Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
of Mass Destruction
Today’s
overview
• History of WMD -
Chemical, Bio, Nuke
• International Treaties
• Nuclear Weapons Today
• North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan
• Iran?
World War I
Chemical
• Non-living
• First use in Western World - Peloponnesian
War
• Rediscovered in Renaissance
Chemical - Modern uses
• Iraq-Iran War
• “Is military research hazardous to
veteran’s health?” (1994) US Senate
• Japan - Aum Shinrikyo
• Russian forces - Moscow theater
hostages
The Chemical Threat
80000 Chemical Stockpiles
70000
60000
31,000
50000
Remaining Stockpile
40000
16,317 Declared Stockpile
30000
40,000
20000
27,771
10000
578
1,055 304
605
16
0 23.6
0
Albania India Libya Russia South Korea US
Units in Metric Tons
Source: Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons December 2006 implementation report,
Report of the OCPW on the Implementation of the Convention of the Prohibition of the Development,
Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction in 2005.
Biological
• Living organisms
– Anthrax
• Cold War focused on retaliation
• A Poor Nation’s WMD
• Iraq
• Nearly impossible to detect
• Dual-use technologies
The Biological Threat
• H5N1/Bird Flu
• 1918 “Spanish Lady”
International Treaties
• 1899 Hague Conference
– Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan - "the
inventiveness of Americans should not be
restricted in the development of new weapons."
• 1925 Geneva Protocol
– Bans chemical & biological weapons
– Nothing on production, storage, or transfer
• 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention
Chemical Weapons Convention
Bans:
* Developing, producing, acquiring, stockpiling, or retaining
chemical weapons.
* The direct or indirect transfer of chemical weapons.
* Chemical weapons use or military preparation for use.
* Assisting, encouraging, or inducing other states to engage in
CWC-prohibited activity.
* The use of riot control agents “as a method of warfare.”
• Easier to make
• Easier to deploy
• Harder to detect
• Harder to fix blame
• Can be used in an
asymmetrical
context
• Therefore, harder to
deter
WMD - Case Studies
-Maintenance of family
regime over everything
North Korean Nuclear Timeline
New Regime 2011 Kim Jong Un
North Korea (Yong Ban)
N. Korea - Potential Disaster
• -Formidable Threat: 1.2 million soldiers, 100,000
elite forces, one of the world’s largest chemical
and biological weapons arsenals. One million
South Koreans live within Artillery range.
• -Deployment of weapons of mass destruction:
Believed to have 30-60 nuclear warheads, the
likelihood of their use increases with greater
regime instability. Hwasong-14 can hit the US
with potentially a Hydrogen warhead
Potential Disaster (con’t)
• -Regime Collapse: “collapse of the chain of
command of the KFR could be more dangerous
than the preservation of it, particularly when one
considers control over WMD.” -Colonel Maxwell,
• -Refugee Crisis: South Koreans and Chinese fear
an influx of refugees more than NK missiles.
“Mother of all relief operations”: The US could be
presented with the greatest stabilization effort
since WWII, and have to coordinate operations
with the Chinese PLA.
Kim Jong Un’s Objectives
• 1: Preserve the Regime
– Maintain US enemy to justify hardships of the
people
• Background
• Spread technology to:
– Iran, Libya, and North Korea
– Transfer to non-state actors?
• Pakistani & US Reaction
IRAN
Iranian
Nuclear
Sites
What will US/Israel do?
Obama’s Nuclear Policy
• World w/o Nukes, but role
remains deterrence
• Renounce 1st Use
• Will not use nuclear weapons to
retaliate against a non-nuclear
state (including Chem/Bio)
• Remove all weapons from alert
status
• Control all fissile materiel
Trump’s Nuclear Policy