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Weapon of mass destruction

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Weapons of Mass Destruction is also the name of rapper Xzibit's 2004 album.

Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are weapons designed to kill large numbers of people, typically targeting civilians and military personnel alike. Some types of WMDs are considered to have a psychological impact rather than a strictly military usefulness. The phrase was coined in 1937 to describe aerial bombardment by conventional explosive bombs in large quantities, the types of weapons today considered to be in this class are often referred to as NBC weapons or ABC weapons:

Other terms include weapons of indiscriminate destruction, weapons of mass disruption and weapons of mass effect.

Historic use of the term WMD

The first record of the term Weapon of Mass Destruction is from a December 28, 1937 Times article on the bombing of Guernica, Spain, by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War:

Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?

This was in reference to blanket bombing of Guernica, during which 70% of the town was destroyed. Neither nuclear nor biological weapons yet existed, although chemical weapons by this time had seen wide use.

In 1946, soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United Nations issued its first resolution. It was to create the Atomic Energy Commission (predessor of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA), and used the wording:

...atomic weapons and of all other weapons adaptable to mass destruction.

Since then, WMD was used widely in the arms control community. The terms Atomic, Biological and Chemical (ABC) weapon, and then Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) weapon were introduced over time.

The modern use of WMD to refer to NBC weapons was coined by UN Resolution 687 in 1991. This resolution refers to the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose to peace and security, and mentions in particular nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and the three relevant treaties:

It was not until post-9/11 that WMD entered mainstream lexicon. The term entered widespread use in connection with the 2002 Iraq disarmament crisis and the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that became a pretext for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The American Dialect Society voted WMD the word (or phrase) of the year in 2002 ([1]).

Current definitions

Today, the term WMD means different things to different people. The most widely used definition is that of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. This definition has been used in the international community ([2]), although there is no treaty or customary international law that contains an authoritative definition of WMD. Instead international law has been used with respect to the specific categories of weapons within WMD, and not to WMD as a whole.

The NBC definition has also been used in official US documents by the US President ([3], [4]), the US Central Intelligence Agency ([5]), the US Department of Defense ([6], [7]), and the US General Accounting Office ([8]).

Other documents expand the definition of WMD to include radiological or conventional weapons. The US military refers to WMD as:

Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part of the weapon.([9])

While in US civil defense, the category is now Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE), which defines WMD as:

(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, or rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces [113 g], missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce [7 g], or mine or device similar to the above. (2) Poison gas. (3) Any weapon involving a disease organism. (4) Any weapon that is designed to release radiation at a level dangerous to human life. (18 U.S.C. Section 2332a)

The FBI also considers conventional weapons (i.e. bombs) to become WMD: A weapon crosses the WMD threshold when the consequences of its release overwhelm local responders.

An additional condition applied to WMD is that the launching of the weapons must be strategic. In other words, it would be designed to have consequences far outweighing the size and effectiveness of the weapons themselves ([10]). Conventional weapons are quite capable of achieving this.

Differences among WMD types

While politicians and the media generally lump all WMD types together in terms of threats, they each differ in their ease of development, ability to cause damage, and in the nature of such damage. While dangerous, chemical weapons have been less deadly than conventional weapons; biological weapons have rarely done harm. Atomic weapons by far outweigh the potential impacts by the other types of WMD. Chemical weapons expert Gert Harigel believes that, as a result, only nuclear weapons should be called weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, so called "weapons of mass destruction" account for a small proportion of overall deaths due to weapons in general. Colombia's Vice President Gustavo Bell Lemus told the UN that deaths from bullet-firing weapons "dwarf that of all other weapons systems - and in most years greatly exceed the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki".

WMD use and control

All such weapons, save nuclear, are banned in the United States, Yemen and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. This includes the samples (such as Anthrax) that had previously been created by the US in germ warfare experiments earlier in the 20th Century, and subsequently destroyed.

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 1972

See main article: Biological Weapons Convention.

Chemical Weapons Convention, 1993

See main article: Chemical Weapons Convention.

UN Resolution 1540

Adopted by the UN Security Council on April 28, 2004, UN Resolution 1540 recognizes the threat posed to international peace and security by nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as their means of delivery. It calls upon greater effort by nations to limit proliferation of such weapons.

Responses to WMD

As mentioned above, weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, are rarely used because their use is essentially an "invitation" for a WMD retaliation, which in turn could escalate into a war so destructive it could easily destroy huge segments of the world's population.

During the Cold War, this understanding became known as mutally assured destruction and was largely the reason war never broke out between the WMD-armed United States and Soviet Union.

Generally, it can be said that WMD are not very popular with much of the world. Their destructiveness is a source of unease for many, and there are always fears that they could be used by a crazy or unstable leader. There are strong movements to prevent further proliferation of WMD, as well as to eliminate nations' current WMD stocks.

Weapons of mass destruction are used to justify the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against "rogue states" thought to be in danger of possessing or developing them. Opponents of this strategy note that the United States is the country that possesses one of the greatest arsenal of WMD on earth, and the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons in anger (at Hiroshima and Nagasaki), whereas others argue that the strategy is aimed solely at those whose intentions may be dangerous and that the current nuclear powers have all shown an unwillingness to use their WMDs outside extreme circumstances, whereas we have no similar guarantees with nations like North Korea.

Countries suspected of having WMD

In the year 2000 the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), issued a list of over 30 countries they considered "possessing, pursuing or capable of acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and missile delivery systems." However it should be noted that this list omitted countries obviously capable of initiating a nuclear weapons programme should they desire (e.g. Germany and Canada). It should also be noted that being on this list did not indicate that any such programmes existed within these countries, or any political will to begin such programmes. In alphabetical order, the members of the list are:

Media coverage of WMD

In 2004 the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) released a report ([11]) examining the media’s coverage of WMD issues during three separate periods: India’s nuclear weapons tests in May 1998; the US announcement of evidence of a North Korean nuclear weapons program in October 2002; and revelations about Iran's nuclear program in May 2003. The CISSM report notes that poor coverage resulted less from political bias among the media than from tired journalistic conventions. The report’s major findings were that:

  1. Most media outlets represented WMD as a monolithic menace, failing to adequately distinguish between weapons programs and actual weapons or to address the real differences among chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons.
  2. Most journalists accepted the Bush administration’s formulation of the “War on Terror” as a campaign against WMD, in contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many journalists made careful distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD.
  3. Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration’s perspective on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats, an policy options.
  4. Too few stories proffered alternative perspectives to official line, a problem exacerbated by the journalistic prioritizing of breaking-news stories and the “inverted pyramid” style of storytelling.

In a separate study published in 2005 ([12]), a group of researchers assessed the effects reports and retractions in the media had on people’s memory regarding the search for WMD in Iraq during the 2003 Iraq War. The study focused on populations in two coalition countries (Australia and USA) and one opposed to the war (Germany). Results showed that US citizens generally did not correct initial misconceptions regarding WMD, even following disconfirmation; Australian and German citizens were more responsive to retractions. Dependence on the initial source of information led to a substantial minority of Americans exhibiting false memory that WMD were indeed discovered, while they were not. This led to three conclusions:

  1. The repetition of tentative news stories, even if they are subsequently disconfirmed, can assist in the creation of false memories in a substantial proportion of people.
  2. Once information is published, its subsequent correction does not alter people's beliefs unless they are suspicious about the motives underlying the events the news stories are about.
  3. When people ignore corrections, they do so irrespective of how certain they are that the corrections occurred.

The degree to which since the war ended US citizens believed the misconception that WMD had been discovered in Iraq varied with the respondants' preferred media source:

Media source Respondants believing WMD had been found in Iraq since the war ended
Fox 33%
CBS 23%
NBC 20%
CNN 20%
ABC 19%
Print media 17%
PBS-NPR 11%

Source: Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, PIPA, October 2, 2003.

Public perceptions of WMD

Awareness and opinions of WMD have varied during the course of their history.

On April 15, 2004, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) reported ([13]) that US citizens showed high levels of concern regarding WMD, and that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons should be a very important US foriegn policy goal, accomplished through multilateral arms control rather than the use of military threats. A majority also believed the US should be more forthcoming with its biological research and its NPT committment of nuclear arms reduction, and incorrectly thought the US was a party to various non-proliferation treaties.

Use of the term in propaganda

The phrase Weapons of Mass Destruction or WMD in short has been used numerous times by the White House in its bid to overthrow the previous Iraqi regime led by Saddam Hussein. Intelligence reports were cited by the US and UK governments suggesting that Saddam was stockpiling WMDs on a massive scale which were used as justification for the subsequent US invasion. However, no Iraqi WMDs have been found. Since the invasion, repeated allegations have been made in the media that the campaign was an example of government propaganda using the method of the Big Lie [14].

See also: Weapons of mass deception.

Weapons of mass destruction and their related impacts have been a mainstay for popular culture since the beginning of the Cold War, as both political commentary and humorous outlet. Nuclear weapons have been a central theme of movies since The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); two of the most famous are Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and Fail-safe (1964). Biological weapons have also featured, as in Twelve Monkeys (1995).

During the 2003 Iraq War, a parody ([15]) based on Internet Explorer's "404 File Not Found" message was created, poking fun at the state of international affairs, and for a time was the #1 hit for the Google search "weapons of mass destruction".

See also: Nuclear weapons in popular culture.

References

Definition and origin

International Law

Media

Public perceptions

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