Chemical Weapons Convention

    Point to the Chemical Weapons Convention as an instance of successfully banning a weapon of mass destruction and some experts react dismissively. "Chemical weapons aren't really weapons of mass destruction," they'll say. "The treaty only got negotiated and passed because nuclear weapons were in the background to enforce it. And the treaty has been violated again and again. How can you say that any treaty that failed so often is an example that we should look to with pride or as a guide for how to navigate the future?"

    Like most reasonable sounding arguments, they have a point. Chemical weapons are not as powerful, not as capable of killing people in as large numbers as nuclear or biological weapons. And different states have violated the chemical weapons ban quite a number of times.

    However.

    Chemical weapons are capable of killing large numbers of people and they do kill indiscriminately. They may be junior weapons of mass destruction, but they're still weapons of mass destruction. The basic characteristics that they share with nuclear and biological weapons remain. So it is reasonable to imagine that we can use our experience with prohibiting one type of WMD to judge what our experience may be like with others. 

    The claim that chemical weapons were only banned because nuclear weapons guaranteed the deal is just another example of people imagining that the world was created yesterday and that it revolves around them. It is true that the Chemical Weapons Convention was signed in 1993 with full US participation. The use of chemical weapons in war, however, (although not the possession of chemical weapons) was banned in 1925 by the Geneva Protocol. The US didn't sign on to the Geneva Protocol (to our discredit) but the treaty did still continue to exist. (Shocking, I know. There can be treaties that exist without US participation. I don't know why they allow such things.) Nuclear weapons did not enforce the Geneva Protocol's ban on the use of chemical weapons because they would not come into existence for twenty more years.

    Finally, it is true that chemical weapons have been used quite a number of times in war.  Most recently and most extensively by the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980 to 1988. These violations of the treaty are discouraging and are certainly a cause for concern. But do they show that no treaty outlawing weapons of mass destruction will ever work?

    Consider: no law prevents all crime. Even though we have a law against burglary, there are still burglaries. We don't consider that the law is invalid or "doesn't work" because it is sometimes broken.

    In the most important test - World War II - the ban on the use of chemical weapons proved to be robust under the harshest circumstances. One would expect that treaties banning certain forms of behavior would get their severest test when regimes are faced with utter destruction - when they are not just going to lose the war, but they are going to be captured, arrested and (probably) put to death. What we euphemistically now call "regime change." What they called "unconditional surrender" in 1945. Both the German and Japanese regimes faced this prospect. Yet neither used chemical weapons in major combat operations.

    The German regime was headed by a man who was known for cruelty and has been widely regarded as one of the most evil men of the last three centuries. The Japanese regime so highly valued military virtues - including especially contempt for losers - that it often treated conquered peoples and prisoners with appalling brutality. We would not expect either regime to be held back by tender moral compunctions. Yet neither used chemical weapons in major combat operations.

    They were not held back by the threat of the Bomb, it didn't exist. They were not held back by moral feeling. How did this treaty - this flimsy piece of paper - hold back the hand of these terrible regimes? It's a question worth thinking about.

    Perhaps treaties have hidden qualities that we sometimes overlook.

Comments

[Anonymous]

You write:

> How did this treaty--this flimsy piece
> of paper --hold back the hand of these
> terrible regimes?

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Your question assumes a matter for investigation to be a matter of fact. Someone has yet to demonstrate that it definitively was the treaty, as opposed to other factors (e.g., military doctrine), that "held back" the Axis Powers from using chemical weapons. There are other plausible explanations.

[Ward]

This is neither news nor a rebuttal. There are always plausible alternative explanations. Even gravity has mildly plausible alternative explanations.

If you have an explanation you like better, make a case for it. If it's well done I'll give you space in the main journal.

[Anonymous]

With respect to Japan, the factual premise of your question

> How did this treaty--this flimsy piece
> of paper --hold back the hand of these
> terrible regimes?

is wrong. They did use chemical weapons.

According to Rodney McElroy's "Briefing Book on Chemical Weapons" (Council for a Livable World Education Fund, October, 1989), in at least 900 incidents between 1937 to 1945 Japan's Army attacked civilians and military opponents in China with mustard gas, phosgene and other CW agents. I don't know how you would define "major combat operations," but 900 incidents of CW use does not strike me as trivial.

With respect to Germany, it appears that military doctrine and organizational culture played the decisive role in the Wehrmacht's decision not to use CW.

There were strong German proponents of CW, e.g., General Hermann Ochsner. But in "Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II" (Cornell, 1995), Jeffrey Legro cites the "conflict between chemical warfare and the dominant thinking that emerged within the Wehrmacht on how to gain military victory" (Blitzkrieg Kultur) as the key reason for German CW restraint during the war (pp. 177ff.). Legro also argues against the explanatory power of the norms explanation (Geneva Protocol on CW) for German restraint during the war (pp. 180-184).

Let me be clear: I'm not saying that treaties are useless. But what prompted me to comment in the first place was how this post presumed, in the absence of a cursory literature review or first-hand analysis, that norms were the deciding factor in preventing Japan (which, it turns out, did use CW in at least 900 instances) and Germany from CW use in World War II.