According to recent reports, the United States will gradually weed out its stockpiles of landmines that were designed to target people, thereby taking a step towards joining hands with a global ban against a weapon that kills more than 15,000 people per year, most of them being civilians. As per a statement issued by the National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden, US officials had declared at an anti-mine conference in Maputo, Mozambique. Numerous activists have been pressurizing the US to join the international treat that banned the manufacturing and stockpiling and using of anti-personnel landmines that were meant to kill or burst when someone stepped on them. Such landmines are usually triggered off when stepped, unlike the anti-vehicle mines. Such weapons can still kill but can go off only when heavy vehicles passed on top of them.
Explosive landmines – Tracing its origin
The practice of keeping explosive landmines underground can trace its origin to Renaissance Europe but this horrible warfare device wouldn’t become as popular as it is had it not been the First World War. Just as bombs, bullets, grenades, bombs and nuclear warheads are horrible devices, such are the landmines. Landmines were created and designed to vigorously stop the enemy. However, all such devices also have the capability to intimidate a would-be aggressor from pillage, conquest and genocide. Most politicians, nowadays, refer to them as “minefield” due to its inclination to attract men and women who are aggressive, wayward, unstable and whimsical. Recently, the real issue of actual landmines has haunted American national security policy.
Obama moving closer to sign the Ottawa Convention – Is this mere politics?
The Obama administration has at last responded to the issue of banning landmines and has moved a step closer to signing the Ottawa Convention that would ban landmines. Obama announced that the US wouldn’t any longer manufacture anti-personnel landmines or even acquire new landmines. The administration also promised to include replacing all the munitions that have expired within the stockpile. Like most political issues, the debate has been outdone by embellishment, emotion and a deformity of the truth.
This contemporary campaign against landmines started off in the year 1991 with pressure brought in by non-governmental organizations and later by former Princess Diana. This treaty that dealt with banning landmines was known as the Ottawa Convention and it was adopted in 1997. President Bill Clinton refused to sign this treaty and surprised and shocked many. It was in 2009 that the Obama administration, mowed down by continuous pressure, ordered a review of the American landmine policy.
The core reason for American opposition to signing the treaty
According to the Obama administration, landmines save lives, the lives of civilians and American soldiers. America is primarily concerned about 2 areas of the world, the Korean peninsula and North Korea. The threat from North Korea, they say, is real and landmines serve as an initial obstruction to an attempt by North Korea to use a ‘blitzkrieg’ that would bring a huge loss of life. The landmines help in deterring attack from the communist North.
It is hence convenient enough to categorize America as monstrous and to overlook the reasons for the American position. Instead of basing the foreign policy on the strategic interests of their allies, they protect their own soldiers. Obama is merely jumping on a partisan bandwagon of self-righteous and emotional campaigning.
