The Case For a Korea Exception

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has underscored growing global concerns about the horrific civilian toll taken by antipersonnel mines by giving its award this year to the International Committee to Ban Land Mines and to its coordindator, the American Jody Williams. Announcement of the award served as an immediate reminder that the United States will not be among the 100 or so countries that plan to meet in Ottawa in December to sign a treaty to ban the use, production and sale of land mines. Until recently, in fact, the United States refused even to formally participate in the treaty talks, organized just a year ago by Canada. That boycott was a political mistake. At the same time, Washington’s refusal to sign the treaty is by no means as uncaring as some critics would have it.

What most worries the Pentagon and the Clinton administration is that a ban on land mines would make it far harder and more costly for South Korea and the 37,000 American troops who are stationed there to defend against a North Korean invasion. For that reason Washington sought an exception to the ban on land mines, which other countries taking part in the talks refused to grant. Yet here is a case where an exception is warranted, since virtually no unintended threat to Korean civilians would have been involved. Indeed, mining along the narrow north-south invasion routes would work to slow down and break up a North Korean attack and so help save lives, civilian as well as military. That is what the treaty is supposed to be about.

The United States has not exported mines for years, and so far it has given $150 million to help remove the 100 million or more mines that have been left behind in such war-ravaged countries as Cambodia, Afghanistan and Angola. These undetected mines kill or maim about 26,000 people a year, most of them civilians. The new treaty ban will be a start on preventing future indiscriminate casualties. Meanwhile, the immediate imperative is to expand demining operations to try to reduce the threat left by earlier wars. That work is likely to take generations to finish. The already terrible toll of victims seems destined to grow steadily and tragically greater in the interim.