Argument: Landmines are easy to use illegally anyway

Landmines are merely a convenient way of providing what can be rigged in many ways – an explosion triggered when movement occurs in a particular area. Without landmines being legally available, troops will improvise landmines – they will wire up pressure plates and hand grenades and trip wires and high explosive charges, with much the same result. These will then be much more difficult to disarm as they will not have a standard design and they may also have much more explosive power. [1] This behaviour was widespread in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The only differences are that these weapons are less efficient, and more dangerous to the user that prepares them.

[1] Maresca, Louis, Maslen, Stuart, The Banning of Anti-Personnel Landmines, International Committee of the Red Cross, 2004, p.316, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R_CjjO8-4-wC

Candidate 1: "That is true if we are discussing a single tripwire or booby trap. But the argument avoids the real point of landmines – blanket deployment over very wide areas, making them impassable for military units in the short term, and deadly for the indigenous population in the long term. Nobody rigs up a few thousand pressure plates at a time. Removing landmines from the available military options would mean that this kind of deployment would become impossible – it would mean the end of the mine field."
Candidate 2: "North Korea has an extensive tunnel network under the DMZ that will facilitate the circumvention of the largest minefield on Earth, if the North Koreans were ever stupid enough to attempt invasion (and there is nothing to suggest that they are going to). This fact demonstrates the uselessness of landmines – the world’s biggest minefield is militarily redundant, a danger only to those that will live in this area in future years. The USA knows this – the defence of South Korea is a hollow, false excuse offered in defence of landmines – the real reason is the unwillingness on the part of the military machine to relinquish the capability of any weapon, no matter how horrible. Of course, there is a healthy profit to be made in their distribution, too."
Candidate 3: "Chemical weapons are also cheap and highly effective. The use of chemical agents was widespread in the First World War and domestic terrorists groups have been able to manufacture and use Sarin gas in attacks. [1]

These weapons are banned despite being cheap and effective because of the unnecessary suffering they cause and because of their indiscriminate nature. Mines and gas are both ‘area denial’ weapons whose effects can linger long after the conflict in which they were employed has faded into history.

[1] Wikipedia, Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway"
Candidate 4: "Faith in these so called ‘smart’ mines is hugely misplaced. Conditions under testing will always vary from those in the field, where all is confusion and areas of deployment are often not properly recorded or marked. Even if they work as claimed, there is no guarantee that regimes that use them will wish to deactivate them upon ceasefire, if left in the territory of a neighbour or enemy with whom a dispute still smoulders. The equipment required for deactivation may be lost or destroyed. The best way to ensure that these weapons aren’t left in the soil is never to put them there in the first place.

That some users might be responsible is not good enough, since if anyone has landmines everyone will. Even that assumes that it is possible to be a ‘responsible’ user of landmines – once they are in the ground the user has lost all practical control over them. The only way to take back control is to disarm them."

That is true if we are discussing a single tripwire or booby trap. But the argument avoids the real point of landmines – blanket deployment over very wide areas, making them impassable for military units in the short term, and deadly for the indigenous population in the long term. Nobody rigs up a few thousand pressure plates at a time. Removing landmines from the available military options would mean that this kind of deployment would become impossible – it would mean the end of the mine field.
