Abstract
The term “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) was long reserved for nuclear explosives, which release upon detonation a million times more energy per weight than conventional explosives like TNT.
More recently, though, and especially now in reference to Iraq, WMD has been expanded to include chemical and biological weapons. This is decidedly misleading terminology, because the three types of weapons are fundamentally different in terms of lethality, in the area they cover and over time; in the availability of measures that can protect against them; and in their potential tactical, strategic, and terrorist uses.
Tactical uses
On the battlefield, biological weapons are not only ineffective because of the time it takes for their effects to take hold, but also dangerous because they can infect friendly troops and deny access to territory the opponent may have abandoned after an attack with biological weapons. Chemical weapons have been used in battlefield situations, but they are not effective against protected troops. Their lethal effects are limited, and they disperse rather quickly, especially in windy conditions.
Nuclear weapons, in contrast, have instantaneous lethal effects against troops and equipment, which cannot be protected from the heat, overpressure, electromagnetic pulse, and prompt radioactivity. But a nuclear detonation is wasteful in the sense that prompt lethality occurs only within a relatively small radius around the point of detonation. A much larger number of people will eventually die from trauma, burn, and radiation sickness, but their eventual fate may or may not have an impact on the outcome of the battle. Even so, the effects of nuclear explosives cannot be countered, and their lethal radius is orders of magnitude larger than that of a chemical weapon.
Strategic counter-population uses
Biological and chemical weapons have been called “capitalist weapons” because they kill people, but do not destroy property.
Used against urban populations, biological weapons can cause hundreds of thousands of casualties in societies with poor public health services. In developed countries, however, prompt inoculation and quarantine can limit their effects in terms of number of victims, the area affected, and the time it takes to get the spread of disease under control. But the outbreak of an epidemic will certainly cause panic among an affected population; therefore biological weapons should be considered terrorist weapons, but not weapons of mass destruction.
Chemical weapons, unless used in very large quantities, may cause hundreds, but probably not thousands, of deaths. Their effects are also limited in space and time. Populations can also be prepared against chemical attack, as is the case in urban areas in Israel. Chemical weapons should also be considered terrorist weapons, but not weapons of mass destruction.
Nuclear weapons have vastly different destructive properties. A single one can physically destroy an entire city instantaneously, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and leave lingering delayed radioactivity that will deny access to a very large area for many years. A nuclear weapon is truly a weapon of mass destruction–of both people and of the facilities and services that would be needed to care for a very large number of wounded and irradiated victims.
Subsuming these three types of weapons under the rubric of “weapons of mass destruction” approaches the disingenuous. Biological and chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction.
And if neither the U.N. inspectors, nor the U.S. investigators who will surely comb the Iraqi countryside after the war comes to an end, fail to find nuclear weapons in Iraq, one must conclude that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction–even if it is found to have had chemical and/or biological weapons.