On June 21 the Biden Administration announced a change to the U.S. Anti-Personnel Landmine Policy, ending America’s use of these weapons outside the Korean Peninsula.

It is worth noting that the announcement makes no mention of the U.S. military endorsing this change. That’s because it did not. In fact, a 2020 policy statement by the Department of Defense clearly stated that, “Landmines … remain a vital tool in conventional warfare that the United States military cannot responsibly forgo.”

The revision is intended to bring the US inline with the 2009 international treaty known as the Ottawa Convention, signed by over 160 parties, which aims to put an 3end to the suffering and casualties caused by anti-personnel mines.Certainly a noble and desirable goal if we’re talking about innocent civilians. But since the Korean War, none of those signatories have deployed armed forces abroad nearly as often as the United States, which currently stands at over 173 instances .

A landmine is a weapon of war, intended to kill or wound an enemy the same as a rifle, an artillery shell or a guided missile. They need not be buried, as the Ottawa treaty defines a mine as, a munition designed to be placed under, on or near the ground.

When I was in Bosnia as part of the NATO Peacekeeping Force, I learned that one of the factions had employed mines in an utterly heinous way, by targeting children. An explosive charge would be inserted within a doll or some other toy, then placed in a location where it would be easily found. Another type of mine was contained within a fragment of a rubberized Russian tank tread. If someone picked it up, there was an instinctive impulse to squeeze it.

At first nothing would happen, then the person might hand it to someone else, who would also squeeze it without incident. Squeezed by a third or fourth person, even days or weeks later, it might blow their hand off. The fuse was pressure cumulative, each squeeze bringing the device closer to the threshold of exploding.

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All three warring armies in Bosnia had used mines, lots of mines. It was estimated there were about seven million mines in the ground when the NATO forces went in, and the threat of mines determined much of where our base camps were located. We rented bombed-out factories at ridiculously high rents because they were mine-free. We leased farmers fields at the same exorbitant rates, fields which were surrounded by hills which doctrine dictated should not be used.

But they were also mine-free. The first American casualty in Bosnia was killed when a Soviet-era mine exploded while he was attempting to disarm it. The use of “persistent landmines,” which are mines that once placed can last indefinitely, is the major problem which led to to the Ottawa agreement.

When detonated they will still kill, cripple or disfigure. In contrast, when deployed all US mines are programmed to self-destruct or self-deactivate, usually after 30 days or less, with a six in one million chance of failure.

It is key to understand that mines in the U.S. arsenal are essentially defensive weapons, used to deny/delay/stop enemy forces seeking to attack our troops, often when they are outnumbered. To remove this weapon from the inventory takes away an effective and valuable option that might well preserve the lives of many of our soldiers and marines who have been ordered into harm’s way.

President Biden’s heart is in the right place, but he might think differently were he himself on the battlefield.

—‚ Special to the Press Herald


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