Chemical Weapons

[Elrohir]

Background: The other day I was reading the book Starship Troopers. (If you haven't read it, you should, very interesting book, even though you probably won't agree with everything in it.) The soldiers, fighting wars against two other alien races, do many things that were gross violations of the laws of war - the attack of "Skinnie" cities and civilians, including the use of small nuclear weapons agains them, and the Bugs, and, against the Bugs, chemical weapons. Since the Bugs live in tunnels, under the surface, a very effective weapon against them was a nerve gas specially made for them, heavier than air, that they simply dropped into the tunnels. It went down, and kills them all.

This got me thinking about the war we're fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and how they often hole up in underground passages and caves, and how much easier it would be to simply flood them with poison gas, instead of raiding them. But chemical weapons are considered Weapons of Mass Destruction, and were outlawed by the Geneva Protocol's. My question is "Why?"

I understand why people would not want biological weapons used in war - it's too easy for the diseases to spread to civilians, or to neutral countries. And the reason for not using nuclear weapons is obvious, far too much collatoral damage, and it leaves large areas radioactive. But chemical weapons don't spread like diseases, and don't leave areas radioactive, and if used in small amounts, wouldn't cause large amounts of collatoral damage.

So why are they banned? People say that they're barbaric, and cruel - but war itself is barbaric and cruel. If it weren't, it wouldn't be war. For the sake of argument, what if the US created a chemical weapon that was heavier than air, totally painless on those it affected, and dissipated quickly. Why would using this against terrorists hiding in an underground cave be immoral, while hitting them with a bunker-busting bomb would be moral? Would such a weapon truly be worse?

I'm not really suggesting that the US necessarily should do such a thing. I'm just wondering if there's a reason why they shouldn't - is it just a slippery slope thing, or is there a true argument against it?

 

[Esox]

It's a Pandora's Box thing.

 

[Elrohir]

It's a Pandora's Box thing.

Why? Gassing an enemies cities would be wrong, of course - but so would flattening it with conventional missiles. If shooting an enemy with a rifle, or blowing him into tiny little pieces with a laser-guided missile is morally justifiable, why is killing him with a perfectly painless poison gas immoral? Given the choice, I'd rather just fall over dead without even having time to realize what had happened, than get shot in the abdomen and linger on the battlefield for hours before expiring, as thousands of soldiers have.

War is terrible. But how is this more terrible than any other aspect of it? Everyone seems to assume that it is, but I don't understand why.

 

[Esox]

I don't mean from a declared-war-among-uniformed-combatants standpoint. I mean that, if chemical WMDs were permissible, then like all portable weapons they would end up in the hands of people who would be more than happy to use them in non-war situations. What we call terrorism.

I think that the Geneva convention at the time was looking at it from a "Man, that's an awful way to die" perspective. But in this era, I don't think we can go back to allowing chemical WMDs. Even if we came up with really cool ones like the one in your OP.

 

[nihilistic]

Because we do not want chemical weapons to be deployed against us. If we find justfications for some chemical weapons we can accept as convenient, others will find other justificactions for other chemical weapons they accept as convenient. Even though this kind of reasoning obviously do not permeate towards the terrorists, using it against them still opens the pandora box because now you are creating instances where you accept chemicals. The backlash you generate sing it is still costlier than the preceived benefit from it.

As for your argument of chemical versus conventional weapons, there are several other considerations where stable and established nation states prefer the latter:

1. Chemical weapons are messy. In this day and age precision is every bit as important than destructive potential. You don't want your own advancing soldiers to suffer any "side effects".

2. Chemical weapons may have questionable lethality. Of course nations like the US can make sure these chemicals will whatevver it intends to, but other nations might not, or might even prefer not to. To established nation states such as the United States, the cost of taking care of a blind paraplegic veteran is several orders higher than the funeral and pensions generated by a dead soldier. There is realpolitik for you.

3. Chemical weapons are cheap and and less detectable. Yes, being too cheap and too effective can be a liability. Rich and established nations like the US can afford large fleets of advanced hardware. Chemical cocktails can be relatively cheap (at least that's what I read) and will to some degree equalize that gap in technology. Therefore, not using any sort of chemical arms is entirely within the interests of the United States. Only by not using it ourselves under any circumstance can we legitimately force others to not use it either and thus force them to compete with us conventionally, something other nation states cannot win.

 

[nihilistic]

I don't mean from a declared-war-among-uniformed-combatants standpoint. I mean that, if chemical WMDs were permissible, then like all portable weapons they would end up in the hands of people who would be more than happy to use them in non-war situations. What we call terrorism.

Yeah, that's true too. Once you begin employing them other countries will too, and eventually some of this will leak downward down to the terrorists. That's even more unacceptable.

 

[Elrohir]

I don't mean from a declared-war-among-uniformed-combatants standpoint. I mean that, if chemical WMDs were permissible, then like all portable weapons they would end up in the hands of people who would be more than happy to use them in non-war situations. What we call terrorism.

I think that the Geneva convention at the time was looking at it from a "Man, that's an awful way to die" perspective. But in this era, I don't think we can go back to allowing chemical WMDs. Even if we came up with really cool ones like the one in your OP.

But many chemical weapons have industrial or agricultural uses, and can actually be bought or stolen if one has enough money and ingenuity. The US, as well as Russia, India, and several other countries, already have stockpiles of chemical weapons (Although they have been decreasing in the past couple years, as we've been destroying them.) and they haven't been stolen, simply because it's easier to get chemical weapons from other sources, or to use conventional arms, than it is to steal them from the military.

Any death in war is a terrible way to die. I just don't see how, if we could come up with chemical weapons like I outlined in my original post, (And I'm sure we could, given even moderate research funds) that it would be a worse way to die than getting a bullet through the gut, or having your tank explode and getting doused in flaming gasoline, or having your ship sunk and drowning in the water, or any number of grousome ways that soldiers die in war in the modern age, but don't require the use of WMD.

1. Chemical weapons are messy. In this day and age precision is every bit as important than destructive potential. You don't want your own advancing soldiers to suffer any "side effects".

See original post. American scientists can be pretty ingenious and devious when they put their minds to it; if the government put up a $1 billion dollar contract for the first company to successfully create such a weapon, it would get done rather quickly. Such a weapon could probably be made to dissipate rather quickly, and besides: There's always gas masks.

2. Chemical weapons may have questionable lethality. Of course nations like the US can make sure these chemicals will whatevver it intends to, but other nations might not, or might even prefer not to. To established nation states such as the United States, the cost of taking care of a blind paraplegic veteran is several orders higher than the funeral and pensions generated by a dead soldier. There is realpolitik for you.

The weapons I'm suggesting would be of almost instantaneous and certain lethality. The weapons others could use against us might not be, true, but our soldiers are certainly better equipped than terrorists, and most likely better equipped than any other army for such a thing.

3. Chemical weapons are cheap and and less detectable. Yes, being too cheap and too effective can be a liability. Rich and established nations like the US can afford large fleets of advanced hardware. Chemical cocktails can be relatively cheap (at least that's what I read) and will to some degree equalize that gap in technology. Therefore, not using any sort of chemical arms is entirely within the interests of the United States. Only by not using it ourselves under any circumstance can we legitimately force others to not use it either and thus force them to compete with us conventionally, something other nation states cannot win.

I see this as a strength. Why should we expend a great deal of conventional explosives, which actually cost a great deal of money, and risk the up-close and personal lives of American servicemen, when we can simply use cheap chemical weapons to get the job done? This would have the added benefit of decreasing the amount of money used to replenish weapons stores, freeing more money up for Veterans Affairs, or others similarly underfunded areas.

Chemical Weapons for the Veterans! It could work.

 

[Tycoon101]

Bring out the Nevre gas and cleanse the world's population!

But seriously, there is nothing too harsh to be used in war. Even outside of warfare, chemical agents would be invalulable for the use of crime surpression. If we use some dirty bombs on a violent riot, then we can serve the purpose of crowd control effectively.

 

[nihilistic]

Elrohir, I don't think you understood what I typed. I was describing the kind of chemical weapon horror that might befall us, not whatever solution our chemists may dream up.

See original post. American scientists can be pretty ingenious and devious when they put their minds to it; if the government put up a $1 billion dollar contract for the first company to successfully create such a weapon, it would get done rather quickly. Such a weapon could probably be made to dissipate rather quickly, and besides: There's always gas masks.

Your enemies may use conpounds without as much care as you do and you can't have a mask+suit on all the time.

The weapons I'm suggesting would be of almost instantaneous and certain lethality. The weapons others could use against us might not be, true, but our soldiers are certainly better equipped than terrorists, and most likely better equipped than any other army for such a thing.

The weapon you are suggestinig most likely will not be the weapon that will be used against you. The problem comes in that defending our soldiers against chemical attakcs is much much more expensive than conducting those attacks. It will also be more expensive than not using them at all.

I see this as a strength. Why should we expend a great deal of conventional explosives, which actually cost a great deal of money, and risk the up-close and personal lives of American servicemen, when we can simply use cheap chemical weapons to get the job done? This would have the added benefit of decreasing the amount of money used to replenish weapons stores, freeing more money up for Veterans Affairs, or others similarly underfunded areas.

Chemical Weapons for the Veterans! It could work.

Because chemical weapons cannot replace conventional weapons in most scenarios and will only serve to legitimize chemical weapons itself and thus bring on many many other costs of war?

You seem to only think of us using chemical weapons and not of the effect it would have on others and how it would change their behavior towards us. Using chemical weapons probably won't save us a penny because we want to deploy it safely (for our own soldiers), while the fundamentalist suicide bombers are quite plentiful and expendable.

 

[Elrohir]

I don't think Al Qaeda needs us to "legitimize" chemical weapons for them: I think if Osama could set off a bomb full of mustard gas in downtown Washington, he'd do it, regardless of whether the US currently deploys chemical weapons, or not. Terrorists will take advantage of any weapon they can get, whether we use them ourselves, or not.

As for another nation using them against us, in the first place US measures against poison gas are actually fairly effective. Also, I don't see us involved in many land wars with other nations in the near future. (Afghanistan and Iraq are all about fighting insurgencies, not conventional armies, and any war with Iran or North Korea, or even China would be mostly about air strikes and naval battles, where chemical weapons are of very limited use.)

 

[nihilistic]

I don't think Al Qaeda needs us to "legitimize" chemical weapons for them: I think if Osama could set off a bomb full of mustard gas in downtown Washington, he'd do it, regardless of whether the US currently deploys chemical weapons, or not. Terrorists will take advantage of any weapon they can get, whether we use them ourselves, or not.

I think I already addressed that:

Because we do not want chemical weapons to be deployed against us. If we find justfications for some chemical weapons we can accept as convenient, others will find other justificactions for other chemical weapons they accept as convenient. Even though this kind of reasoning obviously do not permeate towards the terrorists, using it against them still opens the pandora box because now you are creating instances where you accept chemicals. The backlash you generate sing it is still costlier than the preceived benefit from it.

Besides, there is the problem of permeation, where when you use it you legitimize it and it becomes easier to obtain by terrorist groups.

As for another nation using them against us, in the first place US measures against poison gas are actually fairly effective. Also, I don't see us involved in many land wars with other nations in the near future.

But that doesn't mean we do not have assets overseas. You are right that we probably won't have any sort of land war on our soil anytime in the forseeable future, but we have a bad habit of engaging frequently in land wars in other people's back yards.

 

[Pyrite]

But seriously, there is nothing too harsh to be used in war. Even outside of warfare, chemical agents would be invalulable for the use of crime surpression. If we use some dirty bombs on a violent riot, then we can serve the purpose of crowd control effectively.

I don't think you'll have to worry about it in the suburbs.

 

[amadeus]

It depends on who we're fighting.

 

[HawkeyeGS]

Personally I think that banning certain weapons is weird because it is like regulation that which should be destroyed. I still support banning them because it is a step in the right direction

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

im for chemical weapons. not biological however. mustard, sarin....oh yeah pump em in the holes out in the desert and mountains, lets see if we cant kill some terrorists without giant explosions that really get us nowhere.

i think if they're used in the right areas (away from towns, villages, etc) and in the right situations they'd be an asset.

 

[Xenocrates]

At the moment 35% say that chemical weapons should be allowed in the thread poll. I assume that the same people who voted this way were also against the war in Iraq, which was about WMD's.........

 

[El_Machinae]

First off, if chemical weapons were allowed, it would be harder to legitimately attack countries for producing them ...

But really, the main reason is because chemical weapons tend to kill much later, through tumors and nerve damage, and thus have ramifications much longer than their deployment. A bullet is pretty well spent after it's been fired, but a lung tumour keeps on growing.

The second, but incidental, reason is that they tend to then accumulate in the environment, with unknown ramifications. While this matters to me, I can see how it doesn't matter to the generals - who seem to think that the state of the environment is less important than borders.

Finally, there is not a total ban on chemical weapons. I don't know the current status of tear gas, but I know that pepper-spray is still used.

 

[Elrohir]

I think I already addressed that:

Because we do not want chemical weapons to be deployed against us. If we find justfications for some chemical weapons we can accept as convenient, others will find other justificactions for other chemical weapons they accept as convenient. Even though this kind of reasoning obviously do not permeate towards the terrorists, using it against them still opens the pandora box because now you are creating instances where you accept chemicals. The backlash you generate sing it is still costlier than the preceived benefit from it.

But isn't this, in essence, just a matter of opinion? You're saying that the "pandora's box" that it would open would outweigh the benefit. But as there is clearly no inherent immorality in it, wouldn't the USG, or any government for that matter, be justified in using them if they believed that the benefit would outweigh the danger of increased acceptance of chemical weapons?

I'm still not quite sure I understand your position. Terrorists don't need chemical weapons to legitimize them, our troops in the field are reasonably well protected, and as far as the home front, our national soil goes, I don't think it's an issue: Few countries have the weapons capability to launch missiles onto US soil across the Atlantic or Pacific, and those that do have access to significant stockpiles of nuclear weapons, which are far more destructive. Why would they bother gassing a city if they could just turn it into a radioactive pile of rubble?

I just don't understand why you think this would cause chemical weapons to be used against us more than they are. (Which is effectively not at all.)

First off, if chemical weapons were allowed, it would be harder to legitimately attack countries for producing them ...

Well, we could always just attack countries over their leaders dorky mustaches. I mean, uh, to spread democracy in the Middle East! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Finally, there is not a total ban on chemical weapons. I don't know the current status of tear gas, but I know that pepper-spray is still used.

True. I believe the ban is upon certain chemical weapons, basically lethal ones. Which is what doesn't make sense to me, because there is no inherent immorality in using any specific weapon to kill someone: Dead is dead, whether by a bullet or poison gas.

 

[classical_hero]

At the moment 35% say that chemical weapons should be allowed in the thread poll. I assume that the same people who voted this way were also against the war in Iraq, which was about WMD's.........

That's a cheap troll and a

I am one of those people who would have voted for war in Iraq, but I would never allow anyone from my country to ever use chemical/biological/nuclear weapons.

@nihilistic. Excellent first post.

@Elrohir. The main problem with CW is that they are unpredictable and thus they can hurt you just as much as they can hurt the enemy and any wrong aim and you could have a disaster that is far greater than what anyone would want.

@El_Machinae. I was under the impression that we were talking about weapon grade Chemicals, not for Law and Order purposes.

 

[Elrohir]

@Elrohir. The main problem with CW is that they are unpredictable and thus they can hurt you just as much as they can hurt the enemy and any wrong aim and you could have a disaster that is far greater than what anyone would want.

This is less an inherent problem, and more of a problem specific to more traditional chemical weapons. See my original post; I think if the government put enough effort into it, we could design a very easily controlled, but highly lethal gas that would be invaluable in certain circumstances.

Would you agree, however, that there is no inherent immorality in using chemical weapons?