Would you trust an “intelligent” antipersonnel mine?

Abstract

The terrible plight of landmine victims, often children in developing countries, and concerted international efforts to clear and destroy antipersonnel mines are never far from the public eye. As of Aug 17, 153 countries have signed the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty. After some cautious optimism at the Nairobi conference at the end of last year, some worrying developments concerning new antipersonnel landmines, banned under the Ottawa treaty, have been brought to the world's attention by a new Human Rights Watch briefing paper Back in Business? US Landmine Production and Exports, published this month. As one of the non-signatories, the US Government under President Clinton had planned to join by 2006. However, on Feb 27, 2004, President George W Bush announced a new landmine policy that abandoned the goal of joining the treaty because “its terms would have required us to give up a needed military capability”. The US policy shifted towards the goal of elimination and a global ban of exporting all persistent landmines but allowing those that self-destruct. According to the Human Rights Watch report, the US Government has spent more than US$300 million as part of a research and development plan of so-called smart or intelligent antipersonnel landmines in the past years. One of these, called Spider, is detonated by remote control, which can be overridden. A decision on whether to produce Spider is expected in December this year. Another programme as an alternative to conventional landmines is the Intelligent Munitions System: “an integrated system of effects (lethal, non-lethal, anti-vehicle, anti-personnel, demolitions) software, sensors/seekers, and communications that may be emplaced by multiple means and is capable of unattended employment.” A total of $1·3 billion has been requested for development and production of this system. Weapons can never and will never be “intelligent”. As long as governments spend more energy and resources on devising so-called smart landmines than on harnessing and joining the international effort for a landmine-free world, the future of the Mine Ban Treaty looks bleak.