鈥淪O you鈥檙e telling me that killing people with gas is a crime against humanity,鈥� says the doing the rounds on the internet. 鈥淏ut killing them with bullets, grenades, bombs and missiles is not?鈥�
Good question, kid. Syria鈥檚 civil war has killed some 100,000 people over the past two years. No foreign power intervened until the US threatened strikes after the gas attack in August that killed hundreds. Washington has now backtracked and is effectively working with the Assad regime to scrap chemical weapons (CW).
That at least is good: CW are repulsive, have clearly been used in Syria, and could be captured by terrorists. But as 快猫短视频 went to press, there was no end in sight to the war or the world鈥檚 biggest refugee nightmare.
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So the kid seems to be right. It appears to be OK to kill and wound people with conventional weapons, and even some kinds of , but not mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin.
It seems an obscene hypocrisy. Yet unlikely as it seems, the path to Syria鈥檚 chemical disarmament might turn into a more general road to peace.
鈥淯nlikely as it seems, Syria鈥檚 chemical disarmament might turn into a more general path to peace鈥�
To understand why, we must start with the first world war. Of all that war鈥檚 many horrors, the one that most scandalised people was gas. The result was the banning the use of CW in battle.
That did not stop combatants in the second world war stockpiling them; indeed, Nazi chemists invented sarin. But no one used them. That was partly because bombs were more reliable killers than drifting clouds of gas. But the Geneva Protocol created the idea that some weapons are beyond the pale. Even Hitler, wounded by gas in 1918 and not known for respecting international agreements, obeyed.
Then came the cold war. The 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty tried to limit nuclear weapons to the five nations that had them already. There are now four more 鈥� but experts say there would have been a dozen or more without the treaty.
The 1970 treaty introduced another idea: verification 鈥� in other words, empirical investigations to ensure treaty members weren鈥檛 cheating. International inspectors armed with science track uranium and detect bomb tests. Verification was added to the 鈥渘orm鈥� against CW with the 1997 .
Both treaties, and their many cousins, have limitations. But in a world where sovereign states routinely disregard their to make war only with UN permission, arms control treaties are almost the only means we have to intervene in other people鈥檚 wars.
It almost worked in Iraq. Saddam Hussein used CW with virtual impunity in the 1980s. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the UN sanctioned military action. It then sent in inspectors, mostly civilian scientists, to find and destroy Saddam鈥檚 CW, long-range missiles and alleged nuclear and bioweapons programmes.
Some have forgotten 鈥� 3700 tonnes of CW and precursor chemicals, missiles, a biological weapons factory and a that could have made a weapon within the decade. But Saddam evicted the inspectors before they could verify that everything was gone.
In 2002, they went back to try again but Saddam did not want his weakness exposed and did not answer questions. Hans Blix, who led the mission, has told me that with more time, his team could have established that Iraq had no forbidden weapons left. But an impatient US and its allies claimed otherwise and invaded. They found no weapons.
If it really was only about the weapons, Iraq could have been fought as a proxy war between scientists 鈥� Saddam鈥檚 weapons labs versus the verifiers. A verifier victory would have left Saddam in place, but defanged and under permanent surveillance with his people ready for regime change. A better result? Arguably.
Now CW are again an issue in a Middle East conflict, and the world has another chance to turn it into a proxy war between scientists. If Syria, in its newfound embrace of the Chemical Weapons Convention, is to destroy its sarin and mustard gas and the means to make them, it will need inspectors and ceasefires, plus peacekeepers to back them up. That means the two sides in the civil war 鈥� and their patrons 鈥� must negotiate.
The US and Russia are already doing so. Talks in Geneva last week led to a plan for eliminating Syria鈥檚 CW, backed by . US secretary of state John Kerry added that the agreement 鈥渓aid the groundwork for further cooperation that is essential to end the bloodshed鈥�. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov agreed. If nothing else, they will need enough peace in Syria to make their CW plan work.
Time will tell whether it does. But just getting rid of the sarin is progress. Who knows what else might happen now the opponents are being forced to talk.
So, kid, the answer is this: we鈥檙e not saying it鈥檚 OK to kill people as long as you don鈥檛 use gas. We鈥檙e also saying it鈥檚 not OK to use , or , or , or , or a lengthening list of other horrors, including . All are banned by international treaties.
No treaty works perfectly. But they send messages and create norms: some kinds of war are definitely not OK.
It鈥檚 a slow, inefficient way of making peace. But global rejection of certain kinds of weapons, via treaties backed by scientific evidence, is the closest we have yet come to a working global norm against war.
Don鈥檛 laugh. In 1961, all UN countries actually , taking all weapons and even armies away from national governments, leaving only an international 鈥減eace force鈥�. We may never get there. But taking away the worst weapons is a start.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淢ake science not war鈥�
