Over lunch my dad asked me why the use of chemical weapons is thought morally worse than other weapons (some of which capable of tremendous carnage and deaths). I couldn't do much better than, "it's against international law." Upon reflection my answer is not entirely silly (I return to that below). It is worth nothing that as so-called 'weapons of mass destruction' go chemical weapons are by no means the worst in killing potential. First I turn to Owen Schaefer, who wrote a very thoughtful blog post with a purported answer:
It is indeed generally worse to be killed by a chemical weapon than a conventional one. Chemical agents such as nerve gas typically cause significant suffering before death – choking, vomiting, chemical burns, defecation, convulsions and the like. For those lucky enough to survive, chronic neurological damage can be expected. Conventional weapons are not pleasant either, to be sure, and can similarly cause severe burns, painful wounds, infections, loss of limbs and so on. Nevertheless, the suffering is pretty much inevitable in a chemical attack, whereas at least those killed by conventional weapons may be killed quickly, even instantly. What’s more, chemical weapons are more dispersive than most conventional weapons, more likely to cause collateral damage to noncombatants. These factors indicate we have strong pro tanto reasons to prefer, if a conflict is going to occur at all, that conventional rather than chemical weapons be used.--Schaefer.
I doubt this answer will fully satisfy my dad (a Holocaust survivor who has seen his share of horrors). For Schaefer does not really address the hypocrisy charge given the fact that the legal status quo on the use of Nuclear weapons is -- pace this advisory opinion -- far more permissive. (I am no expert, so feel free to correct me.) Because I am skeptical about the 'more likely to cause collateral damage' claim, it appears that the main moral rationale for focused outrage over the use of chemical weapons is that we prefer our mass killing without prior suffering to the killed. It is, thus, in the spirit of the displacement of torture and needless suffering in 'civilized' penal codes (suggested by Foucault) since the late Enlightenment.
It is, of course, no argument against this anti-suffering ethic to note that it fits a common anesthized (or aestheticized) picture of war. Yet, if consequences matter (as they clearly do in Schaefer's analysis), we also need to ask ourselves if we are taking all the relevant consequences into considerations.
At one point Schaefer argues:
It allows countries to pursue just wars while providing some limitation on the suffering and collateral damage induced in those wars. What’s more, it disincentives even those fighting unjust wars – if the use of chemical weapons are more likely to prompt an international intervention in an otherwise internal or regional conflict, various actors have some reason to avoid their use.
I have to admit that the older I get the more quasy I am about arguments that allow "countries to pursue just wars." These seem, in practice, to open the door to the pursuit of war more generally. For, the best way to provide "some limitation on the suffering and collateral damage induced in those wars" and all other (unjust) wars is to prevent wars from occurring as much as possible. So, what we really need to know is the general deterring effect of chemical weapons at the decision-to-go-to-war margins. That's an empirical and perhaps a game-theoretical question.*
So, there things stood in my head, until I re-read Schaefer's piece. He argues:
The current international ban on the use of chemical weapons dates back to the wake of World War I, where mustard gas and other chemical agents were commonly deployed with horrific effects. The 1925 Geneva Protocol banned the use of such poisonous gasses. The Protocol was later adopted by the UN and is now part of customary international law. The fact that no countries seriously objected to the protocol...is testimony to its reasonableness.
Now, 'reasonableness' covers a wide variety of considerations. Now let's grant that moral horrors of WWI contributed to the Geneva Protocol. But as, say, Spinoza teaches us such treaties are thought reasonable because they are useful to the parties to the treaty, that is, governments. By Schaefer's own lights there is a clear utility of the Geneva Protocal to governments intending or expecting to go to war at some point (say for a just cause); it reduces the possibility (maybe at the margins) that their soldiers and civilians need to be prepared/equipped to handle chemical weapons attacks. So, this suggests that the proliferation of chemical weapons raises the cost of war (another potential deterrence to it).
Admittedly, if you follow the logic of my analysis to its better end, the key to reducing the likelihood of war is to encourage proliferation of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction (recall this once infamous argument). This logic has the unfortunate side-effect that it makes the pursuit of just war less attractive.
*Wikipedia claims (without sources!): "In the Second World War, the U.S., Great Britain and Germany prepared the resources to deploy chemical weapons, stockpiling tons of them, but refrained from their use due to the balance of terror: the probability of horrific retaliation." This suggests that there are some deterring effects.
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