What is Chemical Warfare? Chemical warfare is warfare (and associated military operations) using non-explosive chemical agents to kill, injure or incapacitate the enemy. Living organisms (including viruses) are not considered chemical warfare: their use is instead labeled biological warfare.
Chemical weapons are classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations according to UN Resolution 687, and its production and stockpiling was outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.
Chemical Warfare Agents The chemical used is called a chemical warfare agent (CWA), and is usually gasseous at room temperature, or is a liquid that evaporates quickly and generates toxic fumes (such liquids are said to be volatile or have a high vapor pressure).
The main types of chemical warfare agents are as follows:
Blood agents, usually based on cyanide, that prevent the normal use of oxygen by the body tissues, resulting in chemical asphyxiation.
Vesicants (or blister agents), such as mustard gas and Lewisite, that cause blistering of the skin. They are designed to incapacitate rather than kill, with the goal of overloading the medical facilities of the region.
Pulmonary agents (or choking agents, lung toxicants) that impede a victim's ability to breathe, resulting in suffocation. Examples include chlorine and phosgene. These were commonly used in World War I, but were rendered mostly obsolete by the more effective nerve agents.
Nerve agents, such as sarin and VX, inhibit the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the victim's nerves. Nerve agents are hundreds to thousands times more lethal than blister, pulmonary or blood agents.
Incapacitating agents are less-lethal agents that produce temporary physiological or mental effects in their victims, making them unable to perform organized actions. An example is BZ, which produces massive hallucinations in those exposed to it.
Lachrymatory agents that sting and irritate the eyes to cause pain and temporary blindness, such as tear gas and pepper spray. In recent decades these agents are usually used for riot-control purposes, therefore they are also often called riot control agents.
Not considered to be chemical weapon agents are:
Defoliants that destroy vegetation, but are not immediately toxic to human beings.
Viruses, bacteria, or other organisms, or their toxic products. Their use is classified as biological warfare.
Chemical warfare in ancient and classical times Chemical weapons have been used for millenia in the form of poisoned arrows, but evidence can be found for the existence of more advanced forms of chemical weapons in ancient and classical times.
Dating from the 4th century BC, writings of the Mohist sect in China describe the use of bellows to pump smoke from burning balls of mustard and other toxic vegetables into tunnels being dug by a beseiging army. Even older Chinese writings dating back to about 1000 BC contain hundreds of recipes for the production of poisonous or irritating smokes for use in war along with numerous accounts of their use. From these accounts we know of the arsenic-containing "soul-hunting fog", and the use of finely divided lime dispersed into the air to suppress a peasant revolt in 178 AD.
The earliest recorded use of gas warfare in the West dates back to the 5th century BC, during During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Spartan forces besieging an Athenian city placed a lighted mixture of wood, pitch, and sulfur under the walls hoping that the noxious smoke would incapacitate the Athenians so that they would not be able to resist the assault that followed. Sparta wasn't alone in its use of unconventional tactics during these wars: Solon of Athens is said to have used hellebore roots to poison the water in an aqueduct leading from the Pleistrus River around 590 BC during the siege of Cirrha.
The rediscovery of chemical warfare During the Renaissance, people again began to consider the use of chemical warfare. One of the earliest such references is from Leonardo da Vinci, who proposed a powder of sulfide of arsenic and verdigris in the 15th century:
throw poison in the form of powder upon galleys. Chalk, fine sulfide of arsenic, and powdered verdegris may be thrown among enemy ships by means of small mangonels, and all those who, as they breathe, inhale the powder into their lungs will become asphyxiated.
It is unknown whether this powder was ever actually used.
In the 1600s, it was a common practice during seiges to attempt to start fires by launching incendiary shells filled with sulphur, tallow, rosin, turpentine, saltpeter, and/or antimony. It was quickly observed that even when fires were not started, the resulting smoke and fumes would provide, at the very least, a considerable distraction. Although the primary function as fire starters was never abandoned, a variety of fills for shells were developed that were intended to maximize the effects of the smoke.
In 1672, during his siege of the city of Groningen, Christoph Bernhard van Galen, the Bishop of Münster, employed several different explosive and incendiary devices, some of which had a fill that included belladonna, intended to produce toxic fumes. Just three years later, August 27, 1675, the French and the Germans concluded the Strasbourg Agreement, which included an article banning the use of "perfidious and odious" toxic devices.
In 1854, Lyon Playfair, a British chemist, proposed a cacodyl cyanide artillery shell for use against enemy ships as way to solve the stalemate during the siege of Sevastopol, a proposal backed by Admiral Thomas Cochrane of the Royal Navy. It was considered by the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, but the British Ordnance Department rejected the proposal as "bad a mode of warfare as poisoning the wells of the enemy." Playfair’s response was used to justify chemical warfare into the next century:
There was no sense in this objection. It is considered a legitimate mode of warfare to fill shells with molten metal which scatters among the enemy, and produced the most frightful modes of death. Why a poisonous vapor which would kill men without suffering is to be considered illegitimate warfare is incomprehensible. War is destruction, and the more destructive it can be made with the least suffering the sooner will be ended that barbarous method of protecting national rights. No doubt in time chemistry will be used to lessen the suffering of combatants, and even of criminals condemned to death.
Later, during the American Civil War, a New York school teacher named John Doughty proposed the offensive use of chlorine gas, delivered by filling a 10-in. artillery shell with 2 to 3 quarts of liquid chlorine. When released, such a shell would produce many cubic feet of chlorine gas. Doughty’s plan was apparently never acted on, as it was probably presented to Brigadier General James W. Ripley, Chief of Ordnance, who was described as being congenitally immune to new ideas. Chemical warfare in World War I The first full-scale deployment of chemical warfare agents was during World War I, originating in the Second Battle of Ypres, April 22, 1915, when the Germans attacked French and Algerian with chlorine gas. Since then a total 50,965 tons of pulmonary, lachrymatory, and vesicant agents were deployed by both sides of the conflict, including chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene gas. Offical figures decare about 1,176,500 non-fatal casualties and 85,000 fatalities directly caused by chemical warfare agents during the course of the war.
Unexploded WWI-era chemical ammunition, up to this day, is still commonly uncovered when the ground is dug in former battle or depot areas and continues to pose a threat to the civilian population in Belgium and France. The French and Belgian governments have had to launch special programs for treating discovered ammunition. The United States has a non-stockpile chemical materials program to identify former CW burial sites within the United States and to excavate, transport, and dispose of old chemical munitions.
Chemical warfare in the interwar years After the First World War, the United States and many of the European powers attempted take advantage of the opportunities that the war created by attempting to establish and hold colonies. During this interwar period, chemical agents were occasionally used to subdue populations and suppress rebellion.
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, the Ottoman government collapsed completely and the former empire was divided amongst the victorious powers in the Treaty of Sèvres. The British occupied Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and established a colonial government.
In 1920, the Arab and Kurdish people of Mesopotamia revolted against the British occupation, which cost the British dearly. As the Iraqi resistance gained strength, the British resorted to increasingly repressive measures, and Winston Churchill himself, in his role as Colonial Secretary, authorized the use of chemical agents, mostly mustard gas, on the Mesopotamian resistors. Mindful of the financial cost of supressing the dissidents, Churchill was confident that chemical weapons could be inexpensively employed against the Mesopotamian tribes, saying "I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes." Although opposition to the use of gas and technical difficulties prevented the gas from being used in Mesopotamia, the records of British consideration of poison gas, including Churchill's enthusiasm, were suppressed for many years until the records were released in 1980.
Chemical weapons had caused so much misery and revulsion in the First World War that their use had become the ultimate atrocity in the minds of most people at the time. So much so, in fact, that in 1925, sixteen the world's major nations signed the Geneva Protocol, thereby pledging never to use gas or bacteriological methods of warfare. While the United States signed the protocol, the Senate did not ratify it until 1975.
In 1935 Fascist Italy used mustard gas during the invasion of Ethiopia. Ignoring the Geneva Protocol, which it signed seven years earlier, the Italian military dropped mustard gas in bombs, sprayed it from airplanes, and spread it in powdered form on the ground. 15,000 chemical casualties were reported, mostly from mustard gas.
Chemical warfare in World War II 
The chemical structure of sarin nerve gas, discovered by Germany in 1938.
During World War II, chemical warfare was revolutionized by the Nazi's accidental discovery of the nerve agents tabun, sarin and soman. The Nazis developed and manufactured large quantities of several agents, including the newly discovered nerve agents, but chemical warfare agents were not extensively used by either side. Recovered Nazi documents suggest that during that time, German intelligence incorrectly thought that the Allies also knew of these compounds, interpreting the lack of discussion of these compounds the Allies' scientific journals as evidence that information about them was being suppressed. Germany ultimately decided not to use the new nerve agents against Allied targets, fearing a potentially devastating Allied retaliatory nerve agent deployment.
Although chemical weapons were not deployed on a large scale during World War II, there were some recorded uses of them by the Axis powers, when retailiation wasn't feared:
The Japanese used mustard gas and the recently-developed blister agent Lewisite against Chinese troops. During these attacks, the Japanese also employed biological warfare by intentionally spreading cholera, dysentery, typhoid, plague, and anthrax.
In 1944, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, the senior Islamic religious authority of the Palestinian Arabs and close ally of Adolf Hitler, sponsored an unsuccessful chemical warfare assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Five parachutists were supplied with with maps of Tel Aviv, canisters of a German-manufactured "fine white powder," and instructions from the Mufti to dump chemicals into the Tel Aviv water system. District police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi later recalled, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers."
The Nazis used the insecticide Zyklon B, which contains hydrogen cyanide, to kill large numbers of victims in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Madajnek during the Holocaust. Chemical warfare during The Cold War After World War II, the Allies recovered German artillery shells containing the three German nerve agents of the day (tabun, sarin, and soman) prompting further research into nerve agents by all of the former Allies. Although although the threat of global thermonuclear annihilation was formost in the minds of most during the Cold War, both the Soviet and Western governments put enormous resources into developing chemical and biological weapons.
A UN working group began work on chemical disarmament in 1980. On April 4, 1984 U.S. President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons. U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a bilateral treaty on June 1, 1990 to end chemical weapon production and start destroying each of their nation's stockpiles. The multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was signed in 1993 and came into effect in 1997.
Developments by the Western governments In 1952, researchers in Porton Down, England invented the VX nerve agent, but soon abandoned the project. In 1958 the British government traded their VX technology with the United States of America in exchange for information on thermonuclear weapons; by 1961 the US was producing large amounts of VX, and performing its own nerve agent research. This research produced at least three more agents; the four agents (VE, VG, VM, VX) are collectively known as the "V-Series" class of nerve agents.
Between 1967 and 1968, the U.S. decided to dispose of obsolete chemical weapons in an operation called Operation CHASE, which stood for "cut holes and sink 'em." CHASE disposal operations also included several shiploads of conventional munitions. As the name implies, the weapons were put aboard old Liberty ships that were sunk at sea.
During the 1960s, the U.S. explored the use of psychedelic incapacitating agents. One of these agents, assigned the weapon designation BZ, was allegedly used in the Vietnam War.
In 1969, 23 U.S. servicemen and one U.S. civilian stationed in Okinawa, Japan were exposed to low levels of nerve agent sarin while repainting the depots' buildings. The weapons had been kept secret from Japan, sparking a furor in Japan and an international incident. These munitions were moved in 1971 to Johnston Atoll under Operation Red Hat.
Developments by the Soviet government Due to the secrecy of the former Communist regime of the Soviet Union, very little information was available about the direction and progress of the Soviet chemical weapons until relatively recently. After the fall of the Soviet Empire, a Russian chemist named Vil Mirzayanov publishing articles that revealed illegal chemical weapons experimentation in Russia. In 1993, Mirzayanov was imprisoned and fired from his job at the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, where he had worked for 26 years. In March of 1994, after a major campaign by U.S. scientists on his behalf, Mirzayanov was released.
Among the information related by Vil Mirzayanov was the direction of the Soviet research into nerve agents toward the development of even more toxic agents, which saw most of its success during the mid-1980s. Several highly toxic agents were developed during this period; the only unclassified information regarding these agents is that they are known in the open literature only as "Foliant" agents (named after the program under which they were developed) and by various code designations, such as A-230 and A-232.
According to Mirzayanov, the Soviets also developed agents that were safer to handle, leading to the development of the so-called binary weapons, in which precursors for the nerve agents are mixed in a munition to produce the agent just prior to its use. Because the precursors are generally significantly less hazardous than the agents themselves, this technique makes handling and transporting the munitions a great deal simpler. Additionally, precursors to the agents are usually much easier to stabilize than the agents themselves, so this technique also made it possible to increase the shelf life of the agents a great deal. During the 1980s and 1990s, binary versions of several Soviet agents were developed, and are designated as "Novichok" agents (after the Russian word for "newcomer").
Chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq War The Iran-Iraq War began in 1980 when Iraq attack Iran. Early in the conflict Iraq began to employ mustard gas and tabun delivered by bombs drop from airplanes. Approximately 5% of all Iranian casualties are attributable directly to the use of these agents. Iraq and the United States government alleged that Iran was also using chemical weapons, but independent sources were unable to confirm these allegations.
Shortly after war ended in 1988, the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja was exposed to multiple chemical agents, killing about 5,000 of the town's 50,000 residents. After the incident, traces of mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX were discovered. While it appears that Iraqi government forces are to blame, some debate continues over the question of whether Iraq was really the responsible party, and whether this was a deliberate or accidental act. (see Halabja poison gas attack).
During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Coalition forces began a ground war in Iraq. Despite the fact that they did possess chemical weapons, Iraq did not use any chemical agents against coalition forces. The commander of the Allied Forces, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, suggested this may have been due to Iraqi fear of retaliation with nuclear weapons.
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