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Canada is gonna need to do this next :(
Are we the baddies?
No, the neighbour-invading neighbour which makes landmines necessary in the first place is the baddy in this scenario.
lemmy is the kind of place where people get offended by defense. and I don't mean what americans call "defense" but actual defense
Offensive landmines killing poor innocent invaders who come in and step on them.
Finland is being so aggressive in this landmine assault.
There is no invaders
I mean I hope so. There never are until there is
If you wanted to educate us you should post it here, it would work better
They are banned for the same reason the use of cluster munitions are frowned upon. The problem of being left behind after deployed during war time as they continue to cause horrific civilian casualties which is a huge a big problem for a country trying to recover from war. Particularly if they were deployed inside a country to defend what was then the front line or a fortified location like the outskirts of a town or village.
However if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having an aggressive neighbouring country where you share a large land border who has broken peace treaty promises repeatedly and is repeatedly making threats about invading, then putting landmines along your border is a VERY effective way to deter and slow down an invasion.
I wish that we weren't in a situation where countries felt it necessary to deploy landmines for border defense but here we are.
If nobody invades, there's no problem, no?
Wrong. If nobody invades, the mines don't get laid out in the first place.
If it does come to that, the positions are marked mapped and they will get cleaned out. The reason for the treaty was that in some places mines were just spread willy nilly.
I still haven't seen your explanation for how this is actually an offense, but keep moving that goalpost 👍
Specifically marked minefields were never illegal even with that treaty so......
What I mean is marked on a map, so I guess "mapped". I'm not operating with my native language here.
Well, why the fuck does any country without an immediate conflict coming up maintain an army?
For a moment earlier it sounded like you were concerned with people losing limbs to mines, and there I would agree if mines were planted proactively.
But you're just offended by defense.
Tanks and goodbye!
Then what's the problem?
Mines are cheap and due to geography, they would be a relatively effective defense. For that reason, signing them away with the treaty was called a mistake even back then. Public opinion was about fifty-fifty for a long time and there was never enough political will to seriously consider withdrawal, or even for the opponents to be particularly vocal about it.
So why now? The full scale invasion in Ukraine was a shock that kicked the ball rolling. The topic became hot immediately and there was also a petition that collected signatures very fast. That took some time, but it's how we got here.
Edit: improved my bad explanation.
Now you have circled us back to the question you dodged before. You said there's no invasion. No invasion => No mines. What is the problem?
As long as there's no military need for them against an invasion there will be zero mines in the ground. No one will hurt themselves with them, unless some storage worker happens to drop a box on their toes.
As of why now, you can't pull out of agreement and start to build up manufacturing and logistics if there's active invasion going on. I hope not a single one of them is ever dug on our Finnish soil, but I'm glad that our military is prepared to use any viable option if they need to.
Maybe I’m lacking imagination here, but how exactly would… …
“I’m planting landmines on my own land, which would only go off if someone decides to invade”
NOT be defence?
And that reason is no longer a viable one.
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