Top Dems break with Biden over sending cluster bombs to Ukraine

Key Democratic lawmakers are breaking with President Joe Biden over the controversial decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, arguing that providing the weapons, which are banned by more than 120 countries, cedes the moral high ground and will end up indiscriminately killing civilians.

Top Democrats on the House Rules Committee and the panels that fund the Pentagon and State Department lashed out in rare public statements broadcasting their break with their party’s president.

“The decision by the Biden administration to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine is unnecessary and a terrible mistake,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Mo.), the ranking member of the House’s defense appropriations subcommittee. “The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death and expensive cleanup generations after their use.”

“These weapons should be eliminated from our stockpiles, not dumped in Ukraine,” she added.

Cluster bombs, officially called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, are designed to take out multiple military targets by scattering large numbers of small “bomblets” over a wide area. They are banned by most NATO countries because the ordnance that fails to explode can end up killing civilians, even long after conflict has ended.

The Democratic lawmakers noted that Congress has barred the transfer of any cluster munition with a “dud rate” of greater than 1 percent, though Biden can waive the rule.

Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday that officials will “carefully” select only the rounds with lower dud rates, for which there is recent testing, to send to Ukraine. The U.S. has large numbers of cluster bombs sitting in storage, which officials argue will help Ukraine break through dug-in Russian lines as Kyiv is rapidly running out of conventional ammunition.

Still, lawmakers joined with arms control advocates this week in saying the administration was making an unacceptable ethical trade-off that would kill civilians, alienate allies and damage the moral case to back Ukraine.

Progressive Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House panel that funds the State Department, tweeted she was “alarmed” at the move, while House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern said that while he supports helping Ukraine, sending cluster bombs represents a break with NATO allies such as the U.K., France, Germany and Spain.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday defended the administration’s decision, saying, “Russia has been using cluster munitions since the start of this war to attack Ukraine.”

“Ukraine has committed to post-conflict demining efforts to mitigate any potential harm to civilians. And this will be necessary regardless of whether the United States provides these munitions or not,” he said. 

Still, even some more hawkish Democrats ripped the administration. Air Force veteran and House Armed Services member Chrissy Houlahan, in a statement Friday, challenged the assessment that cluster bombs would be the most effective means to back Kyiv.

“I challenge the notion that we should employ the same tactics Russia is using, blurring the lines of moral high ground,” said Houlahan, who co-chairs the bipartisan Unexploded Ordinance (UXO)/Demining Caucus. “And I challenge all of us to remember that this war will end, and the broken pieces of Ukraine will need to be rebuilt. History remembers not only who wins a war but also how a war is won.”

Humanitarian and civil rights groups also criticized the decision. Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon official and military adviser at PAX Protection of Civilians, a Dutch NGO, noted that the actual dud rates in the field are much higher than those recorded during tests “conducted under perfect and unrealistic conditions.”

Comments from U.S. officials defending the decision do not allay the fears of many in the community, Garlasco said, expressing skepticism about the Pentagon’s latest test data showing lower dud rates.

Arms control advocates who were on a call with administration officials on Friday said that despite claims the cluster munitions being sent would have lower dud rates, there were no details about the types and sources of the cluster munitions the U.S. plans to send.

A Defense Department official, who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of an announcement, said the Pentagon had provided test results, which are classified, to members of Congress upon request. However, the official acknowledged that variables in the field can significantly affect the dud rate.

“Shoot this in the desert, dry, flat ground, you might get a totally different result than if you shot this in a mountain jungle,” the official said.

Still, there are also powerful members of Congress who support sending cluster munitions. House Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul (R-Texas), House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), and their Republican counterparts in the Senate have urged the move for months. The Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee last month advanced its version of the annual Pentagon policy bill with language backing it, too.

In a statement Friday, the Republicans hailed the administration move as relieving pressure on stockpiles of unitary missiles but slammed what they called its delay in sending a range of weapons over a “misguided fear of escalation” that they say risks the success of Kyiv’s counteroffensive.

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, has said Washington should give Kyiv what it says it needs to win the fight, including cluster munitions, longer-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets. “From moment one, my view has been: Give the Ukrainians what they want and need. Frankly I wish that the United States and the administration had moved faster on providing more weaponry,” he said on CNN earlier this week.

Progressives, some of whom called in a letter last year for the administration to ban the use of cluster munitions by the U.S. military, have been lobbying the administration to refrain from this move for months.

A House Democratic aide said he pointed to that letter multiple times with State Department officials over recent months, to wave the administration off when it seemed to be mulling cluster bombs for Ukraine.

“There are a number of progressives who are really hacked off. We thought the communication was clear,” said the aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss tensions with the executive branch. “They can’t say we weren’t emoting clear signals this was a momentous step. A 6-year-old doesn’t step on an F-16 and lose their leg.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee member Colin Allred (D-Texas) defended Biden’s decision on MSNBC on Friday morning, saying there’s “no chance” of Ukraine and its allies losing the moral high ground to Russian troops he accused of war crimes and strikes on civilian targets.

”What we're trying to do, I think, is consistent with our values, to help the brave Ukrainian resistance kick the Russians out of their territory, and I'm sure President Biden thought about this deeply, and his team, and they decided this would help them do that — and I'm sure they'll also try to have a plan to deal with any of the fallout,” Allred said.