Secretary of State Antony Blinken while at the NATO summit in Lithuania is promoting a message that Washington essentially had no choice but to arm Ukraine with cluster munitions because the country would have been "defenseless" with them.
He gave an interview to MSNBC’s "Andrea Mitchell Reports" and asserted that Ukraine's own stockpile of cluster bombs and artillery is running out, even merely exhausted.
"The stockpiles around the world and in Ukraine of the unitary munitions, not the cluster munitions, were running out, about to be depleted," Blinken began.
"And so, the hard but necessary choice to give them the cluster munitions amounted to this: If we didn’t do it, we don’t do it, then they will run out of ammunition," he explained to Mitchell. "If they run out of ammunition, then they will be defenseless."
He also when pressed by the MSNBC host continued to advance the White House talking point that Russia is already doing worse, so cluster bombs are permissible despite the well-known human rights and war crimes issues.
Mitchell asked whether the US is ceding the moral high ground in delivering bombs which are banned by over 120 nations. "Every ally I’ve talked to has said they understand why we’re doing this when we’re doing it," Blinken claimed.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has relied on the same logic. "We are facing a brutal war, and we have to remember this brutality is reflected, that every day we see casualties, and that cluster munitions are used by both sides," Stoltenberg said days ago. "And Russia used cluster munitions to invade another country. Ukraine is using cluster munitions to defend itself."
Meanwhile, a number of European allies have broken from the US on the issue, condemning the move - most notably Germany. Ukraine has long accused Berlin of being weak and hesitate in the face of the Russian invasion.
But Blinken's method of arguing makes clear, Washington has framed each new escalation decision as matter of life & death, despite billions in arms already shipped. Every moment is somehow "facing down Hitler"... we are told.
