Theatre of the Cruel
As European countries announce their withdrawal from the Mine Ban Convention, questions mount over what, exactly, they hope to achieve.
The short version
Polish PM Donald Tusk mistakenly announced plans to withdraw from both the Mine Ban and Dublin Conventions — despite Poland never having joined the latter. The gaffe highlights a troubling lack of awareness at the highest levels of government.
Ten days later, Poland and the Baltic states jointly declared plans to withdraw from the Mine Ban Convention, citing regional insecurity. Officials offered no compelling military rationale — only vague references to “necessary measures”.
Deploying landmines risks long-term civilian harm, not military advantage. The move ignores overwhelming evidence of the humanitarian toll of landmines.
This isn’t strategy — it’s performance. Withdrawing from treaties appears more symbolic than practical, projecting strength while increasing danger to their own people. Europe must resist this slide into militarised spectacle.
Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, was clearly misinformed when he, on 7 March, told the members of parliament that he had instructed his Ministry of Defence to “initiate Poland's withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention and possibly the Dublin Convention”. While Agence France-Presse and The Guardian reported the story, no one, save a lonely voice on X, bothered to point out the error: Poland is a party to the Ottawa Convention — also known as the Mine Ban Convention — and can, in principle, invoke its withdrawal clause.
But Poland has never joined the Dublin Convention — more formally called the Convention on Cluster Munitions — despite repeated calls by the European Union and other partners to do so.
It is possible that Tusk was simply riffing off and seeking to shore up support for neighbouring Lithuania’s recent withdrawal from the Convention on Cluster Munitions — another cruel and inhumane weapon — that had taken effect just a day earlier. Yet, for a Prime Minister who claims to “take rule of law very seriously”, it was a strikingly careless oversight.
That Poland’s prime minister didn’t seem to know which treaties his own country is bound by was strange enough. But the mistake turned outright bizarre once it became clear that the move was part of a coordinated regional plan. On 18 March, Władysław Marcin Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s Minister of Defence, doubled down on Tusk’s announcement by releasing a joint statement alongside his three Baltic counterparts:
“We—the Ministers of Defence of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland—unanimously recommend withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention”. Poland, in particular, was keen to show they meant business —announcing plans just a few days later to acquire “up to one million” landmines, with domestic industry ready to begin production.
The four defence ministers did not repeat Tusk’s blunder—their statement made no mention of the Convention on Cluster Munitions or any other treaty that the countries are not party to. But beyond vague references to an “unstable security environment” in Eastern Europe and a pledge to “use every necessary measure to defend our territory and freedom”, the ministers offered little clarity on the rationale behind the move.
As Tusk’s namesake in Washington, D.C. cozies up to Vladimir Putin, it is easy to see why Russia’s neighbours are growing anxious. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine more than suggests that the norms that have guided the conduct of international politics in Europe since World War II can no longer be taken for granted. It seems logical, in these circumstances, for European countries to critically examine whether they have what it takes to protect their peoples in the event of war.
Seen from a certain angle, the decision by Poland and the Baltic countries to withdraw from the Mine Ban Convention looks like a drift back towards Kriegsraison—the doctrine, influential in Prussian and later German military thinking in the run-up to World War I, that the necessities of war override its laws. As Barry de Vries, a postdoctoral fellow at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, notes in a recent post on the use of landmines in Ukraine, this logic appears to be gaining renewed currency.
Yet, even from the perspective of Kriegsraison, withdrawing from the Mine Ban Convention makes little sense. Landmines offer no military advantage in the kinds of conflicts these countries may face. They do not prevent invasion, cannot distinguish between friend and foe, and are notoriously ineffective means of defence.
Worse still, the four defence ministers appear intent on deploying landmines on their own territory — meaning the people most at risk will be the very civilians they claim to protect. The evidence leaves little doubt about who suffers the most from the use of landmines: children, farmers and displaced people returning home, long after the fighting stops. The Guardian’s coverage of Syria’s post-Assad reconstruction offers a painful reminder of the reality of these weapons: when landmines are used, wars may end — but the children keep dying.
Why would the leaders of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in their efforts to secure their borders, expose their own people to an unnecessary and entirely predictable risk of injury and death? The four defence ministers made no attempt to respond to these concerns. Indeed, the casual disregard for any evidence suggests that something else is at play than considerations of military necessity.
“With this decision, we are sending a clear message”, the defence ministers declared as they announced their withdrawal. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, for certain segments of the European security establishment, the act of withdrawing from treaties that place limits on the weapons of war has become an end in itself — a symbolic gesture, a “message” detached from reality, meant to project a spectacle of ruthlessness to domestic audiences.
Such a scheme may create the impression that the leaders of NATO’s eastern flank are “doing something” to counter the threat posed by Russia. But it does nothing to address these countries’ real security problems. More troublingly still, such acts may offer what Cordula Droege and Maya Brehm of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls a “false promise of security” — symbolic reassurance that leaves the underlying vulnerabilities untouched, while increasing long-term risks to one’s own civilians.
Following the defence ministers’ announcement, there have been fears that other countries will follow suit, potentially triggering a domino effect of treaty withdrawal. “Poland and the Baltic states have said they are planning to leave the Ottawa Convention, dealing a blow to the international treaty banning antipersonnel land mines”, Henry-Laur Allik of Deutsche Welle wrote in response to the news.
Indeed, it would be a mistake to treat the announcement as an isolated incident. After months of questioning its commitments, Finland on 1 April also announced plans to withdraw from the Mine Ban Convention, with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo citing the need to “prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way.” In the United Kingdom, Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank with notoriously dubious funding, has launched a campaign to urge the government to reconsider its commitment to the Mine Ban Convention, triggering a debate in the House of Lords, due to take place on 3 April. Even Sweden is rumoured to be weighing its options — a puzzling development, unless they plan to mine the border with Norway. Or, perhaps, the island of Gotland?
But none of this constitutes “a blow” to the Mine Ban Convention. The Convention has, since its adoption in 1997, benefitted — and it continues to benefit — millions of people in mine-affected countries around the world. Algeria, once one of the most heavily mined countries due to French colonial-era weapons, was declared mine-free in 2017. As Algeria’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Rachid Bladehane, recently reminded diplomats, the country now stands as an “outstanding example” of what sustained anti-mine efforts can achieve.
What we are witnessing, rather, is a collapse of European security thinking — a failure by the leaders of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to articulate a credible, lawful, and evidence-based response to the region’s deteriorating security environment. If these countries go through with their plans and deploy “up to a million” landmines along their borders with Russia, their decision will not only strike another blow to Europe’s claim to defend a rules-based order, but — with literal cruelty— result in a long series of tragic, yet entirely predictable, blows to their own children.
This is not strength. It is not deterrence. This is theatre — theatre of the cruel — where the price of posturing will be paid not by invading armies, but by the very civilians these policies claim to defend.
One can only hope that the citizens of Europe will rise to the occasion and demand more from their leaders than self-defeating, sleepwalking militarism. Unlike Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s America — where politics have become pure spectacle — Europe still holds the promise of democratic accountability: a politics where the lived experience of the governed holds weight, where policy is based on reality, and ignorance is not mistaken for strength.
This is an informative article. I wonder if war and massive rearmament isn't a way to maintain economical interests instead of promoting, trying or inventing different ways ?
Thanks for publishing it.