Mark Perry reports on the Trump administration’s recent reversal of restrictions on the use of landmines:

For nearly 30 years, the U.S. has followed that policy, along with a 2014 ban by President Obama on all landmine use outside of Korea.

That is, until last week, when the Trump administration announced it was reversing Obama’s 2014 order. The decision would permit the U.S. to use the “Gator,” “Volcano,” and “M-131” mine systems currently stored in Korea anywhere in the world. More crucially, it would allow the deployment of more technically advanced landmine systems, currently under development, to Europe (and specifically, as a Pentagon official told me, to Eastern Europe) as a deterrent against a possible Russian tank attack.

Trump’s January 31 decision was met with widespread condemnation among those who had been at the forefront of ban efforts. Senator Patrick Leahy called the decision “disappointing, reflexive and unwise.” He went on to note that “the policy that has been in place, limiting the use of this inherently indiscriminate weapon to the Korean Peninsula, was the culmination of nearly 30 years of incremental steps, taken by both Democratic and Republican administrations after extensive analysis and consultation, toward the growing global consensus that anti-personnel mines should be universally banned.”

As Perry’s report makes clear, the landmine reversal serves no legitimate military need. The military doesn’t want this change in policy. If anything, the previous Obama administration policy didn’t go far enough towards eliminating the use of all landmines. The increased use of landmines practically guarantee that more innocent civilians die wherever they are used, and they will be dying from these weapons for decades after any conflict where they are deployed. This decision on landmines has no merit.

Like quite a few other Trump administration policies, this one seems to be motivated by little more than anti-Obama spite. Perry continues:

Leahy and Kimball weren’t alone in their condemnations. A senior Pentagon civilian familiar with the internal discussions in the lead-up to the Trump decision says the White House was motivated primarily by Trump’s animus towards Barack Obama. “The new policy has nothing to do with landmines, or helping the military,” a senior Pentagon official told TAC just after the announcement last week. “This is all about Obama.”

There is also a desire to enrich weapons manufacturers. It is a perfect example of unnecessary, wasteful military spending on weapons that aren’t needed or wanted:

Which places in doubt the claim made last week by Vic Marcado, the acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities: “Landmines, including APL [anti-personnel landmines] remain a vital tool in conventional warfare that the United States military cannot responsibly forgo, particularly when faced with substantial and potentially overwhelming enemy forces in the early stages of combat.”

“There’s a word for this,” a senior Pentagon official told me last week in the wake of Mercado’s statement, “and the word is boondoggle.”

Landmines are not only inherently indiscriminate, but they are also of no real military value, and the U.S. military hasn’t used them in almost thirty years. The last time that they were used was in the Gulf War, and they mainly served to get in the way of U.S. forces:

While the Trump administration claims that restricting the use of anti-personnel mines places the U.S. military “at a severe disadvantage against our adversaries,” that hasn’t ever been true. If it was, why haven’t we used them in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria? In fact, the last time we used landmines was in 1991. In that instance, during the first Gulf War, they actually inhibited the maneuverability of the U.S. “left hook” into Iraq, when an American armored commander refused to order his troops across a field strewn with “smart mines.”

While he was assured that the minefield was “safe” (the weapons had turned themselves off, he was told) he decided not to take any chances—and ordered his troops to follow a wide arc around the minefield.

The Trump administration’s position is essentially to shout, “We must not allow a landmine gap!” This is as dangerous as it is stupid.