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Why do I feel like some has gotten lost over the years and we're just gonna "find" it if we ever get into another world war? Or we got rid of the weapons, but it was juuuust long enough to make sure we stored the info on how to make them?
Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy if we did get rid of them, I'm just skeptical.
Chemical weapons are pretty strategically bad for how the US engages in warfare. Chemical weapons are great for driving up civilian body count. The US doesn't really do that as a strategic goal. On the battlefield they have a really high chance of killing and/or permanently disabling your own soldiers. It's really more of a guerilla's/terrorist's class of weapon because it's good for area denial and wreaking havoc on soft targets.
Uhhh, Agent Orange, White Phosphorous, Depleted Uranium. Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq... The US absolutely engages in driving civilian casualties in a way that can only be described as strategic. The number of civilians they kill even with conventional weapons is so high. Agent Orange poisoned generations of people, reducing birth rates and increasing mortality for an entire country. And then after they figured that out, they still decided to develop and deploy DU rounds that leave radioactive waste pulverized over vast stretches of land that can effectively never be cleaned up. Almost like it's a deliberate strategy....
Meanwhile, we never see terrorists use anything even close to what the US has done and continues to do.
that makes sense, what with the US being a country of over 300 million people
not that the use of chemical weapons in terrorist attacks is particularly unheard of
lemmygrad
opinion discarded
Utopian indeed
We absolutely still know how to make them and in fact still have small stockpiles of them.
What we have kept are far below international agreements and are used to test PPE for soldiers who may find themselves being attacked with these bio/chem threats.
We had (literal) tons of chemical weapons during WW2 and never resorted to them.
Truth be told, chemical weapons are generally actually pretty shit. They're hard to control (which creates potential for both civilian AND friendly casualties), they don't kill or otherwise put enemies hors de combat particularly reliably, and if both sides end up using them, all that ends up with is a lot of infantry in NBC gear being miserable and not actually increasing the ability of offensives or defensives in any meaningful way.
Anyway, there's no need to store the info on how to make them because it's quite literally public knowledge for the most useful and widely used/stored chemical weapons.
We got rid of the "finished and assembled" chemical weapons. The precursors are all ready to be mixed.
Why would we need a long time to store info on how to make them?
US did not use chemical weapons since WW I. Why would we start using them in future wars?
What are you talking about?!
Agent Orange, White Phosphorous, crowd control conpounds (like tear gas, "pepper" munitions, etc). Napalm was used in Iraq and Kuwait.
What you're talking about is the US not using a very specific list of very specific weapons that are effective due to their chemical properties and the way those chemicals interact with human bodies. It is by no means a comprehensive list of munitions with similar chemical properties.
And it is a classic imperialist move to make a list of some chemical weapons, call the list The List Of Chemical Weapons and they develop new chemical weapons that aren't on the list and say "These aren't chemical weapons because they aren't on the list".
Bot account. sigh.
Well, I suppose it's a good thing no one will try to invade us over WMDs now, considering we invaded Iraq for what turned out to be 39 tons of mustard gas
There was a last minute BBQ and all the stores were closed
Yeah I was getting worried for a moment there!
So apparently we're switching to biological weapons.
But what if we need them?
In principle, these type of weapons are immoral even in war. We’re talking about things like mustard gas, chlorine gas, sarin gas. Nerve agents that are incredibly cruel and painful. They painfully, sometimes slowly, kill or incapacitate indiscriminately.
I think in practice warfare and weaponry have changed enough that the U.S. military feels it can wage war more effectively without these type of weapons.
You don't and won't. There is never any justification for these weapons
If a war somehow gets so bad that the US feels the need to use chemical weapons, they can just make them.