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Can Cluster Bombs Show Us How To Stop a Nuclear War?

The long fight to protect people from explosive remnants of war... and what it means for the future.

Words: Laicie Heeley
Pictures: Antoine LE
Date:

Despite being banned, anti-personnel landmines and unexploded submunitions still litter fields from Bosnia to Bangladesh. And mines are even being used in Ukraine. Does that mean the treaties that ban their use aren’t working? Experts say the story isn’t so simple, and that, actually, the treaties to ban these weapons have shown a new way forward: One where norms stigmatize the return to these weapons and constrain even the biggest superpowers.

But what will it take to clean up the mess left behind? And can anti-nuclear activists repeat the party trick?

Listen and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every two weeks.

Guests: Treasa Dunworth, Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland; Matthew Breay Bolton, Professor of Political Science, Pace University; Sera Koulabdara, Executive Director, Legacies of War; Alex van Roy, Chief Operations Officer, FSD

Additional Resources:

How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia, Erin Lin, American Journal of Political Science

Political Minefields: The Struggle Against Automatic Killing, Matthew Breay Bolton, Bloomsbury Academic

Humanitarian Disarmament: An Historical Inquiry, Treasa Dunworth, Cambridge University Press

Legacies Library: Resources on the Secret War in Laos

Author bio

Laicie Heeley

Editor in Chief

Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor in Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.

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