Hegseth reverses land mine policy to allow use of controversial weapon

The Trump administration reversed a Biden-era policy that prohibited the use of antipersonnel land mines except on the Korean Peninsula, according to a Dec. 2 document reviewed by The Washington Post. The previously unreported memo, signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, says the reversal would give the U.S. military a “force multiplier” against enemies during “one of the most dangerous security environments in its history.”

In the memo, Hegseth calls for a review of the land mine policy and for a new one to be recommended within 90 days. He outlines five objectives for the new policy — including lifting geographic limits on the use of land mines, which would allow for their use globally, and giving combatant commanders the authority to use the explosives. It would also limit the destruction of land mines in U.S. inventory only to those that are “inoperable or unsafe,” the memo says, reversing policy to destroy stockpiles that are not required to defend South Korea.

Human rights groups have long called for a global ban on antipersonnel land mines — small explosive charges buried in or placed on the ground — because of their propensity to kill, maim or blind civilians often years after conflicts have ended. In 2024, nearly 2,000 people were killed by land mines and explosives left behind from war, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

The interim policy says the United States will use “remotely delivered” antipersonnel land mines only if the mines have “compliant self-destruction mechanisms and self-deactivation features.” Ordnance experts have long warned that even mines that can be deactivated, called “nonpersistent” mines, have high rates of failures.

On the removal of geographic constraints, the new policy says that steps will be taken to limit civilian harm and limitations on their use will be made on a case-by-case basis.

More than 160 countries, though not the United States, signed a treaty banning the stockpiling, use and production of antipersonnel land mines. Several countries, including Ukraine — which has used tens of thousands of mines to frustrate the Russian army’s advance — have withdrawn or announced their intention to withdraw from the landmark 1997 treaty this year.

The United States had previously banned through domestic legislation the use of land mines outside the Korean Peninsula and called for destroying stockpiles that were not slated for the defense of South Korea. In 2024, the Biden administration sent antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine in an apparent undoing of its own policy banning the transfer of the explosives.

The December memo also says that President Donald Trump has rescinded the U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program, a long-running campaign through which the United States supported other countries’ efforts to remove land mines. The memo does not provide more details but claims new policy would enable the United States to remain “a global leader in unexploded ordnance clearing assistance and in conventional weapons destruction.”

The Trump administration’s decision to repeal the Biden-era policy, the latest in a long saga of land mine policy reversals, was met with criticism from human rights groups and arms control experts.

Former senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a statement, “The Pentagon is reinstituting a discredited policy that invites other nations to do the same.”

“More U.S. soldiers and innocent civilians will be needlessly killed and maimed,” wrote Leahy, who wrote U.S. policy banning antipersonnel land mines transfers and took part in the 1997 land mine ban treaty negotiation. “Anyone who has seen what landmines do to innocent civilians knows that these inherently indiscriminate weapons do not belong in the arsenal of civilized nations.”

The memo’s claim that land mines could help protect U.S. forces fails to account for the radical changes in land warfare, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. “The United States is not facing any military threat for which land mines are on balance useful.”

The U.S. military has not widely used antipersonnel land mines since the Gulf War more than three decades ago.

“Symbolically, this policy really takes the United States away from being any kind of champion for restraint on this indiscriminate weapon,” said Sarah Yager, the Washington director of advocacy group Human Rights Watch. Despite its long history of land mine policy reversals, the United States has been one of the leaders of stigmatizing their use in conflict, Yager said.

“This, combined with Biden sending land mines to Ukraine, helps open the door to proliferation by other countries.”

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• Dan Lamothe, Meg Kelly and Alex Horton contributed.