Comment & Debate
U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines: “The national security argument does not stand. Surely if we have been able to defend our country for the last 19 years without using landmines, we have already found alternative solutions.”[1]
Zach Hudson, Coordinator of the United States Campaign to Ban Landmines. “The U.S. has not used antipersonnel landmines in 19 years and is the world’s largest individual donor for mine action. It is already compliant with other core components of the Mine Ban Treaty. There is no real reason for the U.S. not to join.”[2]
Jody Williams. “Ban land mines and cluster bombs.” The Boston Globe. April 13, 2009: “Tackling the Mine Ban Treaty first should be easy. The United States has been in virtual compliance with the treaty since long before it entered into force. We have not used antipersonnel land mines since 1991 – the first Gulf War. We stopped their export in late 1992. No production has taken place since the mid-1990s and the US military has forsworn their future production. Some 3 million stockpiled land mines have already been destroyed. Even the argument that we “need them for Korea” holds little weight, since the mines in the DMZ belong to South Korea. Given the above, it would seem that joining the Mine Ban Treaty is essentially all benefit at very little cost.”