Were the drafters of international treaties banning chemical weapons stupid?

[geek tragedy]

Lots of talk around DU about how using poison gas to kill people in war is no different than using bullets or bayonets or drones.

So, this must mean that there was zero logical reason to ban their use in war.

And that it must have been for entirely irrational reasons that even the Nazis didn't use chemical munitions.

So, why bother ban these things or prohibit their production and stockpiling?

Background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention

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	Killing is killing, it was foolish to pass treaties banning chemical weapons in war
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	There was a very sound basis for criminalizing the use of chemical weapons in war, regardless of context.
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[NutmegYankee]

1. Just to comment: The Nazis had no problem using them on civilians.

But with so many soldiers in allied POW camps and cities easily within bomber range, I can understand not wanting to use them in war. The natural response is to receive it back.

[geek tragedy]

3. They didn't use them on the Russians or Poles, who had no air force and

who didn't take prisoners except on a very temporary basis.

[NutmegYankee]

6. The Russians took tons of prisoners on the eastern front.

If a country is going to use such a weapon, it will be from a position of weakness. Early in the war, Germany was winning/holding on all fronts.

When I was referring to civilians, I was referring to the use of Zyklon B in death camps.

[geek tragedy]

14. how many were allowed to survive? nt

[NutmegYankee]

16. For German POWs held by the Soviet Union, about 2.4 million went home by 1950

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_Soviet_Union

[geek tragedy]

17. thx nt

[Posteritatis]

11. If one country busted them out against the other major powers in WWII, everyone would

Everyone going into the war understood that one quite well, so in battlefield terms they were immediately filed under "sooooo not worth it." The Japanese used them in China, but that was and still is mostly off peoples' radar.

About the only time they were likely to see large-scale use - outside of the camps, that is - would have been if the Germans had landed in Britain proper, at which point the British plan was to drench the entire beachhead.

[PowerToThePeople]

2. I think that back in WWI

That the concern may have been one of a "fair fight." Back then, this type of weapon would have been what a nuke is to us in this day. You could have a very small force take out huge numbers of opposition forces with chemical weapons. This would stack the cards to heavily in favor of those using chem weapons.

[Posteritatis]

8. They were only tactically effective a handful of times, actually

Chemical weapons in the First World War were responsible for a very small proportion of the casualties, and only had any kind of decisive impact a couple of times. The reason they were largely stigmatized is because they were not only militarily pointless, but they created even more horrific injuries or deaths than the conventional weapons at the time did. They "only" killed about 90,000 people in the war but injured about fifteen times that in particularly awful ways, despite being around a quarter of all the shells fired in the war.

By the time of the war - or at least by the end of the war - the sentiment was generally "this sucks enough without adding something to the mix that doesn't affect the outcome but just makes things even worse." The notion of a chivalrous, fair fight in general didn't survive the fall of 1914. They knew very quickly that things were different now.

Basically, by the end of the war they were written off as an unproductive atrocity (which was still perfectly okay to use against colonials, as the Italians particularly liked pointing out). By the Second World War they were much more dangerous, but it still came down to understanding that if they were used it probably wouldn't have an effect on the fighting as a whole save to make it even worse. When your only options are "have them used against you in return" or "draw down the wrath of the great powers," they get reduced to one of three things: an absolute dead end, a deterrent against foes who might also have them, or a weapon of desperation and/or fear. But really, that's all they ever were.

[PowerToThePeople]

12. Good info.

My history on WWI is slim. Some reading, but probably the thing that most of my "understanding" of the horrors of that war is based on the movie "Legends of the Fall." Sad huh?

edit- What little reading I have done, mostly consisted of the goings on in Spain. I am trying to recall the books, but I can not.

edit2- quick amazon search lead me to Hemingway. I think I read 3 of his books based on the time. So, works of fiction based on the times.

[Posteritatis]

13. The short version is it's pretty hard to overestimate how stupid they were, for sure

If it ends up being a gap in your historical knowledge you feel like plugging at some point, G.J. Meyer's A World Undone is an absolutely fantastic, highly accessible, single-volume survey of the whole thing, spending as much time on the individuals, culture, etc. of the war as on the fighting itself.

Ypres in particular is horrifying. At least one of my great-grandfathers was at the first two battles there (the second was the first large-scale use of poison gas).

[blueridge3210]

34. World War I

I had always understood that chemical weapons were used in WWI due to the siege warfare that existed for 3 + years. WWII in comparison was generally fluid (w/ exceptions like Stalingrad) and made chemical weapons less useful as the attacking country's own troops would likely be moving through the territory exposed to the agents. Not an expert, just what I picked up from somewhere.

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. An internatonal conferance on the Conventons of war should be convened ...

and the treaty updated to consider modern weapons systems.

But WWI with its wide scale use of Chemical weapons horrified people.

I would like to see cluster munitions and mines that resemble toys outlawed. http://www.warchild.org/Interactive_Galleries/Landmines/Effects/effects.html

[geek tragedy]

5. There are international treaties banning land mines and cluster munitions.

But the US is a very shameful holdout--this is one unambiguously horrid mark on President Obama's legacy.

[Agnosticsherbet]

9. And Bush, and Clinton, and Reagan.

It's the empire, you know.

[Downwinder]

7. Treaties are fine, but who is going to enforce them and how.

[Harmony Blue]

10. Times change

Chemical weapons were far more superior than conventional weapons 70 years ago. In today's military technological environment the gap has been closed with conventional weapons.

[geek tragedy]

15. you think chemical weapons were banned because they were too effective? nt

[Harmony Blue]

18. Yes they were very efficient in WWI

which is why they were banned from any future conflict.But as WWII showed fire bombing and the birth of atomic weapons dwarfed the potential carnage that chemical weapons could inflict.

The edge chemical weapons had against conventional weapons was the ability to take out an opposition with minimal damage to infrastructure and vehicles. Once the neutron bomb was invented that too diminished the advantage of chemical weapons.

Chemical weapons warfare is now a niche area that conventional armies of the world don't even consider using. In symmetrical or assymetrical warfare.

[geek tragedy]

19. um

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3544813

[Harmony Blue]

24. Disagree with that heavily

WWI conventional bombing was just as inaccurate as the artillery shells delivering the chemical weapons.

Guidance of conventional weapons delivery didn't develop until WWII.

[Posteritatis]

26. Many people disagree with facts. Chemical weapons caused a tiny fraction of the war's casualties. nt

[Harmony Blue]

30. Chemical weapons were not used at the onset of WWI

and the reality is they were far more efficient than most are willing to admit. Conventional artillery is often pointed to as the biggest cause of casualties in WWI but a closer look realizes how inefficient conventional artillery was given trench warfare was formulated to counter artillery use. And when conventional artillery was used on a trench you would have to rebuild and re-fortify the trench. This is why chemical weapons started to become more prominent later in the war.

[Posteritatis]

32. Gas shells were one quarter of all shells fired, and caused four percent of the casualties. (nt)

[Harmony Blue]

33. The problem is that this is very a conservative estimate of casualties by chemical weapons

as the PTSD symptoms associated with chemical weapon use we are finding was far greater than we realized. It is true that there were PTSD symptoms associated with conventional shelling as well. But it is far greater with chemical weapons.

[Downwinder]

22. Chemical weapons are unreliable. They go where the wind sends them.

You might be aiming at an enemy and get your own troops.

[Posteritatis]

23. Which often happened. Chem weapons were probably the *least* effective weapons of that war. (nt)

[Harmony Blue]

25. Trenches were not that close of proximity

and if they were that means you were also prone to friendly fire from conventional weapons as well.

[99Forever]

20. ALL weapons of war should be banned, permanently.

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world can live as one."

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. People arguing that use of chemical weapons is "the same" as use of other weapons are simply foolish

I disagree with military action against Syria, but those arguments are ridiculous, and betray a real immaturity, if not outright stupidity, in the arguer.

[FSogol]

27. +1 n/t

[VanillaRhapsody]

28. Would they also say then that the use of Nuclear weapons is "the same"?

unfuckingbelievable...

[Posteritatis]

29. If politically palatable, probably

Then again, we get a "conventional weapons are just as bad as nuclear weapons" 'discussion' on DU every August, so yeah.

[VanillaRhapsody]

31. **facepalm**