Biden Set to OK Cluster Munitions for Ukraine

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Jack and Robbie here. Hope everyone is having a better hair day than Yevgeny Prigozhin.

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We’d love your thoughts on both fiction and nonfiction books that make great summer reads. We’ve already received some great recommendations and plan to release the list next week. Reply to this email with your suggestions!

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Biden administration is set to send controversial Cold War-era cluster munitions to Ukraine, the Senate confirmation process for top U.S. national security officials is grinding to a halt, and U.S. think tankers are engaging in back-channel diplomacy with Russia.

Clusters Plucked

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to approve sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, four sources with knowledge of the matter told SitRep, giving Ukraine a highly explosive munition to take out entrenched Russian defenses that Kyiv has been demanding for a year, despite the heightened risk of fratricide and civilian casualties from the weapon.

Biden is likely to approve the delivery of hundreds of Cold War-era dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, better known in defense parlance as DPICMs, after the State Department—one of the last U.S. agencies holding out on approving the transfer—relented and recommended that the White House send the weapons. Because the artillery-fired weapons scatter dozens of bomblets that can “dud,” or be left behind on the battlefield to potentially harm civilians, they require a congressional waiver to export.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Jim Townsend, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense. “There’s a civilian impact that we know about. Right now, Ukraine is full of bomblets coming from Russian cluster [bombs] but also minefields. The unexploded ordnance is terrible there. So using U.S. cluster [bombs] is just going to add to the problem.”

There are about 3 million DPICM rounds in U.S. arsenals. NPR first reported that Biden had signed off on providing the cluster munition variant to Ukraine. The National Security Council did not immediately respond to Foreign Policy’s request for comment.

Ukraine’s top military officials began rallying for U.S.-made cluster munitions that had been sitting on the shelf for years back in August 2022, as the back-and-forth artillery war with Russia began to drain Western ammunition stockpiles and U.S.-built 155 mm howitzers faced significant overuse. The outcry to send the cluster munition variant—which are far more highly explosive than standard artillery rounds and were first fielded during the Cold War to counter the Soviet Union’s numerical superiority in a tank advance on NATO soil—only increased as Russia hunkered down into fortified defenses to prepare for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

“Given the fact that [Russia] will rely more and more on manpower proportionate to other arms, cluster munitions become more and more important,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, which advises the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Plus, it’s a good way to preserve high-explosive 155 mm shells.”

But not all experts agree. “Cluster munitions will not differentiate a Ukrainian soldier from a Russian one,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonprofit advocacy group, who criticized the decision. “The effectiveness of cluster munitions is significantly oversold, and the impact on noncombatants is widely acknowledged but too often overlooked.”

While international consensus has held up around providing arms to Ukraine more than a year into Russia’s full-scale invasion, the move to send cluster munitions could prove controversial among U.S. allies, many of which have signed an international convention banning the spread of cluster munitions. Neither the United States nor Ukraine is a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty signed by 123 countries that prohibits the use of the weapon. (Some of Ukraine’s largest military donors, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, are parties to the pact.)

But even without getting the rounds in larger numbers, Ukraine has had some success in obtaining them from NATO allies. While the Biden administration deliberated over providing the weapons, Turkey began sending U.S.-designed artillery-fired cluster munitions to Ukraine last fall.

The debate over cluster munitions, which have surged to near the top of Ukraine’s weapons wish list as Western artillery stockpiles have dwindled, has caused consternation among rights groups, which worry that Ukraine already has a World War II-scale cleanup of unexploded munitions left on the battlefield to take care of before civilians can return home. In a report released on Thursday to coincide with the Biden administration’s announcement, Human Rights Watch said Ukrainian cluster munition attacks in and around Izium in 2022 killed at least eight civilians and wounded 15, as Kyiv wrested control of the eastern Ukrainian city from Russian hands. Russia has also been accused of “flagrant and widespread” use of cluster munitions by rights groups that have sent investigators to the battlefield.

But Ukraine’s urgency to get the weapons has increased with the long-anticipated counteroffensive into Russian lines slow to gain momentum. U.S. officials are eager to see progress. And Ukrainian officials are worried that it’s their last shot to prove to Washington that they will be able to reconquer all of their territory.

“In Washington, it shows a willingness to go all-out to make sure the offensive works,” Townsend said. “It just shows that Ukraine is having trouble. It shows that they are really having to not just use creative tactical efforts but also some munitions as well to hopefully break some of those obstacles and get them through.”

Let’s Get Personnel

Garrett Berntsen is now the director for technology and national security at the National Security Council.

Biden has tapped Elliott Abrams, former President Donald Trump’s point man for Iran and Venezuela, to be a commissioner on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Holdup. The Senate confirmation process is grinding to a halt, leaving dozens of important national security posts empty for months or years on end. A small group of Republican lawmakers have seized on a new trend of issuing sweeping “blanket holds” over all nominees at the State, Defense, and Justice departments (minus U.S. marshals) to pressure the Biden administration on a select group of issues, including abortion access for U.S. service members and releasing documents on the origins of COVID-19. Diplomats and defense officials warn the indiscriminate blanket holds are undermining important U.S. military and diplomatic work around the world, as Robbie reports. And not all Republicans are happy with their colleagues’ practice here. So, what’s that about politics stopping at the water’s edge?

Freelance diplomacy. Here’s a doozy of a story from our friends over at NBC News: Prominent former U.S. national security officials are apparently engaged in back-channel talks with Russians close to the Kremlin, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an effort to lay out a road map to end the war in Ukraine. In an April meeting that included Lavrov, outgoing Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, and others, the two sides pushed for a resolution on Russian-held territory that Ukraine may have trouble reconquering and looked for a diplomatic offramp for the war. The Biden administration has been briefed on the talks but is not directing them.

Denied. Iranian naval vessels tried to seize two oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday but backed off after U.S. Navy ships sailed toward the tankers to intercede. The Navy said the Iranian vessels fired at the tankers before backing off, and though no one was injured, the incident highlights the risks to commercial maritime traffic and potential for U.S.-Iranian military showdowns in the region. The Strait of Hormuz is considered one of the world’s most strategically important maritime choke points: Around 20 percent of all crude oil passes through the strait, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.

Snapshot

U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden watch the Independence Day fireworks display from the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington on July 4. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Put On Your Radar

Thursday, July 6: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in China, making her the third high-level U.S. official to visit after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his top Asia hand, Daniel Kritenbrink, traveled to Beijing last month in separate visits. Blinken, meanwhile, is in the South American country of Guyana.

Sunday, July 9: Biden is set to begin a two-day state visit to the United Kingdom. Uzbekistan holds presidential elections.

Monday, July 10: The United Nations resolution to allow cross-border aid to flow into war-torn Syria is set to expire unless renewed by the Security Council.

Tuesday, July 11: NATO’s annual two-day summit is set to begin in Vilnius, Lithuania. Among the biggest topics on the agenda for the 31-member alliance are whether Turkey and Hungary will end their long-held opposition to Sweden’s bid for entry and whether Ukraine will get any security guarantees from Western countries.

Thursday, July 13: Biden visits Finland, NATO’s newest member.

Quote of the Week

“I’m not sure why he was driving with no lights on. … Perhaps he was trying to evade police, or perhaps [he] didn’t know where the light switch was.”

—California Highway Patrol Officer Marcus Hawkins to CNN, on the unknown perpetrator who stole a green military vehicle from a National Guard armory north of San Francisco this week. 

This Week’s Most Read

• U.S. Lifts Human Rights Violation Designation on Ethiopia by Robbie Gramer
• China’s Ideological Affinity With Russia Is Over by Howard W. French
• India Has Become a Middle Eastern Power by Steven A. Cook

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Oh, I didn’t know it was that old. A tourist who etched his and his girlfriend’s initials into the nearly 2,000-year-old Colosseum wrote a letter apologizing for his actions, saying he didn’t realize how old the Roman monument was, in a bid to reach a plea deal on his charges.