “it will immediately withdrew this profoundly wrong decision. “ Last June, Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick J. Leahy sent a letter to Biden urging him to reinstate 2014 politics as a first step toward full disarmament and accession to the Ottawa treaty. “The Department of Defense should be instructed to move quickly to fully implement and institutionalize the policy,” Leahy said in an email to reporters Monday. “This is a very belated recognition that the serious humanitarian and political costs of using these weapons far outweigh their limited military utility.” The senator also urged the White House to take further steps to put the United States on a path to adherence to treaties banning anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions. “None of these indiscriminate weapons, the horrific consequences of which we are witnessing today in Ukraine, belong to the arsenal of civilized nations,” the statement said. In a news conference Tuesday, Stanley L. Brown, chief assistant secretary of state at the State Department’s Office of Political-Military Affairs, said the United States currently has about 3 million anti-personnel mines in stock and will destroy any he did not need to defend South Korea. Biden government officials have seized the opportunity to condemn the use of landmines by Russia in Ukraine, where ammunition “caused extensive damage to civilians and civilian property,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrien Watson said on Tuesday. In early April, evidence emerged that Russia had used a new type of anti-personnel mine in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv that fired an explosive device when it felt close to people. In Bezruky, a city north of Kharkov, the New York Times documented the use of anti-tank landmines by Russia that could explode if collected by humans, meaning they would be banned under international law. The United States last used these types of landmines on a large scale during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. In a single incident in 2002, US Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan used a small landmine that had been detonated as a grenade – called deterrent pursuit ammunition – on a mission. The US Landmine Blockade Campaign, a defense group that pushed the White House to join the Ottawa treaty, welcomed the news of the Biden government’s policy change. The move was “an important step”, the group said in a statement on Tuesday, reiterating its call on the president to “ban the use of landmines against personnel without geographical exceptions, including on the Korean Peninsula”. “Mines on the Korean Peninsula continue to cause continuous damage and act as an obstacle to peace,” the group said.
