Chemical Weapons U-Turn

To celebrate C&EN’s 90th anniversary, one Editor’s Page each month examines materials from C&EN Archives. Featured articles are freely downloadable for one month.

The United Nations has confirmed the use of chemical weapons in the civil war in Syria: An attack near the capital, Damascus, on Aug. 21 delivered the nerve gas sarin, killing about 1,400 civilians.

Because they are invisible and indiscriminate, chemical weapons incite universal condemnation. But they were not always held with such disapprobation, as C&EN’s coverage shows. Over the decades, however, views changed, including those of the American Chemical Society.

In the 1920s, chemical warfare was a key area of inquiry. In fact in 1924, ACS members visited the workshop of the Chemical Warfare Service as part of that year’s spring meeting activities. The service was the precursor of the Chemical Corps, the U.S. Army branch responsible for defending against nonconventional weapons.

A Nov. 20, 1926, item by J. Merritt Matthews, “Chemical Warfare Is Here To Stay,” was a zealous defense of chemical weapons when efforts to restrict their use were gathering in Europe. Then on Dec. 10, 1926, ACS Secretary Charles L. Parsons wrote to ACS members, asking them to urge their senators to vote against ratifying the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous, or Other Gases & of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare—the Geneva Protocol. In a letter to Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, Parsons explained ACS’s reasons for opposing the treaty. Among them was the view that use of debilitating gases is preferable to blowing up combatants with “bullets, shells, and destructive methods,” and banning chemical warfare “will lead to unnecessary suffering, maiming, and death in wars to come.” As a result of lobbying by ACS and others, the U.S. did not ratify the Geneva Protocol then.

The views of chemical warfare were positive until the 1950s. For example, in the June 16, 1958, editorial, Walter J. Murphy singled out Parsons as “the moving spirit in the effort to prepare the country for gas warfare should the U.S. be forced into the European conflict” during World War I. “His wise leadership and indomitable courage served the country well at a time when few, if any, political leaders understood the need in war of chemical research and a strong chemical industry.”

Public opinion may have flipped during the Vietnam War. Even while encouraging the use of chemical agents in that war, C&EN Editor Richard L. Kenyon, on Aug. 16, 1965, noted the “widespread unfavorable public reaction” to the use of sublethal levels of chemical agents. In his view, use of amounts enough only to “flush all parties out of protective hiding” was far better than “the indiscriminate slaughter that comes of throwing grenades into caves where there may be not only enemy guerillas but also civilians.”

Yet the galvanizing factor may have been the U.S.’s use of crop-killing chemicals to clear jungle foliage that can hide the enemy. C&EN reported on Jan. 24, 1966, that scientists called on President Lyndon B. Johnson to publicly forbid the use of chemical weapons by U.S. armed forces. The practice is “barbarous,” they said, representing “an attack on the entire population of the region where the crops are destroyed, combatants and noncombatants, alike.”

By the 1970s, ACS was testifying in Congress against chemical warfare and in favor of ratifying the Geneva Protocol. Charles C. Price, who was ACS president in 1965, explained that ACS changed its position because “chemical agents now have become agents of mass destruction for civilians for whom there is no effective or practical protection.” The U.S. ratified the protocol on April 10, 1975.

Also in the 1970s, the UN began work to ban chemical weapons, which culminated in the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1995. The treaty bans the production, storage, use, and transfer of chemical weapons and requires the destruction of arms and production facilities.

It’s safe to bet that ACS’s position on chemical weapons will not make another U-turn. It’s less clear how the horrific tools of war can be truly banished or at least kept away from tyrants.