Christ To The Crusade Ages

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

After the events of WW1, the families of those who fought were sickened by the use of "mustard gas" used by both sides during the war. No one was pleased with the casualties of hundreds of thousands of young men by this chemical gas and felt that this type of warfare was inhumane. The public opinion everywhere on this matter continued to grow in this direction with the years following the war. This eventually led the leaders from around the world to later come together and come up with the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which prohibited the use of both poisonous and bacteriological gases during warfare. The Geneva Protocol however, did not forbid the stockpiling or research of chemical weapons making this its’ only downfall. Failure to this led to the 1932-1937 Disarmament Conference, which ultimately ended in an unsuccessful attempt to try and prohibit the production and stockpiling of biological weapons.

The events of WW1 left the world in a state of shock and had an epiphany open the eyes of millions of people to this new type of warfare that had never really received much attention. The simple reality of being able to die a painful death by simply breathing the air around you scared everyone and allowed them to fear radioactivity. Although nations had signed the Geneva Protocol, some were still using chemical agents during the years leading to and after World War 2. Surprisingly Hitler himself did not promote the use of any chemical or biological agents against the Allies during WW2. This might have been due to a reason that he himself had experienced the effects of mustard gas during WW1 while fighting on the front lines. However, this did not stop him from using his deadly gas chambers to systematically execute the Jews and other social/ethnic groups. Although this wasn’t really a type of warfare, it was known to be a chemical genocide.

The years following WW2 were simply the beginning of the Cold War and all of its technological advancements. With the Soviet Union in possession of German stockpiled gases (Tabun, Sarin, and Soman) and the U.S in development of new chemical agents, there was a fear within the public of what could happen if either side attacked and of the retaliation that would follow. No one dared to show off their mighty arsenal of biological and chemical weapons until the U.S involvement in Vietnam. "Agent Orange", as it was nicknamed, was a chemical agent used against the Vietcong forces in South Vietnam in order to drive the guerilla forces out of the South. When news got out that "Agent Orange" was being used in the battlefields of Vietnam, the hatred that most of the American public had against the war grew even stronger. Most of the public believed that the agent was harmful not only to the enemy, but civilians and soldiers as well as the environment. This eventually led to groups introducing resolutions in 1966 to the United Nations that the U.S was violating the Geneva Protocol and that the use of the agent should stop immediately. Use of "Agent Orange" was stopped in 1971 and a year later, the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) was held. Unlike its predecessor (the 1932-1937 Disarmament Conference), the BWC was successful in prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling, and acquisition of such weapons. This went hand in hand with the Geneva Convention, yet it did not go into effect until March 26 of 1975.

After the Vietnam War, the use of biological weapons had been made to look very destructive by most of the general public in the world for the disturbing effects it could produce to humans, animals and the environment. Leaders of countries would not want to use such sort of weapons in fear of intervention by the U.N and the repercussion that might follow from the citizens. Biological weapons were not heard from again until they were used in the First Persian Gulf War between Iraq and Iran. Although the use of chemical and biological weapons was prohibited by both the Geneva Protocol and BWC, the United Nations turned a blind eye towards the situation seeing as how in this situation, Iraq was the victim of Iran’s invasion and was simply defending itself.

With the international community knowing Iraq was in possession of chemical weapons, some feared the use of these weapons by Iraq during the Gulf War. After the initial invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991, Saudi Arabia and the U.S led a retaliation strike to push Iraq out of Kuwait. The American public feared that Saddam Hussein might use his arsenal against the U.S and coalition troops. The U.N took this into consideration very seriously, issuing gas masks and hazardous suits to all coalition soldiers. Luckily, no chemical weapons were used against coalition troops during the fighting, although missiles thought to contain nerve agents were fired at Israel by Iraq in hopes of Israeli intervention in the war. With the end of the Gulf War, world leaders sought a new way of getting rid of biological and chemical weapons that some countries might still have in their arsenals as they were considered potential threats.

The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) solved this issued. Although identical to the 1972 BWC, one thing was different with the CWC, seeing as how it required all existing stockpiles of chemical weapons to be destroyed within ten years. Since it also allowed the use of toxic chemicals for uses not prohibited by the Convention, the CWC established the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to ensure that international states followed such measures and to oversee their application. Everything was just a precaution taken to ensure that no nation could use chemical weapons or biological ones.

In modern day 21st Century, uses of chemical agents by international states has not been common or heard of, since most are done covertly and under special circumstances that don’t affect a large population or group of people. What has been heard of has been of the uses of biological and chemical agents by terrorist organizations and rogue individuals. With the incident of the anthrax letters in the aftermath of the September 11 attack and the use of sarin in the Tokyo metros of Japan by a terrorist organization, nations across the world can only prepare themselves for a day that someone uses a biological or chemical weapon/agent in a large scale attack. However that day may come soon, with all of the threats that North Korea has been making against the United States. No one is for sure whether the threats being made by the dictator in North Korea are to be taken lightly or not, but one thing is for sure, if a full scale Biological and Chemical warfare was to be released in modern day 21st century. The world as we know it may cease to exist, due to the radioactiveness of such massive weapons. The most futile and important evidence of this is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since up to this date no one is able to live near that region because of the radioactiveness and the effects that radioactivity has on a person.