CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

I. NATURE AND HISTORY OF CHEMICAL WARFARE (CW)

The U.S. Army defines chemical warfare as the tactics and technique of conducting warfare by use of toxic chemical agents. Such agents may be in any physical state but when thought of as CW, the most common form of military use and reaction to such use is gas. Chemical weapons can be designed to cause (1) either death or disability to man, (2) destruction or damage to food, animals and crops, and (3) the depression or removal of other living things in accordance with a specific military tactic. The general types and effects of the principal chemical agents are as follows: 1

Nerve gases. The most lethal (or deadly) chemical weapons. Generally odorless and colorless, they cause asphyxiation by paralyzing the human nervous system. As little as one-fiftieth of a drop can kill a man.

Incapacitating agents. Can produce temporary paralysis, blindness, or deafness. Some are said to cause hallucinations.

Riot control gases.-Sometimes called tear gas, these cause watering of the eyes, coughing, and breathing difficulties. Large amounts can cause prolonged nausea. Victim usually recovers in a few hours.

Harassing agents.-Include mustard gas, which caused many casualties in World War I. Mustard gas causes severe burns to eyes and lungs and blisters the skin. Large amounts can kill. Defoliants and herbicides.-Used against vegetation rather than humans. Can be sprayed on forests and jungles to expose enemy hiding places, also effective in killing crops in enemy-held territory. May cause eye irritation, stomach upsets, or arsenic poisoning in humans.

Classifying incendiaries, flamethrowers, napalm, smoke, dyemarkers, etc. as conventional devices, and not as arch-typical CW, and also excluding some interesting historical accounts of poisoned wine and water and sulfur fumes, chemical warfare can be said to have begun with the German chlorine gas attack at Ypres in April 1915. There soon followed retaliation by the British, then successive escalations of new gases by the Germans, French, British and Americans. Few people today realize how extensive the use of gas was in World War I. All told perhaps 30 different types of chemicals and combinations of chemicals were developed and introduced into operations. At least seven different types of gas masks were manufactured and supplied to troops by the British alone (some 50 million masks during the entire war). None of these was very effective in protecting against the blistering mustard gas which was introduced by the Germans in July 1917 and by the Allies about a year later.

1 From Senior Scholastic, Feb. 7, 1969. (See app. A for further details.)

There were thousands of gas cylinders (10,000 cylinders per kilometer of front when used by the Germans), 125,000 tons of gas, 9 million artillery shells filled with mustard gas alone (by 1918, 50 percent of the artillery shells fired by the Germans were gas shells), over a million casualties, and nearly 100,000 deaths.23 The restraint if any, was a function of the rate at which chemists, chemical industry and engineers could outwit, outman, or "outgun" their opponents. It was perhaps only production limitations, logistic and climatic difficulties, and poor military judgment in following up on initial advantage that prevented World War I from becoming a full-blown gas warfare catastrophe. However, even as it turned out, the gas excesses were severe enough to provide the basis of reactions resulting in the nonemployment of mass casualty producing chemical agents in World War II.

It also turned out that article 23 of the Hague Conventions of 1899 did not prevent the signatories-Germany, France, Russia, AustriaHungary and "adhering" Great Britain from using gas warfare in World War I. The specific declaration, which incidentally the United States did not ratify, bound the above nations and some 20 others "to abstain from the use of projectiles, the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." Legal and semantic technicalities overtook the spirit of the declaration in that there was doubt that the tear gases in the early German "projectiles" were effectively "asphyxiating and deleterious"; and when a toxic gas which was definitely effective was employed by the Germans on April 22, 1915, it was released from cylinders instead of "projectiles." But the intent of the declaration had been breached and the escalation of gas warfare proceeded from there. Neither the intent nor the phraseology of article 23 mattered after that, so far as World War I was concerned. Although tactical advantage was achieved from time to time, the gas warfare was not strategically decisive; there is no reason to believe that it had any effect on the outcome of the war except for the specific nature of the casualties.

The use of chemical warfare since World War I has been limited to the following:

1936.-Mussolini's airplanes dropped mustard gas on barefooted troops during the Abyssinian campaign.

1937-43.-Japanese made intermittent small toxic gas attacks against Chinese forces. The Chinese also claimed the Japanese dropped plague-infested fleas from airplanes during this same period. A similar charge was made against the United States by the Chinese Communist regime during the Korean war. Japan and the United States denied the charges.

May 10, 17, and 18, 1967.-The United Arab Republic dropped toxic gas (believed to be mustard gas) on Yemeni villages. According to reports, 318 persons were killed and large numbers of animals, including cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, and birds.

2 Brown, Frederick J., Chemical Warfare, A Study in Restraints (chapter 1, The Heritage of the War) Princeton University Press, 1968.

Research in CBR, report of the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representa tives, 86th Cong., first sess., Aug. 10, 1959; prepared by Dr. Charles S. Sheldon II, based on hearings of the full committee held on June 16-22, 1959.

The nature and fact of the deaths was confirmed by doctors of the International Red Cross who conducted autopsies and examined four survivors who were in the affected area.*

Vietnam.-Chemical warfare in Vietnam includes the use of tear gas, presumably on the part of both the free world military assistance forces and the Vietcong-North Vietnamese military army forces. This consists of nonlethal-nonpersistant agents similar to those used to control civil disturbances. In order to reduce the risk of Vietcong ambush the United States began experimenting with defoliants in January 1962. Now at least five different types of defoliating agents are in use. Some of the agents (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T) are of the weed-killing variety and have been in use for this purpose in the United States since 1945. Others are arsenicals like cacodylic acid, the long term effects of which are not known, and Picloram which is among the most potent, persistent, and toxic plant poisons known. In Vietnam, Picloram is combined with 2,4-D to make a formulation called "White" by the U.S. Army. Indications are that employment is directed at the dense forests of Vietnam. Some American scientists feel that since most of the other plants and animals in a tropical forest are connected ecologically to the canopy in some vital way, several months of defoliation in the forests of Vietnam is certain to cause the extinction of many animal populations. Calculation of the amount of all herbicides dropped on the Vietnamese countryside indicate that some 2,240,000 acres 7 were involved. Some areas were treated more than once. The United States has been able to use these types of chemicals in Vietnam thus far without escalation to other classes of weapons on either side.

Among charges of chemical warfare in Vietnam against the United States which have been denied are a series of chemical attacks throughout 1962 which killed crops, livestock, and people. Also, at the U.N. on July 28, 1964, the Cambodian Foreign Minister claimed that United States-Vietnamese planes dumped toxic chemicals (a powder) on six Cambodian villages, killing a total of 76 persons.

The United States does recognize the spirit of international legal restraint as well as popular opposition with respect to the introduction of lethal chemical weapons into warfare. Although enemy chemical retaliation capability in Vietnam is probably small and although the use of persistent lethal chemicals might offer tactical advantage to the United States in guerrilla and jungle warfare, legal, popular, and even military restraints seem to be as effective in Vietnam as they were in Korea and World War II.

Viney, D. E., "Constraining Chemical-Biological Warfare," Disarmament, No. 15, September 196 (pp. 1-4). "CBW: What's Being Done in Vietnam?" Scientific Research, Nov. 11, 1968 (p. 26).

Harvey, George R. and Jay D. Mann, "Picloram in Vietnam," Scientist and Citizen, September 1968 (pp. 165–171).

Tschirley, Fred H., "An Assessment of Ecological Consequences of the Defoliation Program in Vietnam." (Based on a report prepared for the Department of State and released by the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in September 1968.)

Review of recent activities in the area of CBW, by Cedric W. Carr, Jr., Foreign Affairs Division, Library of Congress, Feb. 3, 1965.

Lethal: drooling, sweating, nausea, vomiting, cramps, involuntary defecation or urination, twitching, jerking, staggering, headache, confusion, drowsiness, coma, convulsions, asphyxia.

Harassing: burning feeling in mucous membranes, severe eye irritation and lachrymation, headache.

Harassing: burning feeling on moist skin, copious lachrymation. Harassing: headache, sneezing, coughing, chest pains, nausea, vomiting.

Harassing: stinging and burning

feeling on skin, coughing, tears, chest tightness, nausea. Slowing of physical and mental activity, giddiness, disorientation, hallucinations, occasional maniacal behavior.

Source: Reproduced from "The Silent Weapons" by Robin Clarke, published by David McKay Co. Used by permission of the author and publisher.