Cluster munitions are banned in more than 120 countries that have signed an international treaty against their use. It’s a weapon with high attack power against civilians and can still explode years after it’s launched. This week, the Ukrainian arsenal was supplied with new bombs of this type sent by the USA. NATO, the main intergovernmental military alliance in the west, advocated the use of equipment in war. To explain the consequences of cluster bombs and the current status of NATO in the conflict against Russia, Natuza Nery speaks to Cristian Wittmann, law professor at Unipampa and board member of Ican, an organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. with Marcelo Lins, moderator and commentator for GloboNews. In this episode:
- Cristian describes how the bombs worked and how their submunitions “decades later maimed and killed civilian victims.” He assesses Brazil’s motives for rejecting the agreement banning the use of arms: “Brazil produces and exports these arms”;
- He shares that the failure rate of these weapons can be as high as 60%, which means that a huge amount of explosives remains in the affected area: Laos, for example, has more than 80 million bombs and about 300 deaths a year a legacy of Vietnam war more than four decades ago;
- Marcelo Lins considers NATO’s position regarding the use of “the most cowardly weapons” in favor of Ukraine to be “uncomfortable”: “It would be natural to seek a solution through dialogue,” he says. Instead, representatives of the western alliance invest in a military victory and use it as an excuse “to supply the war machine with such a ferocious weapon”;
- The journalist also claims that “NATO has never been so united and so strong,” a result of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine urging members to integrate them as well. But he also questions whether the organization shouldn’t have been wiped out along with the Warsaw Pact at the end of the Cold War.
What you need to know:
The Podcast O Subject is produced by: Mônica Mariotti, Amanda Polato, Lorena Lara, Gabriel de Campos, Luiz Felipe Silva, Thiago Kaczuroski, Guilherme Romero and Nayara Fernandes. Presentation: Natuza Nery.
1 of 1 Natuza Nery, host of the O Subject podcast — Photo: g1 Natuza Nery, host of the O Subject podcast — Photo: g1