Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone…

Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it in college. Both the US and the UK wanted to target the war making capacity of the Germans. The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. The disparity for example manifested in the reluctance of…

Same reason we don’t use nuclear weapons anymore I guess. They’re not tactically useful and escalate into unstable situations at the strategic level. They also have really bad pr for the user(s).

This reads as just what is is: some guy on the internet thinking he's got it all figured out. There's no way to decide the relative weight of uselessness and perceived immorality of chemical weapons. Some people clearly do consider them horrible, and it would be quite a surprise if none of those people were in any position of power, from armed forces to civilian government to parliamentarians to voters. The argument otherwise rests on the assumption of perfect efficiency…