One area of US, Russian policy convergence that harms humanity

The cluster bomb is one nasty munition. It's a bomb containing many little 'bomblets', which can spray a wide swathe of enemy territory, making it a truly efficient killing machine. Unfortunately, up to 30% of the bomblets don't go off; burying themselves in Mother Earth to blow off the limbs or snuff out the life of an unsuspecting innocent who happens upon one. Much of the civilized world is so repulsed by cluster bombs, 103 of them ratified the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions outlawing them. The two most prominent exceptions are the US and Russia. America hasn't used cluster bombs since 2009 in Yemen but still stockpiles 1.5 million of them, containing 90 million of those unfriendly little fellows. Untold thousands, maybe millions of US cluster bomblets say hello to new victims in Vietnam and Iraq every day. Our cluster bomb fellow traveler Russia just unveiled an advanced cluster bomb that can't be detected by radar or infrared devices preventing its being jammed. Russia's Sputnik News claims that "Russian sub-munitions are way smarter than their U.S. counterparts." Who does that sound like? Speaking of that man in the White House...his administration last November rescinded a 2008 US pledge to scrap all US cluster munitions.

It's unusual for the US and Russia to agree on anything. Alas, the one biggie they find common ground on is how to fill the ground around millions of innocents with one of man's most insidious killing implements.