US Cluster Bombs Risk Russian War Escalation, Lula Adviser Says

Simone Iglesias and Martha Beck
·4 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden’s plan to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is dangerous for civilians and risks escalating war with nuclear-armed Russia, according to Brazil’s most prominent foreign policy official.

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The US announced Friday that it will send the controversial munitions to Ukraine as part of a larger push to support its counteroffensive in the war.

Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskiy has requested cluster bombs from the US since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. But Celso Amorim, a former foreign minister and longtime aide to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, expressed concerns with the plan in an interview at the presidential palace in Brasilia last week, and said Brazil opposed the use of the munitions in the war.

“When shrapnel falls from cluster munitions, some explode, some don’t. Afterward, children play,” Amorim told Bloomberg News while the plan was still under consideration. “We are seeing a war that involves not just a nuclear power, but the greatest nuclear power along with the US. So it is a very dangerous world.”

Lula has faced criticism from the US, European Union and at times Ukraine over his repeated claims that they share blame for the conflict. But Brazil is far from isolated in its objection to cluster munitions.

Human rights activists and arms control groups have urged Biden to refuse Ukraine’s requests, arguing that the wide dispersal area of some cluster bombs and the potential for unexploded ordnance to remain dangerous for years put civilians at risk.

Read More: US Will Send Cluster Bombs to Ukraine Despite Civilian Threat

In 2010, more than 100 countries, including many members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, signed a treaty that bans the use and transfer of cluster munitions. The US, Ukraine and Russia, however, are not party to the agreement.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters before the announcement of the plan that the US would send Ukraine newer munitions with “lower dud rates.”

Peace Talks

Since taking office in January, Lula has expressed a desire to create a group of neutral countries, potentially including Brazil, to mediate peace talks between the warring nations.

But his comments on the conflict, as well as a visit from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this year, led the US to question Brazil’s neutrality. In April, a White House spokesman accused the leftist leader of “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda” about the war.

Brazil nevertheless remains one of the few global players that has a friendly relationship with both Russia and Ukraine and can help bring them to the table, Amorim said. And Lula’s stance on the war has not dented its ability to help facilitate peace talks, according to the 81-year-old former ambassador who served as Lula’s foreign minister throughout his previous two terms in office.

Brazil was one of the first nations called to participate in recent meeting in Denmark, and Amorim received a personal invite from Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, he said.

“This shows me that they see Brazil as a mediator and an influential country in this debate,” Amorim said. “If Lula’s statements interfered, why does Brazil continue to be called?”

Read More: Zelenskiy’s Plans to Meet Brazil’s Lula at G-7 Fall Through

Amorim, who met Zelenskiy in Kyiv in May, also pushed back on the idea that Brazil is too close to Russia and repeated Lula’s condemnation of the invasion, calling it “totally wrong.”

But peace efforts, he said, must consider Russia’s tensions with the West, NATO’s eastward expansion since the Cold War, and global security concerns — including the risk of nuclear war, which Amorim has raised alarms about since last year.

“If I say I’m neutral, they say I’m pro-Russia,” he said. “It’s true that Ukraine is the victim, and nothing justifies the invasion.”

But the expansion of NATO, which has accelerated since the invasion, also “creates real tension in Russia,” he said. “It’s not paranoia.”

A weakening of Russia could result in resentment and revanchism of the sort that afflicted Germany after the end of World War I, Amorim said, referring to it as a worst-case scenario in the eyes of the Brazilian government.

Lula has also broken with the US over its sanctions against Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro. He drew criticism from other Latin American leaders last month when he claimed that a “narrative of anti-democracy and authoritarianism” had been created to hurt the Venezuelan president.

But Amorim described those comments as part of the leftist leader’s pragmatic approach to foreign affairs.

“No country is perfect,” he said. “Foreign policy has to be a mixture of idealism and pragmatism.”

--With assistance from Courtney McBride and Alberto Nardelli.

(Updates with US announcement. A previous version corrected final quote from Amorim.)

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