On November 20, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that the Biden administration was reversing a previous policy and providing Ukraine with anti-personnel landmines to thwart Russian advances. The shift met with immediate criticism from anti-mine groups and architects of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning such mines, to which Ukraine is a signatory. Former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, a key figure in negotiating the Ottawa Treaty, denounced the US decision as “both deplorable and dangerous” and showing “treaty obligations can be disregarded and the protections afforded by the global ban on anti-personnel mines can be cast aside.” Yet a careful analysis suggests the decision reveals both the ongoing military utility of landmines and the weaknesses of the Ottawa Treaty.

With support from NGOs for a ban on landmines growing, but successful negotiation through UN and other existing channels likely to prove time-consuming and produce only partial limitations rather than a complete ban on the production, transfer, and deployment of anti-personnel mines, Axworthy and his collaborators chose to push conclusion of a treaty through an ad hoc coalition of states already committed to a total ban, in sometimes uneasy partnership with NGOs. This departure from standard diplomatic practice produced the rapid conclusion of a treaty, the destruction of millions of stockpiled mines and much subsequent de-mining in countries where unexploded mines from past conflicts posed a deadly hazard to civilians and kept useful land off limits.

But this signal triumph for Canadian diplomacy was ambiguous. As David Lenarcic noted as early as 1998, major producers of mines were not signatories and the legitimate concerns of militaries still dependent on mines were not taken into account. The NGOs in particular treated the issue not as a prudential one of arms........

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