Ukraine Needs Anti-Personnel Landmines – And So May We

On November 20, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that the Biden administration was reversing a previous policy and providing Ukraine with anti-personnel landmines to thwart Russian advances. The shift met with immediate criticism from anti-mine groups and architects of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning such mines, to which Ukraine is a signatory. Former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, a key figure in negotiating the Ottawa Treaty, denounced the US decision as “both deplorable and dangerous” and showing “treaty obligations can be disregarded and the protections afforded by the global ban on anti-personnel mines can be cast aside.” Yet a careful analysis suggests the decision reveals both the ongoing military utility of landmines and the weaknesses of the Ottawa Treaty.

With support from NGOs for a ban on landmines growing, but successful negotiation through UN and other existing channels likely to prove time-consuming and produce only partial limitations rather than a complete ban on the production, transfer, and deployment of anti-personnel mines, Axworthy and his collaborators chose to push conclusion of a treaty through an ad hoc coalition of states already committed to a total ban, in sometimes uneasy partnership with NGOs. This departure from standard diplomatic practice produced the rapid conclusion of a treaty, the destruction of millions of stockpiled mines and much subsequent de-mining in countries where unexploded mines from past conflicts posed a deadly hazard to civilians and kept useful land off limits.

But this signal triumph for Canadian diplomacy was ambiguous. As David Lenarcic noted as early as 1998, major producers of mines were not signatories and the legitimate concerns of militaries still dependent on mines were not taken into account. The NGOs in particular treated the issue not as a prudential one of arms limitation but as a moral question. They rejected US proposals for exemptions in the Korean Peninsula where mines still provide defence against a North Korean attack (and where the sole alternative was an unsustainably large mobilization of South Korean forces) as well as for more discriminate and self-destroying mines. The result was to unjustly stigmatize weapons which some would still need.

While landmines pose particular threats to unwary civilians, they do have significant military advantages reinforcing other defences and freeing up military personnel for other tasks. They are also an effective barrier to the advance of enemy troops, who must clear minefields before they can safely move forward. They can also be deployed to confine an enemy advance to a narrow channel, where defensive firepower can be concentrated against the attacker.

Current conditions in Ukraine make landmines particularly valuable. In recent months, Russian troops have stepped up operations in Eastern Ukraine, particularly in the Donetsk area, and have advanced at a more rapid pace than at any stage in the current conflict since 2022, even at the price of high casualties from large-scale infantry attacks. At the same time, repeated Russian drone strikes and small-scale targeted ground attacks have hindered the Ukrainians’ ability to sustain their defensive positions. Ukraine now confronts the threat of substantial territorial losses as Russia seeks to maximize its gains in the months leading to what may well be a negotiated peace imposed by incoming President Trump, where possession of ground determines negotiating strength. 

The mines the Biden administration has provided will allow Ukraine to impede Russian progress and confine it to narrow areas where Ukrainian rockets and artillery fire will prove more effective. At the same time, the effectiveness of contemporary defences against tanks and other armoured vehicles makes advances relying on the use of armour costly. Russia has already suffered losses of armoured vehicles which it cannot easily replace, and has shifted to attacks where infantry is the dominant actor, and against infantry attacks landmines, especially anti-personnel landmines, strengthen defensive positions exceptionally well.

The Ukrainian leadership and the Biden administration have reasonably concluded that the gains from now employing anti-personnel mines outweigh the risks, and others are thinking along the same lines. Since late 2023, debate has begun in Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, all vulnerable to Russian attack by land and all signatories to the Ottawa Treaty, about the desirability of withdrawal though none has yet withdrawn. In addition, withdrawal requires six months’ notice, but, perversely, a state engaged in war is not permitted to withdraw until the conflict is over, leaving Ukraine no option but to stand in violation of a treaty to which it is a signatory.

Significantly, the non-signatories include not only the major military powers (the US, Russia, and China) but states with well-founded fears of attack by land (India, Pakistan, South Korea and Israel). The treaty was also concluded when large-scale ground war seemed unlikely in much of the world and promoted mainly by states not directly threatened by its resurgence. The return of great power conflict means that even Canada must now consider scenarios in which landmines become a necessity  

A neglected fact in too many discussions of the rights and wrongs of landmines is that landmines are not all equal. The Ottawa Treaty does not apply to anti-tank mines, or, tellingly, Claymore mines, which detonate by remote control by a nearby operator, as opposed to mines that are “victim-activated” by pressure from above on an underground mine or breaking a tripwire. This is tacit acknowledgment that an important consideration in evaluating the risks and benefits of using mines is how they are controlled, activated and detonated. The US proposes to provide Ukraine with “non-persistent” mines that are battery-powered and, once activated, become inert when the battery runs down or self-destruct. This can take a few hours or a few weeks but ensures the mines do not pose a long-term threat to civilians. Moreover, they replace less discriminate homegrown Ukrainian mines.

Yet critics of the US shift take the view that anti-personnel mines, including non-persistent ones, are “inherently indiscriminate.”

More indiscriminate than some landmines is the blanket prohibition on anti-personnel landmines in the Ottawa Treaty and defended by its advocates. To be sure, even the most carefully designed and discriminate mines will pose some danger to innocents, as do most weapons of modern war. But they are not so egregiously dangerous as to deserve prohibition and are appropriately treated as weapons like others.

The all-or-nothing logic of the Ottawa Treaty is likely to break as signatories, under the pressure of military necessity, withdraw or violate it, and other states refuse to adhere in the first place. According to the Associated Press, Russia has used at least a dozen types of anti-personnel mines so far in the war. The result is merely to undermine the treaty’s own standing and credibility. A more limited regime, recognizing the variations among landmines as well as the conditions under which they are necessary, would not only be more realistic and intellectually coherent, it would command wider assent and be more sustainable. As it stands, the Ottawa Treaty, in the harsh light of a brutal war and the fight for state survival, looks like a fading relic of a moment when the illusion of universal peace seemed more plausible than it does today.