Lulled by decades of peace and seduced by the conceit of its own virtue, the continent of Europe has willingly tied its hands behind its back when planning its own defense. After all, while European NATO might not have the “nasty” weapons needed to fight an enemy, the United States did, and could be relied on to help its sanctimonious allies.
Times have changed. Secretary of Defense Pete Hesgeth said on February 12 that, “Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO.”
There are signs of open panic in a Europe that seemingly thought this day would never come. Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz says, “It’s five minutes to midnight for Europe” and that defense spending must be doubled.
But while European NATO may finally be grasping the severity of its security shortfall, it still has a long, long way to go to shake off the illusions of the post-Cold War era.
The continent’s adherence to misguided treaties like the 2008 Cluster Munitions Convention and the Ottawa Landmine Treaty continues to undermine its own defense and that of its neighbors. These conventions must be abandoned, and quickly, if Europe is serious about survival in an increasingly hostile world. It must also begin to manufacture these critical munitions.
I know this fight firsthand. As the primary advocate for cluster munitions for Ukraine in 2022-2023, I spent months pressing the Biden administration to deliver these weapons to a nation under siege.
Only through sheer force of will did my voice, along with those of others, pressure the White House into ignoring European equivocation and providing the full family of cluster artillery shells, rockets, missiles, and bombs Ukraine so desperately needed.
The Biden administration’s continued delays cost precious time, however — time measured in Ukrainian lives and territory lost. Those delays have left the conflict in the untenable position we find ourselves in today, with Russia still advancing and Europe still debating. The Trump administration’s push for a swift end to the fighting is a welcome shift, but it cannot succeed alone — Europe must act.
The impact of those weapons is undeniable. According to US Department of Defense general officers who closely track these statistics and who have spoken to this author, over half of Russia’s staggering 850,000 casualties in Ukraine — some 425,000 killed or wounded — stem from cluster munitions.
During the defense of Bakhmut in 2023, I was told by US military sources, Ukrainian forces used Turkish-supplied 155mm DPICM (Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions) cluster shells to devastating effect, shredding Russian infantry formations and halting assaults that outnumbered the defenders by 8-to-1.
More recently, HIMARS rockets armed with cluster warheads have crippled Russian artillery batteries along the Donetsk front, reducing their fire rate by an estimated 40% in key sectors since late 2024. These weapons don’t just level the playing field — they tilt it against an invader reliant on mass and momentum.
Yet Europe’s political elite, swayed by do-good politicians with no military experience, spent years legislating warfare to avoid second- or third-order effects, sacrificing tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives in the process.
The Cluster Munitions Convention, launched in 2001 and formalized in Oslo in 2008, was a noble but naive idea. Signed by 112 countries — now 111 after Lithuania’s withdrawal last year — it aimed to ban a weapon deemed too messy for modern sensibilities. The Ottawa Landmine Treaty of 1997 followed a similar logic, erasing another effective tool from the battlefield. The United States wisely refused to sign either, reserving the right to deploy these weapons against overwhelming threats from Russia, China, or North Korea. Europe, however, embraced both treaties — weakening its own defenses and leaving Ukraine to pay the price.
The frontline states that border Russia, China, or North Korea — those who never signed — know the truth: cluster munitions and landmines are essential to counter the artillery-heavy, numerically superior forces of an invader.
Lithuania’s exit last year was a wake-up call, a recognition that survival trumps sentimentality. Europe as a whole must follow that example. Russia’s war has laid bare the West’s vulnerabilities: depleted stockpiles, overstretched supply chains, and a Kremlin emboldened by European indecision.
Cutting defense budgets while objecting to the most effective weapons wasn’t just shortsighted; it’s a gift to Moscow. Russia doesn’t play by the Oslo rules. Its forces deploy cluster munitions and mines with ruthless efficiency, exploiting every advantage to conquer and control.
The United States can’t keep carrying this burden alone. While we’ve doubled artillery shell production to 28,000 per month and sent cluster munitions to Ukraine, Europe has faltered. The EU’s pledge to deliver one million shells to Ukraine by March 2024 fell flat at 300,000, hampered by fragmented industries and a refusal to prioritize defense over politics.
That’s now improved (production should reach 2 million this year) and shows how Europe can act when motivated. Cluster munitions and landmines aren’t optional — they’re necessities against a foe that outguns and outmans us.
Dan Rice is President of the American University Kyiv and Special Advisor to the former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi (2022-2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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