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Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

203 points by nkurz 7y ago

thedirt0115 7y ago
tl;dr: "Not because chemical weapons are immoral. Because they are ineffective" :'(
- throwanem 7y ago
  There's a saying, I forget where it originates but I want to say with either Bismarck or von Schlieffen, to the effect that the closest thing to a moral philosophy of warfare is that it should be pursued as brutally and ferociously as necessary to make wars as short as they possibly can be. Granted, it's as much of its time as were the men I named. But it nonetheless does a good job, albeit implicitly, of pointing up that the best you can do in warfare is to minimize its essential immorality.
  - jimbob45 7y ago
    It was the central thesis of season three of Game of Thrones.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      "Steal from the best."
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  All's fair in love and war. There is no such thing as morality in war or nature. Just winners and losers.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Societies often find a moral conscious once something stops being economically (or in this case, militarily) viable.
- davidgay 7y ago
  Which strikes me as coming from the rather strange view that there must be a single reason for everything. When in my view, it's hard for a single person to have a single reason for anything, so when many people are involved...
throwanem 7y ago
tl;dr: Because they're tactically and strategically ineffective. They can make serviceable assassination weapons, as can almost anything given the right arrangement of circumstances, but as a tool of warfare, they suck. What I'd really like to see is an analysis from a military historian's perspective of why biological weapons are even more useless, with specific reference to current events. The tl;dr there is that they're tactically nonexistent, and strategically worse than merely ineffective because you can't control either their spread or your borders well enough to avoid them blowing back on you. Of course, I'm not so naïve as to imagine such a thing would convince anyone who needs convincing. It'd be a fun read if Mr. Devereaux did it, but I suspect it would serve neither tactical nor strategic goals in the battle against misinformation.
- thedance 7y ago
  Why aren't chemical weapons (for example VX) effective area denial weapons? They seem damned good for the purpose.
  - donw 7y ago
    Because they deny the area to you as well. Cleaning up a minefield is child's play compared to dealing with nerve agents.
    - kjs3 7y ago
      No. Minefield can persist dangerous for decades. Nerve gas dissipates is days/weeks. Nerve agents might clear the ground tactically, but they don't hold it.
      - donw 7y ago
        Ah, I should provide context. From a tactical perspective, the minefield is easy to clear. In terms of long-term effects, the mines are definitely worse. We are still finding mines from World War II all over Europe, and it’s a huge problem in Korea as well.
howmayiannoyyou 7y ago
Deterrence. All manner of WMD would be used absent a credible deterrent. Just ask the residents of Aleppo or Halabja.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
KarlKemp 7y ago
There's no way to decide the relative weight of uselessness and perceived immorality of chemical weapons. Some people clearly do consider them horrible, and it would be quite a surprise if none of those people were in any position of power, from armed forces to civilian government to parliamentarians to voters. The argument otherwise rests on the assumption of perfect efficiency in military procurement and decision-making. Does anyone believe the military never uses "useless" technology? They came up with a rationalisation for building that marginal nuclear bomb to allow the 254th complete destruction of earth. I'm sure they could convince themselves of the necessity of chemical weapons if motivated. It’s also quite a feat to write about chemical weapons and use the Tokyo Sarin attack as an example, and not Syria. Not only did the latter happen fairly recently. It’s also an actual military using these weapons, not a cult. And if Syria is to fresh and people here are among those doubting the reports, maybe the Iraqi chemical weapons program from the Iran-Iraq war and later the genocidal use against the Kurds is more trusted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program There, several thousand people were killed.
- AlexMoffat 7y ago
  All the occasions you mention are covered in the blog. The sarin attack is used to demonstrate that even in the best conditions for the attacker they would not be effective in a military sense against modern first tier armies. As a terror weapon yes but the question is why don’t modern militaries plan to use them. It doesn’t rest on perfect efficiency. At this point the US, for example, doesn’t have the quantity needed for battlefield and no procedures for deploying them.
  - ken 7y ago
    The nuclear weapon question isn't really covered, which is an interesting case because they're also strategically useless to a Modern army -- and the U.S. government knows it [1]. Yet disarmament basically froze 10 years ago. In the language and framework of this article, I understand why countries with Static armies might feel the need to develop them, but I don't understand why Modern armies which are happy to dispose of chemical weapons aren't equally happy to dispose of nuclear weapons. Do American and Russian generals think that nuclear weapons will become useful at some point in the future? Do countries like France believe this? The French president hinted that they kept submarines with nuclear weapons configured for terrorist attacks, but the deadliest terror attack in history was carried out with box cutters, so it's hard to imagine how nuclear weapons would help. Nuclear weapons could be useful (if horrific) against a Static opponent, but not a Guerrilla one. [1]: https://thinkprogress.org/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-useless-4ab6657759c7/ https://thinkprogress.org/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-u...
thom 7y ago
Some would possibly count tear gas, white phosphorous or depleted uranium.
- austincheney 7y ago
  None of that are chemical weapons any more than water in waterboarding. They are all chemicals including water.
  - megous 7y ago
    Whether something is a chemical weapon depends also on use, not only on content. https://www.opcw.org/our-work/what-chemical-weapon https://www.opcw.org/our-work/what-chemical-weapon So yes, any of the above chemicals if they were to be used to cause harm via their toxic properties, would be chemical weapons according to OPCW.
  - gonzo41 7y ago
    WP white phosphorous is actually a chemical weapon when used against people. It is an anti material weapon and used for smoke screens. But read up on the use of WP in fallujah.
    - amitport 7y ago
      Well that depends who you ask. US claimed it is not a chemical weapon because it ""merely"" burns its subjects but doesn't poison them. Though probably any other country using it like they used it in Fallujah would have suffered consequences (note we're not talking about WP as used for lighthing and gun laying. Allegedly (I'm not sure what the evidence status), US used it for shake & bake on civilian population)
      - hansjorg 7y ago
        From the Wikipedia page on White phosphorus munitions: > on 15 November 2005, US Department of Defence spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable confirmed to the BBC that US forces had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon there US shaked and baked children in Fallujah, but they were conveniently redefined from children to enemy combatants at the time.
rayrrr 7y ago
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
- kjs3 7y ago
  Incredibly powerful writing. You might give Wilfred Owen props for writing it.
  - rayrrr 7y ago
    I was waiting for someone to do that for me. ;) Thanks. Agreed. Props to the WW1 poet Wilfred Owen 1893-1918.
    - dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
      Thanks for posting wow.
    - robin_reala 7y ago
      (I put together a PD ebook collection of his work at https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-owen/poetry https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-owen/poetry)
TomMckenny 7y ago
Another point of evidence that the author probably omitted out of politeness are the nations that freely violated rules of war yet did not make (much) use of chemical weapons: the nazis on the eastern front and wwii japan. Also another technology banned because it don't work is the hollow point bullet. Apparently killing a solider outright is not as destructive as driving him long term onto the medical system. This is also one of the reasons caliber has generally been dropped over time. The 1950s move to the 223 round is pretty explicit on this.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > Another point of evidence that the author probably omitted out of politeness are the nations that freely violated rules of war yet did not make (much) use of chemical weapons: the nazis on the eastern front and wwii japan. Why single out germany and japan? Are you really pretending the US, Britain, Soviet Union, etc didn't freely violate the "rules of war" also? Also, the nazis aren't a nation. Edit: I guess some here think nuking hiroshima/nagasaki, firebombing and burning millions of civilians to death, mass rape of women, etc are within the "rules of war". Interesting.
  - fuckface123 7y ago
    "Nazis" in the context of WWII is commonly understood to mean the nation of Germany under control of the Nazi party.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    It isn't singling out, dude. It's just an example. Obviously from the guys avoiding signing anti-cluster-munitions and anti-landmines you can tell that they're all concerned about their military effectiveness. Fine, go ahead and say that Admiral Donitz only got away because we used Unrestricted Submarine Warfare just as much as he did. Okay. There we go. Now we're all even.
    - FillardMillmore 7y ago
      Give the man his due. That's Führer Donitz to you. Even if it was for a shorter period of time than William Henry Harrison fighting a cold after a a chilly wind.
blunte 7y ago
This is an excellent and well written essay that answers its own question. But I will offer my own answer. Grooups generally don't use chemical weapons because such use is too obvious too unsettling to viewers/supporters. They want the outcome, whatever it may be, but they don't want to look like they are greedy or insensitive or anti(or counter)-religious [generally speaking, they don't want to appear overtly confrontational]. Things must be done just slightly less aggressively than will upset the general population/supporters who fund the endeavors. In Earth-time, this discussion is mostly academic. The horrors which we inflict upon each other is far less than the likely destruction we invite upon ourselves as a species through our collective behaviors (environmentally speaking). The human existence on this planet is probably (in the mathematical sense) very short. I suspect the real concern is that we or someone we know may suffer some extended period of pain because of chemical or other non-instant-death conflict. People think they are afraid of dying, but usually it is more that they are afraid of a slow death which includes pain and anguish.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  This is, in fact, explicitly stated in the article. "This isn’t a value question, but a value-against-replacement question – why maintain, issue, store, and shoot expensive chemical munitions if cheap, easier to store, easier to manufacture high explosive munitions are both more obtainable and also better? When you add the geopolitical and morale impact on top of that – you sacrifice diplomatic capital using such weapons and potentially demoralize your own soldiers, who don’t want to see themselves as delivering inhumane weapons – it’s pretty clear why would wouldn’t bother."
- mythrwy 7y ago
  Humans are amazingly resilient. Like mice, but to the n'th degree. Human existence on this planet isn't going to end any time soon. Even if the planet heats up. Even if there is trash in the oceans. But there might be a whole lot less of us and life might be a lot less pleasant.
  - outworlder 7y ago
    This is true. But our bodies require very specific conditions to survive. We can offset them with tech, but only to a degree. Most of it requires some semblance of civilization to maintain. Disrupt that, and we are in for a very bad time.
kitteh 7y ago
Another reason: maintaining a supply of chemical weapons is dangerous. Turns out no city/state wants that stockpile, either. Years ago a co-worker of mine at the phone company had to go to military base in Terre Haute to work on some high speed circuits that weren't working properly. The network room was in the basement of a warehouse that stored VX nerve agents - rows and rows of it. When he got to the base he had to watch some training video on nerve agents, get issued a gas mask and the atropine shot then escorted to the facility. He said during the whole time he was incredibly nervous as the evacuation route involved running back up into the warehouse then through an exit.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  This is, in fact, explicitly stated in the article. So, no, not "another" reason.
- jonmartinwest 7y ago
  Dzerzhinsk in Russian is a great example of this.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    > Dzerzhinsk is one of the worst-polluted cities of the world and has a life expectancy of 42 years for men and 47 for women, with the 2003 death rate exceeding its birth rate by 260%. Holy Cow! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzerzhinsk,_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzerzhinsk,_Russia
- RyJones 7y ago
  Interesting - I grew up in Terre Haute. I think you're talking about the old VX bunker up in Newport, maybe?
- rsynnott 7y ago
  > maintaining a supply of chemical weapons is dangerous I don't really buy this one. I mean, I agree it's dangerous, but the major powers maintained large stocks throughout the Cold War without apparently worrying about it too much. More recently it's become a somewhat expensive disposal problem, but in terms of cost it's not really significant next to the cost of maintaining, say, aircraft carriers, or nuclear warheads.
DubiousPusher 7y ago
Very interesting. I wrote a paper in college that argued a very similar line of reasoning. I based this largely around the conversation that was had about aerial bombing during the inter-war period. During WWI a biplane or two was able to fly over Paris and drop a grenade. It caused quite a scandal with some Navy high ups condemning the concept of aerial bombardment altogether. By the end of the inter-war period there was a strong stigma against it. The concept of using bombs on civilian centers was pretty much unthinkable. Until of course the war began and it wasn't. Throughout the war taboos were approach and broken one after another. When the U.S. joined the war, there was a major row between U.S. and British airforce commanders about using bombers at night. The U.S. thought it unethical, especially since they had invested in a supposedly superior bomb sight which was rendered essentially useless at night. The British, facing an existential threat were not so scrupulous. Of course the night raids soon began. So by war's end there was virtually no size of bomb nor target that was much unacceptable even though the idea of aerial bombing of even soldiers had been distasteful at its start. Give this, the only reason I could think that chemical weapons had not followed the same slippery slope was that they were far less useful. I got an A- on the paper, my teacher said it was good but too fringey. I couldn't dig up the paper but I found the bibliography. If you're interested in the subject give some of these sources a try. I especially enjoyed the biography of Doolittle, "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again". "The Bombing of Berlin in World War II." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, 7 April 2012. Web. 10 April. 2012. "The Bombing of Germany." American Experience. Writ. Zvi Dor-ner. Dir. Zvi Dor-ner. PBS, 2010. Streaming. "Bombing of Tokyo." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, 3 April 2012. Web. 6 April. 2012. Carlin, Dan. ”Logical Insanity.” Harcore History. dancarlin.com, 31 March 2012. Podcast. 6 April 2012. Cheek, Dennis W. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. Ed. Carl Mitcham. Vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 921-924. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. Doolittle. Gen. James H. and Carroll V. Glines. I Could Never Be So Lucky Again. 1991. New York: Bantam Books, 2009. e-book. "Firestorm." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, 13 April 2012. Web. 14 April. 2012. Hansen, Randall. Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945. New York: New American Library, 2009. e-book. Truman, Harry S. "Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945." Atomic Bomb: Decision. n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
- 7y ago
totorovirus 7y ago
As an ex south korean army (mandatory service), our neighbor in the north still think chemical weapon an effective asymmetrical weapon against us because our small piece of land won't really allow any mobility based modern warfare. There are outposts throughout all the borderline. We do quite a lot of training to protect against chemical attacks and also the protective respiration devices are included for every soldiers. The most probable attack against us will begin with spreading chemical gas on air to crush the first defense line in the borderline. If situation become really bad and raw - killing all the civilians - chemical weapon would still be a very effective weapon I think.
- brazzy 7y ago
  > If situation become really bad and raw - killing all the civilians - chemical weapon would still be a very effective weapon I think. The article argues pretty convincingly that this is not actually true, since they are just not as effective as high explosives at killing people. They are possibly more effective at terrorizing the population into surrendering.
  - 23B1 7y ago
    > terrorizing the population into surrendering. This is asymmetrical warfare in a nutshell
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      Except terrorizing a population into surrendering hasn't proven to be an effective tactic in history. I'm struggling to think of a single case where it actually happened.
      - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
        While terrorism (going by the classical definition) hasn’t had had any (or many?) victories of that sort - let’s not pretend that acts of terrorism don’t achieve political goals - and if nothing else they make the people in charge sit-up and take notice. There’s only one example I can comfortably talk about: I don’t believe Devolution and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland would have come about if it weren’t for the shadow of the IRA looming over Westminster.
shklnrj 7y ago
I think the main point was missed in the article. Chemical weapons cause more suffering and less death and cause multi generation effects, while other weapons are primarily hit/miss but geared towards death. It might seem weird, but death is considered better than suffering by lots of people. I give an example. In the series Chernobyl - soldiers are employed to kill dogs because they might spread radiation. The senior soldier instructs that when you see a dog - keep shooting, till it dies. In old times, slow killing was considered to be much worse as compared to sudden death. So maybe this is why we don't use chemical weapons.
- behindsight 7y ago
  Apologies if I misunderstood, but I don't think that particular point was missed; it seems to be the article's first stated viewpoint actually: > the narrative I got was fairly clear: we didn’t use chemical weapons because after World War I the nations of the world got together and decided that chemical weapons were just too horrible and banned them, and that this was a sign of something called ‘progress.’ That point is even further iterated on in the conclusion when comparing them to cluster munitions which as you put, "cause multi generation effects" due to remaining active years after the conflict.
- GeorgeWBasic 7y ago
  What could possibly be considered weird about that? How could anyone consider slow killing to not be worse than sudden death? They're both death, but one is much worse. It's much more weird to be talking about suffering and slow death as though they aren't worse, and that only weird people think they are.
pc2g4d 7y ago
The trouble with realpolitik is when you get more cynical than reality itself. Instead of a binary---either the morality of chemical weapons caused their ban, or their uselessness in battle did---why not take a supply/demand, cost/benefit sort of approach? The moral repugnance of weapons of mass destruction makes them more costly to the users---if they delegitimize your war effort, what have you really gained? They ceased to be used when the costs outweighed the benefits. Therefore the moral repugnance of them likely hastened their abandonment, even if battlefield effectiveness was the greater influence.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  This is, in fact, explicitly stated in TFA. "This isn’t a value question, but a value-against-replacement question – why maintain, issue, store, and shoot expensive chemical munitions if cheap, easier to store, easier to manufacture high explosive munitions are both more obtainable and also better? When you add the geopolitical and morale impact on top of that – you sacrifice diplomatic capital using such weapons and potentially demoralize your own soldiers, who don’t want to see themselves as delivering inhumane weapons – it’s pretty clear why would wouldn’t bother."
  - j9461701 7y ago
    I find myself mostly agreeing with this article, although I think it over-states its case slightly and this section highlights why. Chemical weapons are not very useful on a tactical level, and modernly nuclear weapons are superior on the strategic level. But for a brief period between 1915 and 1945, they were an attractive solution for mass death on a strategic level. A 1,000 pound explosive bomb, with WW2 level targeting, is very unlikely to hit its target and will likely explode some random unpopulated building. A 1,000 ton mustard gas bomb, though it won't hit its target (because WW2 era bombing accuracy), will still have its payload disperse over a wide area and is utterly horrific to deal with. As the article notes, the 1995 sarin attack in Japan injured over 1,000 people. Chemical weapons may not be good for winning a battle, but they're perfect as a terror weapon meant to go after civilians. In a sense, chemical weapons are a kind of 'poor man's nuke'. Russia and America are standing down their chemical weapons because they have actual nukes, and don't need to also have 2nd rate knock offs. The article tries to point to WW2 as an example of nations being in existential peril, and still not using chemical weapons, and concluding this means they were ineffective even as terror weapons. But I think that doesn't hold water upon closer analysis - the moment a single German soldier's boot stepped foot on the British isles, which is to say the UK actually faced imminent threat of conquest, Churchill planned to quote "drench [Germany] in gas". Later on in the war chemical weapons were avoided not for fear of retaliation in itself, but for fear of how one's own people would respond to said retaliation. If you are Great Britain, and public morale for the war is hanging on by a thread, do you want to roll the dice and gas attack Germany - thereby causing Germany to gas attack your civilians - and risk support for the war collapsing? In 1944 Churchill asked for a 'cold blooded analysis' about gassing Germany, and the response that came back was basically "We're already winning the war, and mass gas deployment would be needlessly taking chances. Do not do it!". Churchill famously disagreed with this analysis, but didn't push the matter any further.
xzel 7y ago
I stumbled onto this news documentary on the nerve gas stored in the US from 1973 very randomly maybe a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjA0EQPeUGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjA0EQPeUGM . If you're interested in this type of stuff this documentary is incredible and apparently won an Emmy. The number of problems with long term are mind boggling technologically, even if people don't know its near them. The whole idea if this place got bombed it would wipe out huge amount of people in the surrounding area based on wind patterns is nuts, frankly. The whole process to dismantle and then "store" the old gas is insane.
jrs95 7y ago
I would argue we do use chemical weapons, but only in specific circumstances in order to generate outrage about whoever we are claiming used them to justify our own military action. The biggest value they have now is how offensive they are. And I dont mean "we" as in the United States or anything like that, I mean humanity in general. No rational actor would ever decide to use a chemical weapon unless they intended primarily to blame someone else for it.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
cause it sucks for both sides, like really suck. So they took them out and fight with the rest of arsenal
anthony_doan 7y ago
WWI happened. Historian see WWI as the war of chemists. And WWII as the war of physicists.
anovikov 7y ago
We don't use chemical weapons because they have very poor military efficiency - modern armies taught themselves very well to protect against them, they will mostly harm civilians and make any postwar arrangements very complicated. Also they are very indiscriminate and depend on factors such as wind and elements way too much, so they are about as likely to harm own troops as the enemy. Plus, why bother if we have, to kill military targets, high precision weapons that do the job a lot better than chemicals ever could, and for wide area targets or infrastructure, nukes?
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  That, and it's kind of frowned upon internationally thus exposing people wielding these weapons to the possibility of ending up in a court room some day. Ali Chemicali was eventually executed. So was his boss, Saddam Hussein. In both cases, the use of chemical weapons against civilians was the main thing they were convicted off.
GarvielLoken 7y ago
What an ignorant article. The Soviet union was a peer to the "Western" and "Modern System" and they would totally use chemical weapon during a conflict, asymmetrical tactics and in general any underhand methods that they could think of. Typical Nato way = The only way article. And the Soviet union was more mechanized and earlier then the US. If anything Nato was the static tactic user during the cold war. Source: https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf Page 186, section 16-3
- ggm 7y ago
  The refusal of NATO to repudiate first strike and the decision to place troops forward into the comecon borders did nothing to assuage paranoia inside the sovuet union. Do not equate missiles in Cuba with the permanent stationing of troops with tactical nukes on the landmass facing Russian satellite economies. Many senior non US NATO staffers are believed to have agreed they'd disarm Americans who even looked like latching up the missiles btw.. Seriously: if you wanted one thing to help defuse a world looking to CBW then a president confident enough to repudiate first strike would have done it in the 1950s and 1960s (my school navy cadet handbook in the seventies explained CBW cleandown for ships in graphic detail at the back)
RivieraKid 7y ago
What's the summary of the article? I don't have the time to read it but am curious about the answer...
ggm 7y ago
It's indiscriminate and insufficiently useful because occupying the field demands decontamination and collateral damages are ruinous. It's also illegal which may seem odd but 'just war' imposes constraints. Troops are less effective in CBW uniforms and atropine (and other) drugs deeply unpleasant. Neither side wants it, Syria aside. Unneeded force wastes effort. We don't use napalm either. White phosphorus is used. Sadly. As is depleted uranium which wreaks havoc with dust. Weapons with chemical consequence abound. Teargas was used for bunker clearing. The Russians have used sleeping gases in Chechen hostage rescues and people died from side effects. Nothing is simple with gases. Old mustard gas is heavy liquid, bad juju. These old school simple chemical weapons were a giant toxic chemical love canal disaster. Belgium and France still heavily contaminated around the trenches. Binary weapons safer but still pretty bad. "Safe" to handle is very qualified when field treatment is "hit it with a hammer" maintenance. Ask yourself if the neutron bomb is still a part of rational war planning. Three days later, it's all usable as is. No electromagnetic spike damage, just smelly dead bodies to bury. Hmm. Bit niffy. Menthol up the nostrils is said to work by forensics staff.
beloch 7y ago
We don't use chemical weapons because they didn't even work that well in WWI. The first chemical weapon attacks in WWI were quite deadly. However, chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, etc. didn't remain effective after troops on both sides came to expect them. Once everyone had gas masks and the training to put them on quickly, chemical weapons became a mainly psychological threat. There are plentiful horror stories about gas attacks precisely because so many people survived them. Chemical weapons and surprise are, together, a deadly combination. What might be combined with surprise in the future?
- lopis 7y ago
  > What might be combined with surprise in the future? From what you say, a chemical weapon would be pretty surprising today.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Except that top-flight militaries are ready for them. All of our armored vehicles are already air-tight, and hazmat suits are widely available throughout the military. It doesn't help the chemical weapon's case that the countermeasures to it fall into the broad category of Nuclear/Biological/Chemical, all of which need roughly the same countermeasures (airtight vehicles, gas masks, hazmat suits). Militaries are still equipped and ready for these kinds of attacks.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
They get used an awful lot against civilian populations who are protesting the political status quo, globally. Not mustard gas, no, but mace, pepper spray, tear gas, all of which can kill or injure vulnerable people.
strategarius 7y ago
Who are "we"? Assad regime and Russian mercenaries perfectly use it.
- brazzy 7y ago
  Read the article.
- samoa42 7y ago
  US also has plenty in stock.
blargmaster33 7y ago
For the same reason we do not use nukes, the elites can't guarantee there own safety if we start using it.
nabla9 7y ago
I'm not fully agreeing with the argument. Chemical, biological and radiological weapons (not nukes) are effective as defensive weapons. They dramatically slow down down area access and advance of the enemy. Troops fighting in full NBC suit move very slowly. They have to periodically retreat, decontaminate and rest. Just like land- and sea mines they are defensive weapons that attacking armies dislike. The rationalization is the long term damage for the civilians or society (can be true), but mines and chemical weapons allow for smaller armies slow down the advance of the enemy.
- hajile 7y ago
  They also completely skip by VX "gas" and seem to assume that aerosol is the only dispersal mechanism. VX is more a surface coating than a gas. "minefields" of VX could be laid very rapidly and randomly which would be a bane to mobile troops. If saddam actually had a VX supply and laid it down in key areas, the US soldiers would have suffered many times more KIA (and there's no effective treatment -- gallons of atropine per patient simply isn't viable).
danesparza 7y ago
Omitted by the article (I'm sure it was an oversight): The US had a chemical weapons program into the 1990's (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_chemical_weapons_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_chemical_weapons... ) -- this program was decommissioned by President George Bush in 1993, but the last of the munitions WON'T BE REMOVED UNTIL 2023.
- hajile 7y ago
  If people think all those munitions are simply going away,they must not know the US military. You can bet everything that only old, outdated munitions get destroyed. The US has flagrantly violated every other treaty and there's no reason to believe this one is different.
adultSwim 7y ago
Didn't the US use white phosphorus in Iraq?

203 points by nkurz 7y ago

thedirt0115 7y ago

tl;dr: "Not because chemical weapons are immoral. Because they are ineffective" :'(

throwanem 7y ago
There's a saying, I forget where it originates but I want to say with either Bismarck or von Schlieffen, to the effect that the closest thing to a moral philosophy of warfare is that it should be pursued as brutally and ferociously as necessary to make wars as short as they possibly can be. Granted, it's as much of its time as were the men I named. But it nonetheless does a good job, albeit implicitly, of pointing up that the best you can do in warfare is to minimize its essential immorality.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  It was the central thesis of season three of Game of Thrones.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    "Steal from the best."
dntbnmpls 7y ago
All's fair in love and war. There is no such thing as morality in war or nature. Just winners and losers.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Societies often find a moral conscious once something stops being economically (or in this case, militarily) viable.
davidgay 7y ago
Which strikes me as coming from the rather strange view that there must be a single reason for everything. When in my view, it's hard for a single person to have a single reason for anything, so when many people are involved...

throwanem 7y ago

tl;dr: Because they're tactically and strategically ineffective. They can make serviceable assassination weapons, as can almost anything given the right arrangement of circumstances, but as a tool of warfare, they suck. What I'd really like to see is an analysis from a military historian's perspective of why biological weapons are even more useless, with specific reference to current events. The tl;dr there is that they're tactically nonexistent, and strategically worse than merely ineffective because you can't control either their spread or your borders well enough to avoid them blowing back on you. Of course, I'm not so naïve as to imagine such a thing would convince anyone who needs convincing. It'd be a fun read if Mr. Devereaux did it, but I suspect it would serve neither tactical nor strategic goals in the battle against misinformation.

thedance 7y ago
Why aren't chemical weapons (for example VX) effective area denial weapons? They seem damned good for the purpose.
- donw 7y ago
  Because they deny the area to you as well. Cleaning up a minefield is child's play compared to dealing with nerve agents.
  - kjs3 7y ago
    No. Minefield can persist dangerous for decades. Nerve gas dissipates is days/weeks. Nerve agents might clear the ground tactically, but they don't hold it.
    - donw 7y ago
      Ah, I should provide context. From a tactical perspective, the minefield is easy to clear. In terms of long-term effects, the mines are definitely worse. We are still finding mines from World War II all over Europe, and it’s a huge problem in Korea as well.

howmayiannoyyou 7y ago

Deterrence. All manner of WMD would be used absent a credible deterrent. Just ask the residents of Aleppo or Halabja.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

KarlKemp 7y ago

There's no way to decide the relative weight of uselessness and perceived immorality of chemical weapons. Some people clearly do consider them horrible, and it would be quite a surprise if none of those people were in any position of power, from armed forces to civilian government to parliamentarians to voters. The argument otherwise rests on the assumption of perfect efficiency in military procurement and decision-making. Does anyone believe the military never uses "useless" technology? They came up with a rationalisation for building that marginal nuclear bomb to allow the 254th complete destruction of earth. I'm sure they could convince themselves of the necessity of chemical weapons if motivated. It’s also quite a feat to write about chemical weapons and use the Tokyo Sarin attack as an example, and not Syria. Not only did the latter happen fairly recently. It’s also an actual military using these weapons, not a cult. And if Syria is to fresh and people here are among those doubting the reports, maybe the Iraqi chemical weapons program from the Iran-Iraq war and later the genocidal use against the Kurds is more trusted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program There, several thousand people were killed.

AlexMoffat 7y ago
All the occasions you mention are covered in the blog. The sarin attack is used to demonstrate that even in the best conditions for the attacker they would not be effective in a military sense against modern first tier armies. As a terror weapon yes but the question is why don’t modern militaries plan to use them. It doesn’t rest on perfect efficiency. At this point the US, for example, doesn’t have the quantity needed for battlefield and no procedures for deploying them.
- ken 7y ago
  The nuclear weapon question isn't really covered, which is an interesting case because they're also strategically useless to a Modern army -- and the U.S. government knows it [1]. Yet disarmament basically froze 10 years ago. In the language and framework of this article, I understand why countries with Static armies might feel the need to develop them, but I don't understand why Modern armies which are happy to dispose of chemical weapons aren't equally happy to dispose of nuclear weapons. Do American and Russian generals think that nuclear weapons will become useful at some point in the future? Do countries like France believe this? The French president hinted that they kept submarines with nuclear weapons configured for terrorist attacks, but the deadliest terror attack in history was carried out with box cutters, so it's hard to imagine how nuclear weapons would help. Nuclear weapons could be useful (if horrific) against a Static opponent, but not a Guerrilla one. [1]: https://thinkprogress.org/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-useless-4ab6657759c7/ https://thinkprogress.org/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-u...

thom 7y ago

Some would possibly count tear gas, white phosphorous or depleted uranium.

austincheney 7y ago
None of that are chemical weapons any more than water in waterboarding. They are all chemicals including water.
- megous 7y ago
  Whether something is a chemical weapon depends also on use, not only on content. https://www.opcw.org/our-work/what-chemical-weapon https://www.opcw.org/our-work/what-chemical-weapon So yes, any of the above chemicals if they were to be used to cause harm via their toxic properties, would be chemical weapons according to OPCW.
- gonzo41 7y ago
  WP white phosphorous is actually a chemical weapon when used against people. It is an anti material weapon and used for smoke screens. But read up on the use of WP in fallujah.
  - amitport 7y ago
    Well that depends who you ask. US claimed it is not a chemical weapon because it ""merely"" burns its subjects but doesn't poison them. Though probably any other country using it like they used it in Fallujah would have suffered consequences (note we're not talking about WP as used for lighthing and gun laying. Allegedly (I'm not sure what the evidence status), US used it for shake & bake on civilian population)
    - hansjorg 7y ago
      From the Wikipedia page on White phosphorus munitions: > on 15 November 2005, US Department of Defence spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable confirmed to the BBC that US forces had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon there US shaked and baked children in Fallujah, but they were conveniently redefined from children to enemy combatants at the time.

rayrrr 7y ago

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

kjs3 7y ago
Incredibly powerful writing. You might give Wilfred Owen props for writing it.
- rayrrr 7y ago
  I was waiting for someone to do that for me. ;) Thanks. Agreed. Props to the WW1 poet Wilfred Owen 1893-1918.
  - dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
    Thanks for posting wow.
  - robin_reala 7y ago
    (I put together a PD ebook collection of his work at https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-owen/poetry https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-owen/poetry)

TomMckenny 7y ago

Another point of evidence that the author probably omitted out of politeness are the nations that freely violated rules of war yet did not make (much) use of chemical weapons: the nazis on the eastern front and wwii japan. Also another technology banned because it don't work is the hollow point bullet. Apparently killing a solider outright is not as destructive as driving him long term onto the medical system. This is also one of the reasons caliber has generally been dropped over time. The 1950s move to the 223 round is pretty explicit on this.

dntbnmpls 7y ago
> Another point of evidence that the author probably omitted out of politeness are the nations that freely violated rules of war yet did not make (much) use of chemical weapons: the nazis on the eastern front and wwii japan. Why single out germany and japan? Are you really pretending the US, Britain, Soviet Union, etc didn't freely violate the "rules of war" also? Also, the nazis aren't a nation. Edit: I guess some here think nuking hiroshima/nagasaki, firebombing and burning millions of civilians to death, mass rape of women, etc are within the "rules of war". Interesting.
- fuckface123 7y ago
  "Nazis" in the context of WWII is commonly understood to mean the nation of Germany under control of the Nazi party.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  It isn't singling out, dude. It's just an example. Obviously from the guys avoiding signing anti-cluster-munitions and anti-landmines you can tell that they're all concerned about their military effectiveness. Fine, go ahead and say that Admiral Donitz only got away because we used Unrestricted Submarine Warfare just as much as he did. Okay. There we go. Now we're all even.
  - FillardMillmore 7y ago
    Give the man his due. That's Führer Donitz to you. Even if it was for a shorter period of time than William Henry Harrison fighting a cold after a a chilly wind.

blunte 7y ago

This is an excellent and well written essay that answers its own question. But I will offer my own answer. Grooups generally don't use chemical weapons because such use is too obvious too unsettling to viewers/supporters. They want the outcome, whatever it may be, but they don't want to look like they are greedy or insensitive or anti(or counter)-religious [generally speaking, they don't want to appear overtly confrontational]. Things must be done just slightly less aggressively than will upset the general population/supporters who fund the endeavors. In Earth-time, this discussion is mostly academic. The horrors which we inflict upon each other is far less than the likely destruction we invite upon ourselves as a species through our collective behaviors (environmentally speaking). The human existence on this planet is probably (in the mathematical sense) very short. I suspect the real concern is that we or someone we know may suffer some extended period of pain because of chemical or other non-instant-death conflict. People think they are afraid of dying, but usually it is more that they are afraid of a slow death which includes pain and anguish.

jvanderbot 7y ago
This is, in fact, explicitly stated in the article. "This isn’t a value question, but a value-against-replacement question – why maintain, issue, store, and shoot expensive chemical munitions if cheap, easier to store, easier to manufacture high explosive munitions are both more obtainable and also better? When you add the geopolitical and morale impact on top of that – you sacrifice diplomatic capital using such weapons and potentially demoralize your own soldiers, who don’t want to see themselves as delivering inhumane weapons – it’s pretty clear why would wouldn’t bother."
mythrwy 7y ago
Humans are amazingly resilient. Like mice, but to the n'th degree. Human existence on this planet isn't going to end any time soon. Even if the planet heats up. Even if there is trash in the oceans. But there might be a whole lot less of us and life might be a lot less pleasant.
- outworlder 7y ago
  This is true. But our bodies require very specific conditions to survive. We can offset them with tech, but only to a degree. Most of it requires some semblance of civilization to maintain. Disrupt that, and we are in for a very bad time.

kitteh 7y ago

Another reason: maintaining a supply of chemical weapons is dangerous. Turns out no city/state wants that stockpile, either. Years ago a co-worker of mine at the phone company had to go to military base in Terre Haute to work on some high speed circuits that weren't working properly. The network room was in the basement of a warehouse that stored VX nerve agents - rows and rows of it. When he got to the base he had to watch some training video on nerve agents, get issued a gas mask and the atropine shot then escorted to the facility. He said during the whole time he was incredibly nervous as the evacuation route involved running back up into the warehouse then through an exit.

jvanderbot 7y ago
This is, in fact, explicitly stated in the article. So, no, not "another" reason.
jonmartinwest 7y ago
Dzerzhinsk in Russian is a great example of this.
- Balgair 7y ago
  > Dzerzhinsk is one of the worst-polluted cities of the world and has a life expectancy of 42 years for men and 47 for women, with the 2003 death rate exceeding its birth rate by 260%. Holy Cow! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzerzhinsk,_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzerzhinsk,_Russia
RyJones 7y ago
Interesting - I grew up in Terre Haute. I think you're talking about the old VX bunker up in Newport, maybe?
rsynnott 7y ago
> maintaining a supply of chemical weapons is dangerous I don't really buy this one. I mean, I agree it's dangerous, but the major powers maintained large stocks throughout the Cold War without apparently worrying about it too much. More recently it's become a somewhat expensive disposal problem, but in terms of cost it's not really significant next to the cost of maintaining, say, aircraft carriers, or nuclear warheads.

DubiousPusher 7y ago

Very interesting. I wrote a paper in college that argued a very similar line of reasoning. I based this largely around the conversation that was had about aerial bombing during the inter-war period. During WWI a biplane or two was able to fly over Paris and drop a grenade. It caused quite a scandal with some Navy high ups condemning the concept of aerial bombardment altogether. By the end of the inter-war period there was a strong stigma against it. The concept of using bombs on civilian centers was pretty much unthinkable. Until of course the war began and it wasn't. Throughout the war taboos were approach and broken one after another. When the U.S. joined the war, there was a major row between U.S. and British airforce commanders about using bombers at night. The U.S. thought it unethical, especially since they had invested in a supposedly superior bomb sight which was rendered essentially useless at night. The British, facing an existential threat were not so scrupulous. Of course the night raids soon began. So by war's end there was virtually no size of bomb nor target that was much unacceptable even though the idea of aerial bombing of even soldiers had been distasteful at its start. Give this, the only reason I could think that chemical weapons had not followed the same slippery slope was that they were far less useful. I got an A- on the paper, my teacher said it was good but too fringey. I couldn't dig up the paper but I found the bibliography. If you're interested in the subject give some of these sources a try. I especially enjoyed the biography of Doolittle, "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again". "The Bombing of Berlin in World War II." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, 7 April 2012. Web. 10 April. 2012. "The Bombing of Germany." American Experience. Writ. Zvi Dor-ner. Dir. Zvi Dor-ner. PBS, 2010. Streaming. "Bombing of Tokyo." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, 3 April 2012. Web. 6 April. 2012. Carlin, Dan. ”Logical Insanity.” Harcore History. dancarlin.com, 31 March 2012. Podcast. 6 April 2012. Cheek, Dennis W. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. Ed. Carl Mitcham. Vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 921-924. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. Doolittle. Gen. James H. and Carroll V. Glines. I Could Never Be So Lucky Again. 1991. New York: Bantam Books, 2009. e-book. "Firestorm." Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia, 13 April 2012. Web. 14 April. 2012. Hansen, Randall. Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945. New York: New American Library, 2009. e-book. Truman, Harry S. "Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945." Atomic Bomb: Decision. n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

7y ago

totorovirus 7y ago

As an ex south korean army (mandatory service), our neighbor in the north still think chemical weapon an effective asymmetrical weapon against us because our small piece of land won't really allow any mobility based modern warfare. There are outposts throughout all the borderline. We do quite a lot of training to protect against chemical attacks and also the protective respiration devices are included for every soldiers. The most probable attack against us will begin with spreading chemical gas on air to crush the first defense line in the borderline. If situation become really bad and raw - killing all the civilians - chemical weapon would still be a very effective weapon I think.

brazzy 7y ago
> If situation become really bad and raw - killing all the civilians - chemical weapon would still be a very effective weapon I think. The article argues pretty convincingly that this is not actually true, since they are just not as effective as high explosives at killing people. They are possibly more effective at terrorizing the population into surrendering.
- 23B1 7y ago
  > terrorizing the population into surrendering. This is asymmetrical warfare in a nutshell
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Except terrorizing a population into surrendering hasn't proven to be an effective tactic in history. I'm struggling to think of a single case where it actually happened.
    - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
      While terrorism (going by the classical definition) hasn’t had had any (or many?) victories of that sort - let’s not pretend that acts of terrorism don’t achieve political goals - and if nothing else they make the people in charge sit-up and take notice. There’s only one example I can comfortably talk about: I don’t believe Devolution and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland would have come about if it weren’t for the shadow of the IRA looming over Westminster.

shklnrj 7y ago

I think the main point was missed in the article. Chemical weapons cause more suffering and less death and cause multi generation effects, while other weapons are primarily hit/miss but geared towards death. It might seem weird, but death is considered better than suffering by lots of people. I give an example. In the series Chernobyl - soldiers are employed to kill dogs because they might spread radiation. The senior soldier instructs that when you see a dog - keep shooting, till it dies. In old times, slow killing was considered to be much worse as compared to sudden death. So maybe this is why we don't use chemical weapons.

behindsight 7y ago
Apologies if I misunderstood, but I don't think that particular point was missed; it seems to be the article's first stated viewpoint actually: > the narrative I got was fairly clear: we didn’t use chemical weapons because after World War I the nations of the world got together and decided that chemical weapons were just too horrible and banned them, and that this was a sign of something called ‘progress.’ That point is even further iterated on in the conclusion when comparing them to cluster munitions which as you put, "cause multi generation effects" due to remaining active years after the conflict.
GeorgeWBasic 7y ago
What could possibly be considered weird about that? How could anyone consider slow killing to not be worse than sudden death? They're both death, but one is much worse. It's much more weird to be talking about suffering and slow death as though they aren't worse, and that only weird people think they are.

pc2g4d 7y ago

The trouble with realpolitik is when you get more cynical than reality itself. Instead of a binary---either the morality of chemical weapons caused their ban, or their uselessness in battle did---why not take a supply/demand, cost/benefit sort of approach? The moral repugnance of weapons of mass destruction makes them more costly to the users---if they delegitimize your war effort, what have you really gained? They ceased to be used when the costs outweighed the benefits. Therefore the moral repugnance of them likely hastened their abandonment, even if battlefield effectiveness was the greater influence.

jvanderbot 7y ago
This is, in fact, explicitly stated in TFA. "This isn’t a value question, but a value-against-replacement question – why maintain, issue, store, and shoot expensive chemical munitions if cheap, easier to store, easier to manufacture high explosive munitions are both more obtainable and also better? When you add the geopolitical and morale impact on top of that – you sacrifice diplomatic capital using such weapons and potentially demoralize your own soldiers, who don’t want to see themselves as delivering inhumane weapons – it’s pretty clear why would wouldn’t bother."
- j9461701 7y ago
  I find myself mostly agreeing with this article, although I think it over-states its case slightly and this section highlights why. Chemical weapons are not very useful on a tactical level, and modernly nuclear weapons are superior on the strategic level. But for a brief period between 1915 and 1945, they were an attractive solution for mass death on a strategic level. A 1,000 pound explosive bomb, with WW2 level targeting, is very unlikely to hit its target and will likely explode some random unpopulated building. A 1,000 ton mustard gas bomb, though it won't hit its target (because WW2 era bombing accuracy), will still have its payload disperse over a wide area and is utterly horrific to deal with. As the article notes, the 1995 sarin attack in Japan injured over 1,000 people. Chemical weapons may not be good for winning a battle, but they're perfect as a terror weapon meant to go after civilians. In a sense, chemical weapons are a kind of 'poor man's nuke'. Russia and America are standing down their chemical weapons because they have actual nukes, and don't need to also have 2nd rate knock offs. The article tries to point to WW2 as an example of nations being in existential peril, and still not using chemical weapons, and concluding this means they were ineffective even as terror weapons. But I think that doesn't hold water upon closer analysis - the moment a single German soldier's boot stepped foot on the British isles, which is to say the UK actually faced imminent threat of conquest, Churchill planned to quote "drench [Germany] in gas". Later on in the war chemical weapons were avoided not for fear of retaliation in itself, but for fear of how one's own people would respond to said retaliation. If you are Great Britain, and public morale for the war is hanging on by a thread, do you want to roll the dice and gas attack Germany - thereby causing Germany to gas attack your civilians - and risk support for the war collapsing? In 1944 Churchill asked for a 'cold blooded analysis' about gassing Germany, and the response that came back was basically "We're already winning the war, and mass gas deployment would be needlessly taking chances. Do not do it!". Churchill famously disagreed with this analysis, but didn't push the matter any further.

xzel 7y ago

I stumbled onto this news documentary on the nerve gas stored in the US from 1973 very randomly maybe a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjA0EQPeUGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjA0EQPeUGM . If you're interested in this type of stuff this documentary is incredible and apparently won an Emmy. The number of problems with long term are mind boggling technologically, even if people don't know its near them. The whole idea if this place got bombed it would wipe out huge amount of people in the surrounding area based on wind patterns is nuts, frankly. The whole process to dismantle and then "store" the old gas is insane.

jrs95 7y ago

I would argue we do use chemical weapons, but only in specific circumstances in order to generate outrage about whoever we are claiming used them to justify our own military action. The biggest value they have now is how offensive they are. And I dont mean "we" as in the United States or anything like that, I mean humanity in general. No rational actor would ever decide to use a chemical weapon unless they intended primarily to blame someone else for it.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

cause it sucks for both sides, like really suck. So they took them out and fight with the rest of arsenal

anthony_doan 7y ago

WWI happened. Historian see WWI as the war of chemists. And WWII as the war of physicists.

anovikov 7y ago

We don't use chemical weapons because they have very poor military efficiency - modern armies taught themselves very well to protect against them, they will mostly harm civilians and make any postwar arrangements very complicated. Also they are very indiscriminate and depend on factors such as wind and elements way too much, so they are about as likely to harm own troops as the enemy. Plus, why bother if we have, to kill military targets, high precision weapons that do the job a lot better than chemicals ever could, and for wide area targets or infrastructure, nukes?

jillesvangurp 7y ago
That, and it's kind of frowned upon internationally thus exposing people wielding these weapons to the possibility of ending up in a court room some day. Ali Chemicali was eventually executed. So was his boss, Saddam Hussein. In both cases, the use of chemical weapons against civilians was the main thing they were convicted off.

GarvielLoken 7y ago

What an ignorant article. The Soviet union was a peer to the "Western" and "Modern System" and they would totally use chemical weapon during a conflict, asymmetrical tactics and in general any underhand methods that they could think of. Typical Nato way = The only way article. And the Soviet union was more mechanized and earlier then the US. If anything Nato was the static tactic user during the cold war. Source: https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf Page 186, section 16-3

ggm 7y ago
The refusal of NATO to repudiate first strike and the decision to place troops forward into the comecon borders did nothing to assuage paranoia inside the sovuet union. Do not equate missiles in Cuba with the permanent stationing of troops with tactical nukes on the landmass facing Russian satellite economies. Many senior non US NATO staffers are believed to have agreed they'd disarm Americans who even looked like latching up the missiles btw.. Seriously: if you wanted one thing to help defuse a world looking to CBW then a president confident enough to repudiate first strike would have done it in the 1950s and 1960s (my school navy cadet handbook in the seventies explained CBW cleandown for ships in graphic detail at the back)

RivieraKid 7y ago

What's the summary of the article? I don't have the time to read it but am curious about the answer...

ggm 7y ago

It's indiscriminate and insufficiently useful because occupying the field demands decontamination and collateral damages are ruinous. It's also illegal which may seem odd but 'just war' imposes constraints. Troops are less effective in CBW uniforms and atropine (and other) drugs deeply unpleasant. Neither side wants it, Syria aside. Unneeded force wastes effort. We don't use napalm either. White phosphorus is used. Sadly. As is depleted uranium which wreaks havoc with dust. Weapons with chemical consequence abound. Teargas was used for bunker clearing. The Russians have used sleeping gases in Chechen hostage rescues and people died from side effects. Nothing is simple with gases. Old mustard gas is heavy liquid, bad juju. These old school simple chemical weapons were a giant toxic chemical love canal disaster. Belgium and France still heavily contaminated around the trenches. Binary weapons safer but still pretty bad. "Safe" to handle is very qualified when field treatment is "hit it with a hammer" maintenance. Ask yourself if the neutron bomb is still a part of rational war planning. Three days later, it's all usable as is. No electromagnetic spike damage, just smelly dead bodies to bury. Hmm. Bit niffy. Menthol up the nostrils is said to work by forensics staff.

beloch 7y ago

We don't use chemical weapons because they didn't even work that well in WWI. The first chemical weapon attacks in WWI were quite deadly. However, chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, etc. didn't remain effective after troops on both sides came to expect them. Once everyone had gas masks and the training to put them on quickly, chemical weapons became a mainly psychological threat. There are plentiful horror stories about gas attacks precisely because so many people survived them. Chemical weapons and surprise are, together, a deadly combination. What might be combined with surprise in the future?

lopis 7y ago
> What might be combined with surprise in the future? From what you say, a chemical weapon would be pretty surprising today.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Except that top-flight militaries are ready for them. All of our armored vehicles are already air-tight, and hazmat suits are widely available throughout the military. It doesn't help the chemical weapon's case that the countermeasures to it fall into the broad category of Nuclear/Biological/Chemical, all of which need roughly the same countermeasures (airtight vehicles, gas masks, hazmat suits). Militaries are still equipped and ready for these kinds of attacks.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

They get used an awful lot against civilian populations who are protesting the political status quo, globally. Not mustard gas, no, but mace, pepper spray, tear gas, all of which can kill or injure vulnerable people.

strategarius 7y ago

Who are "we"? Assad regime and Russian mercenaries perfectly use it.

brazzy 7y ago
Read the article.
samoa42 7y ago
US also has plenty in stock.

blargmaster33 7y ago

For the same reason we do not use nukes, the elites can't guarantee there own safety if we start using it.

nabla9 7y ago

I'm not fully agreeing with the argument. Chemical, biological and radiological weapons (not nukes) are effective as defensive weapons. They dramatically slow down down area access and advance of the enemy. Troops fighting in full NBC suit move very slowly. They have to periodically retreat, decontaminate and rest. Just like land- and sea mines they are defensive weapons that attacking armies dislike. The rationalization is the long term damage for the civilians or society (can be true), but mines and chemical weapons allow for smaller armies slow down the advance of the enemy.

hajile 7y ago
They also completely skip by VX "gas" and seem to assume that aerosol is the only dispersal mechanism. VX is more a surface coating than a gas. "minefields" of VX could be laid very rapidly and randomly which would be a bane to mobile troops. If saddam actually had a VX supply and laid it down in key areas, the US soldiers would have suffered many times more KIA (and there's no effective treatment -- gallons of atropine per patient simply isn't viable).

danesparza 7y ago

Omitted by the article (I'm sure it was an oversight): The US had a chemical weapons program into the 1990's (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_chemical_weapons_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_chemical_weapons... ) -- this program was decommissioned by President George Bush in 1993, but the last of the munitions WON'T BE REMOVED UNTIL 2023.

hajile 7y ago
If people think all those munitions are simply going away,they must not know the US military. You can bet everything that only old, outdated munitions get destroyed. The US has flagrantly violated every other treaty and there's no reason to believe this one is different.

adultSwim 7y ago

Didn't the US use white phosphorus in Iraq?