Ukraine and the U.S. know exactly what they’re getting into here. In fact, both Russia and Ukraine not only use cluster munitions, but the same cluster munitions (mostly Soviet PFM-1 petal mines — particularly nasty). So arguing that we ought to save Ukraine from itself, as a country which is intimately familiar with mass civilian casualties (and the risks of UXO for the better part of a decade), as a country locked in an existential struggle against a democidal (at best) regime, and as if the resulting cost-benefit analysis by the Ukrainian government hasn’t already been considered, smacks of condescending paternalism to me.
Nonetheless, “cost-benefit analysis” is a flimsy euphemism for “how many civilians are we willing to accidentally kill so that we can save our country.” In any other context, alarm bells should be ringing at the thought. But this is a real shooting war, where cluster munitions used against static, dense fortifications in overwhelmingly rural settings (like the Russian defensive lines in the south) is perfectly reasonable. If the West was actually concerned about civilian casualties caused by Ukraine’s hamfisted arsenal, it’d be sending fighter jets and CAS!
The above also doesn’t consider that neither the U.S. nor Ukraine are party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and that Russia’s been using cluster munitions the whole time!
Wow… that doesn’t make any sense.
First, even a passing comparison between Afghanistan and Ukraine is absurd. Just take a quick look at Wikipedia’s demographics page (or like, Britannica, etc.?) for both of them.
Second, the crux of the issue isn’t that these journalists aren’t on “our side,” it’s that we’ve been literally bombarded with these sorts of articles since day one, usually something like: “Sure Ukraine has the lowest rate of antisemitism in Eastern Europe, and its far-right political parties have less seats proportionally than the AfD or RN, but here are some marginal dudes who are undoubtedly nazis, localized entirely in places that have no political power.” A lot of these articles are predicated on the patronizing idea that Ukrainian society has no agency and that (justified) American political anxieties about the far-right can be neatly mapped onto Ukraine. I mean, just look at this quote from the article:
LEV GOLINKIN: Yeah. It’s pretty insane that every time Marjorie Taylor Greene sneezes, it’s the second coming of Hitler, and yet here we have two brigades — brigades — of neo-Nazis, and we’re perfectly fine with it.There isn’t an Enabling Act lurking somewhere in the ~4% of far-right Ukrainian voters, just waiting to pounce when us soft Westerners let our guards down. Nor is there some far-right putsch hiding in the perhaps 10k (if you squeeze it) far-right-aligned soldiers out of the 700k soldiers in the army. Because Azov isn’t some rogue militia farming poppy to buy RPGs, it now answers to an elected government with effective control of the armed forces. In a liberalizing society. That launched a revolution against an authoritarian government. Specifically so that it could join the EU.
Lastly, there literally are anarchists groups fighting for Ukraine, just not as a government-sanctioned militia. Most of them take inspiration from Nestor Makhno! As for the Kobanî, just look at their Wikipedia sidebar. Ukraine is fighting for its life and Turkey’s a strategic ally! Knowing how they go apeshit over every issue related to: burning Qurans, Aegean islands with Greeks on them, and the YPG especially, you can’t reasonably blame Ukraine for refusing their support.