[matkoniecz]

War crimes are bad, but using ATP land mines is not a war crime by itself.

For example ATP land mines with reliable self-destruction used properly are OK (yes, some failure rate will exist - in case of war you rarely have 100% sunshine and rainbows solutions).

While dropping randomly land mines over city to target civilians is bad, evil, war crime and terrorism.

Yes, in case of war it is very likely that murdering soldiers of other side will become necessary. It does not make executing PoW acceptable, but guns/mines etc will be used.

[wesselbindt]

One core principle behind determining whether the use of a weapon is a war crime is seeing if it can be used discriminately, i.e., if it can be targeted. So for example, the use of guns (though awful) is not a war crime, because using it requires you to point it at something and pull the trigger. You are in control of whether you shoot an enemy who is actively engaging, an enemy who is retreating, a field medic, a journalist reporting on the scene, a civilian who was not able to flee the area. With for example mustard gas, you cannot make this choice, and that's one of the two major reasons why the use of mustard gas is a war crime.

Even if you build in a self destruction mechanism to landmines(1), this indiscriminate nature remains.

On top of that, you mention something about peppering cities with land mines not being ok (and it wouldn't be), but I'm not convinced that anyone's doing that. And still civilians make up 90% of the victims.

Of course, there's another thing playing into that 90% figure, which is that, by and large, mines are not very effective against military tartgets because they have ample means to dispose of them. Given the fact that our target here is Russia, and not some poorly funded guerilla outfit, I think this should be taken into consideration.

Pairing their war crimey nature and their low efficacy (2), I personally cannot get behind withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty.

There is much more to say about this, and much more has been said about this. I would recommend giving

https://www.humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/landmines-can-no-lo...

a skim. They give alternative, more effective, less inhumane, solutions to the problems that mines try (and largely fail) to solve.

(1) Which is ultimately a bit of a hypothetical exercise, because the nations that left the treaty, well, left the treaty. They didn't propose an amendment allowing for temporary mines, they left the treaty. And on top of that the failure rate for such smart mines is like 20%. You get 1/5th of a war crime I guess.

(2) Earlier I said something to the effect of "I'm sure they're effective". At the time I hadn't read up on the actual effectiveness of mines, because to me, the effectiveness of a method plays no role in whether it should be allowed in combat. I've since read up on that part too, and I'm reasonably convinced they're not very effective in our current context.

[jandrewrogers]

Modern mines have programmable target discriminators that use multiple sensor modalities in addition to a programmable self-destruct. A cow or a goat herder usually won't set these off.

Many types of sophisticated mines cannot be trivially cleared with line charges or engineering vehicles. Soviet style mines can be cleared this way but aren't the only kind that exist.

This tech isn't sophisticated but it costs money and requires maintenance. Many militaries don't use them because they want weapons that can sit in a warehouse for 50 years with zero maintenance.

The military purpose of mines is not to kill anyone. It is to deny use of space in order to shape the battlefield and trap the adversary in areas where they are exposed to other weapons. Mines are highly effective at this purpose and will be for the foreseeable future against almost all adversaries. This is not controversial.

The "expert" in the linked article has no background in mine warfare, only EOD. This became obvious when I was reading the article because it presented an unexpectedly naive understanding of mine warfare. That perspective might make sense if your only experience is clearing old Soviet mines and IEDs but it doesn't generalize.