24
votes
Finland will review whether to reintroduce antipersonnel land mines for improved defenses against Russia on the NATO defense bloc's longest land border with its main adversary
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Bloomberg
- Word count
- 77 words
Fucking hell. Land mines are a problem that lasts generations. It'd be evil to introduce them anywhere. The Finnish government are out of their minds if they think this might be a remotely reasonable course of action.
Landmines have been pivotal in preventing Ukraine's offensive, they've demonstrated they're basically necessary in a static war. Landmines are also fundamentally defensive, which makes building up your landmine capabilities an effective method of deterrence with less chance of alarming your neighbor into thinking you're planning to invade them.
Mines, like nukes, are an ugly thing with consequences that linger and kill innocent people for decades after the war ends. That doesn't make their use unjustified.
Ukraine is fighting for its life, and they would have had tens of thousands fewer casualties if they had built up a strong mining doctrine before the war started. They're using mines despite the bans, because they're facing an existential threat.
If Finland were in the same sort of war, should they also use mines? Absolutely. And Russia has shown they'll just up and invade without justification or warning.
Although they won’t invade Finland because they are part of NATO.
Look at Cambodia and tell me again that landmines are justifiable. I'm not sure how you balance the equation in your head. How many people missing legs and how dead children are worth an abstract advantage in war to you?
And nuclear weapons? What gain is worth the thousands of dead civilians? What the fuck?
If Finland put mines on their border, all they will kill will be their own children and grandchildren, and refugees trying to cross. They won't kill any Russian soldiers because Russia is never going to invade a NATO member. A Russian invasion of Finland is an extremely unrealistic prospect.
Nuclear weapons are a deterrent. A country ABSOLUTELY needs to be willing to use them [edit: for them to be useful as a deterrent] but it's not really the point.
I hit the paywall so I couldn't read the article, but are they planning on putting them down or are they planning to allow their use in a future war? If it's the latter then I would say leave it be as threat to Russia. The USA is one of the few countries that didn't sign the Ottawa Treaty about mines but to my understanding they maintain a stockpile but don't use them in any of their modern conflicts. Russia would be one of the few others but they actually use them.
I agree that mines are horrific things that end up harming civilians for decades. I also think that war with Russia would be a horrific thing that would indiscriminately kill lots of civilians, and it would also end up with Russian mines littering your country.
Here's two alternative sources from Finnish news (Yle). First Citizens' initiative calls on Finland to withdraw from the Ottawa landmine treaty and then Finland will evaluate potential reintroduction of landmines, Stubb says.
In short, my impression in my own words: they are contemplating reviewing the use of land mines and a withdrawal from the Ottawa convention, particularly in the context of their viability in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Finnish parliament may be required to debate it because of an ongoing citizens' initiative (even if it was started in part by a defence industry lobbyist).
Civilian deaths are no less horrible when they’re from thousands of regular fire bombs than from a single nuclear blast.
I don't think dropping thousands of fire bombs on civilians is a good idea either.
Are you a pacifist? Do you think Ukraine should surrender and let Russia annex them?
I am not a pacifist and I don't think Ukraine should surrender to Russia. I feel confused by the context of the question, because there is a lot of nuance between the extremes of dropping thousands of bombs on a civilian populace and refusing to resist an invading military.
The reason I asked if you were a pacifist is because you rejected the idea of using nukes, and similar means via conventional warfare. If you object to following through on deterrence, then you must similarly object to using deterrence in the first place (because deterrence doesn't exist if the other side expects you won't follow through).
Also, you're saying "killing is bad" in the context of a war, and it's hard to tell if you mean "this is always bad and war is not an excuse", and "this is justified but I wish it wasn't and I wish the invasion never happened in the first place" (the former is idiotic and the latter seems like a pointless statement; nobody (sane) likes wars happening.
So, getting to your actual comment:
There's not a lot of nuance, because modern wars are total wars, where the entire economy is leveraged for military advantage and the "civilian populace" are widely necessary and employed in military production. Before Napoleon, generally speaking the state was the army, and if you defeated one (1) army then the state would collapse and you win the war. Nowadays, if you defeat one army then the state builds another army and the war keeps going until the state runs out of manpower and/or money(/resources). Combine that with logistics permitting a neverending stream of both manpower and logistics, and you have the meatgrinder that is modern warfare, exemplified by the western front of WW1.
Fundamentally, in modern wars you need to bomb military factories, which are filled by "civilian" workers and are located in "civilian" cities. There is neither clear geographic nor economic separation between civilian and military.
My key point here is that being unwilling to bomb a civilian populace as a side-effect of targeting war production is fighting with your hands tied behind your back. At the end of the day, the attacking country (or its populace) choose to have civilians around their production centres, for the economic/production benefits it provides them in more effectively build materiel with which to invade you. If you require defending armies to not bomb the attackers' production, then you are not realistic about permitting a defense.
Winning a war basically consists of inflicting enough misery or functional damage on the other side (specifically: the entire state apparatus, not just the military!) that the general populace are unwilling or unable to continue the war. In practice, modern states are extremely resilient to mere destruction of factories (even when a factory is directly bombed, workers can typically restore 90% of functionality within 24 hours - so if you bomb a factory 10 times, it'll still generally have ~35% of its functionality (this was based off WW2 nazi factory statistics)), and in the case of the Russia/Ukraine war the shortage (and thus high wages) of factory workers directly increases the costs of the Russian army hiring more troops. Every single dead factory worker increases the Ruble cost of deploying another Russian soldier in Ukraine.
In fact, in the context of Japan there were a lot of decentralized workshops for producing small-arms in all those wooden buildings in the cities, so it's hard to argue the distinction between firebombing a civilian populace and firebombing rifle production. Like, if someone has a home workshop producing rifle buttstocks (with that neat fancy two-piece system to save wood and get the wood grain protecting the tip of the buttstock) and you firebomb it, did you bomb someone's home or did you bomb a factory that the family decided to sleep in?
Actually, to be explicit, if you're producing rifles for a fascist military then you're pretty obviously not a civilian, any more than if you're a truck driver in logistics moving around shells. I doubt anyone thought those Arisakas were for hunting purposes.
If you're purposefully targeting civilians who aren't working those factories, and without any perceived benefit to reduced capacity of those factories, then you're obviously committing war crimes, and you should stop doing that. But similarly, if you e.g. set up a gun factory in the middle of a refugee camp, you're complicit in any refugee deaths that result from the gun factory getting bombed.
So, to summarize:
That is kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario, and... a bit more nuanced and complicated than just "they won't because nukes".
NATO, and the individual countries that comprise it, really can't just sit back on their heels and feel safe that "Well, we're safe because NATO has nukes and we have Article 5, so no need to maintain too much military capacity."
NATO does have nukes, yes. But exactly at what point will NATO push the WW3 doomsday button? If Russia builds up forces on the Finnish border and 'conducts exercises', will we fire nukes? No? Ok, what if, with those exercises, totally by accident, a couple tanks drive over the border and are in Finnish territory for a few hours, doing donuts, then drive back across. Do we fire nukes then? Do we shoot the tanks with conventional weapons and "NATO shot first!!!"?
Russia and China both engage in 'actions below the threshold of war' - they poke and prod, do small things that they are pretty sure we won't declare war over... and then inch a bit further next time. The threat of WW3 and the spectre of nuclear annihilation won't stop them from doing a whole bunch of things that are below the threshold of blowing up the world. As such, many different types and layers of deterrence and force-parity or force-superiority are required to maintain... if not exactly peace, then to maintain not-war as well as preventing the testing/probing/pushing tactics from a spiral of never-ending escalation by inches.
That means using all the tools in the toolbox, or rather, being credibly willing and able to use them as an overall flow of force-balancing and escalation management.
Russia wants to have some armored exercises near the Finish border? Finland sees their 'exercises' are getting closer and closer, maybe running over a marker post one night? Finland maybe let's Russia know "hey guys, just so you know you are near a minefield, it might be unsafe if you get too close to the border and 'accidentally' drive over it in the dark."
As an example.
The US just shared a bunch of landmines with Ukraine.
These landmines have an expiration date and will cease to function after a certain period of time.
This is no longer an issue of airdropping endless tonnes of landmines into Laosian jungles, this is meticulously placing, tracking, and updating your expiring minefield.
Ukraine has shown that this is not an out-of-their-mind choice, but a necessity to effectively defend against a hostile country in peer to (near)peer war.
This perspective is naive. The nature of landmines is that they are primarily intended to act as a deterrent, so if they are effective as such nobody will know whether an invasion simply wasn't planned or whether the presence of landmines swayed a potential invasion. They may be indiscriminate killing and maiming devices, however it is naive to believe that they are not necessary in the face of a potential assault.
Land mine technology has come a long way; there are now mines that consistently cease to be functional after a couple of years. It lets a country mine an area for defense without sacrificing some unknown number of innocents in the hopeful future where the area isn't mostly meant to be a defensive buffer against an aggressive neigbor.
Sounds kinda funny that even in the military space enshittification is a thing. What's next? Landmines that run on a subscription fee?!
/s
164 countries have ratified the Ottawa Treaty.
I think they should all implement economic sanctions against non-ratifying nations that engage in land mine usage or manufacturing, until there's global compliance. It should be treated as a crime against humanity.
Also, for fuck's sake, does Europe not already have enough unexploded WWII ordnance problems?
Good luck when all the world's largest + most powerful countries have not ratified it.
The countries that haven't ratified it include USA, Russia, both Koreas, India and Pakistan. (Edit: also China)
And in practice, THE ENTIRETY OF EUROPE, despite the map. Put it like this: anyone in NATO can ask for support from the US, and the US can deploy landmines as they haven't ratified the landmine ban, so all NATO countries have that option while retaining their high horse. Just like with cluster munitions.
It's easy to sign an agreement banning something if you don't think you'll need them.
Landmines are an indiscriminate, inhumane weapon that outlast the wars they are used in and tend to just keep hurting civilians.
They are also militarily effective for their intended roles.
It's just one of those 'reality sucks' situations. In war, especially in desperate war, anything that is effective tends to get used. Landmines do not carry the same global societal stigma and taboo that Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons do - and so landmines get used.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't the big problem with landmines that no one knows exactly where they are, so it's easy for civilians to step on them years later? Couldn't the Finnish military just keep track of them and remove them when they're no longer needed, thus removing the problem?
Yes, that's exactly how that works.
If you place them yourself, you can track them rather quickly and meticulously. If not shot from a mortar or dropped from a plane that is, which is not necessary if you're placing them during peacetime.
That is a classic case of theory meeting reality and not meshing well.
Ideally? On paper? Yes.
In practice, this adds significant time and administrative overhead. That is NOT a trivial thing during an active war in a situation where you need a road and all the open farmland around it mined RIGHT NOW to serve as area and pathway denial to an armored column that intel says is already moving in your direction.
There are lots of ideas to get around this, like a transponder system - but then the enemy e-war guys adapt and figure out how to use that to find your mines. You adapt by making your transponder design only say 'HI, I'M HERE' when you send out a blip on a set frequency... and then that gets found, same result... you try going further down the rabbit hole and now procurement is shaking their head no before you get 1/4 done explaining the new mine design that takes a simple, cheap, fast to produce weapon system and makes it slow, bespoke, and expensive to produce.
Ok, let's say you have... more ideal conditions and plenty of time. In a war... Sure! Hey, it might happen sometimes. "Private doesn't-screw-up-too-much! Take your fellow privates and get mining that farmland. Make sure to fill out the mine deployment and mapping forms!" "Yes Sir!"
...a month goes by... private doesn't-screw-up-too-much is sadly KIA.
"Ok Corporal, I need the mines pulled from the field in grid 47 so we can use it as a staging area." "Yes General!" (this would not happen... hopefully/probably, example purposes only)
Corporal: "Hey, does anyone have the mine deployment maps and use-forms from when this area was mined?"
Reality: absolutely no one knows where that paperwork went.
Hypothetical reality: let's say he has the forms.
Corporal: "Private Expendable, I need you to go out there and de-mine that field. Here is the mine usage map."
Private Expendable: "..."
Private Expendable: "...um, Sir, about that... how reliable is this map? It doesn't look very... precisely drawn. Is there any way we can get ahold of the person who placed the mines?"
Corporal: "Sorry Private E, that soldier is KIA, but that's why we had him draw up that deployment map."
Private Expendable: "Sir, you know that saying about not giving an order you know won't be obeyed?"
Corporal: "..." gives Private E some side-eye "Anyone with some rank knows the saying Private. Are you refusing to follow orders during a time of war?"
Private E: "Sir, let me put it this way. Hold this map, look at it carefully, then look out in that field. The one that has pretty clearly been hit here and there with 120mm, 152mm, and that crater there looks like it might have been 203mm. You see all the dirt and mud that got thrown around?"
Corporal: "Yes E, I do have eyes."
Private E: "Well Sir, and this is just me thinking, could any of that dirt that got thrown around maybe have also thrown around some of those mines? Maybe landed them who-knows-where? That, and exactly how careful and accurate was the solder who deployed and mapped the mines? All I know is he wasn't careful enough to still be alive, and maybe that's just bad luck and all, but still... looking at that map, looking at that field... would you really want to walk out there yourself Sir?
Corporal: "...I'll talk with the General and see if we have a plan B field we can use for staging."
Private E: "Sounds like a great idea Sir. That's why you got promoted Sir."
Corporal: "Private, you know that the rank of Corporal is an enlisted rank, not an officer rank, right?"
Private E: "Sir?"
Corporal: "Stop calling me Sir dumbass, call me Corporal."
Private E: "Sir, sorry Corporal Sir!"
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense.