Absolutt en mulighet, spør du meg. Nervegass hadde sin opprinnelse i laboratoriet til Gerhard Schrader i Spandau citadellet i utkanten av Berlin. dette er også stedet hvor Rudolf Hess satt fengslet til sin dødsdag etter Nurnberg prosessene. I dag er det er grufullt museum som forteller litt om historien til IG Farben, som hadde kontorer her hvor før nevnte Schrader og parnere utviklet Sarin og Tabun. Jeg var der i 2008:
Jeg husker også at vi måtte sette en ampull med saltvann i låret under befalsutdanningen på flyskolen. Tror det var på Hvalsmoen. Ampullen skulle illudere Atropin, en motgift til nervegass. (Red.)
Russia May Risk the Use of
Nerve Agents in Its War With Ukraine
By Julian Spencer-Churchill
August 26,
2024
Frustration in the Kremlin over repeated Russian military failures in
their prosecution of the war against Ukraine, is leading a desperate Moscow to
explore ever more brutal strategies to undermine their adversary’s will to
resist.
Russian atrocities against Ukrainian non-combatants and prisoners of war, and mass deportations, are
primarily the result of dehumanizing state propaganda, and the lack of moral restraint in the
Russian soldiery and supervising officers. However, the artillery and
missile bombardment of Ukrainian non-combatants, is a deliberate strategy by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
administration, like the threat of using nuclear weapons, to break the stalemate of the war, which is having a severe
reputational impact on the Russian military’s ability to deter threats and
assert its influence along its long border.
Moscow may be tempted to escalate its use of chemical weapons (CW) as
part of its incremental exploration of winning tactics. In a significant escalation, Russia has
been accused of using chloropicrin, a choking agent, against Ukrainian forces, with up to fifty soldiers treated. The
accusations, first originating from the Tavria operational-strategic
group commander in southeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian sources
cite over 1,891 incidents of
chemical weapons use as of May 3, 2024, with a sharp increase since
December 2023. Although concrete evidence remains scarce due to the active
conflict zones and information management policies, the use of chloropicrin, a
chemical banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention for riot control,
indicates a severe breach. The delivery systems used by Russia are under
scrutiny, with allegations ranging from modified K-51 hand grenades to MLRS-launched rockets, highlighting a concerning advancement
in chemical warfare tactics. Despite the lack of confirmed casualties
specifically from chloropicrin, its use, often accompanied by reports of
chlorine smells, raises alarms about Russia's potential violation of
international norms and agreements. It is also aligned with Soviet use of these
agents as Riot control agents in Georgia in 1991.
While some authors doubt
whether chemical weapons have ever demonstrated effectiveness, when compared
with well-targeted artillery or airstrikes, their area effects would provide
a force multiplier to the current
Russian tactic of indiscriminate bombardment. A surprise chemical attack
against unprepared Ukrainian infantry in the defense, even on a small scale,
would temporarily break the front, creating the conditions for an offensive
breakthrough by Russian mechanized forces. Against Ukrainian logistics
positions in depth, including airfields, command complexes, train depots,
ports, and hospitals, especially in conjunction with explosive, incendiary
white phosphorous and cluster munitions, would lead to extended evacuations of
whole areas, and consequent disruption of supplies and Ukraine’s ability to
maintain a continuous front. A sustained, broad-fronted and in-depth use of
mixed (nerve and corrosive) agents, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of
broad sectors of the Ukrainian front, perhaps even reversing the territorial
gains around Khakiv and in Donetsk.
By the end of the First World War, chemical shells constituted a
quarter of fired artillery rounds, inflicting eighteen percent of casualties,
of which only another fifteen percent were fatal:killed 0.75 and injured 10.5
soldiers. In addition, the resulting chronic cardiovascular injury resulted in
susceptibility to the post-war influenza epidemic, and shortened life
expectancy among survivors. Contemporary attacks that mixed chemical shelling against
a position of prepared, well-trained troops, would produce casualty rates of
10-30 percent, and as high as 80 percent against untrained troops.
Non-persisting chemical agents can breach forward defences as they act very
quickly, are difficult to detect, are highly
lethal and can dissipate within minutes. As a result, advancing troops would
not even need protective equipment and would require little preparation to take
advantage of its use. Persisting agents, on the other hand, can last for hours or even days and can protect flanks, enable area denial, and reduce mobility.
The combination of persistent and non-persistent agents can be used in a
layered approach to offer the highest chance of achieving tactical objectives.
However, the prevailing evidence from
the Italian use of first
generation gas in its 1935 invasion and
later counter-insurgency in Ethiopia, is that it had its greatest effect on
non-combatants, such as at Jijiga, and during the rout of Abyssinian forces,
such as at Ganale Doria. Italian
tactical air power, machine guns, tanks, and Italy’s overwhelming numbers were far more decisive. Conservative
backbencher, Winston Churchill, in a 1934 speech, identified
incendiary bombs as far more lethal and dangerous to London, than German gas,
though he was unaware of the effects of the new nerve agents.
Sporadic use of chemical weapons by Iraq was decisive in blunting attacks by
unprepared Iranian infantry during the Iran-Iraq War. Even though well-trained
soldiers with chemical protection equipment can reduce their daily losses during
chemical attacks to 2 percent per day, their combat performance suffers
significantly. Even partial exposure to nerve gasses can induce double-vision,
trembling and other neurological disorders. It is instructive to the war in
Ukraine, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein decided to use chemical weapons
against the Kurdish villages in the North as part of the 1987 Anfal campaign,
following a recommendation from military intelligence, in order to raise morale
and secure control. According to the Saddam Hussein FBI
Counterterrorism Files, Saddam ordered the attack, without consulting
others and fully aware of the international consequences, in a moment of
desperation and in response to the Iranian capture of the Al Faw peninsula. The
deeper Iranian forces penetrated into Iraq, the greater the incentive to
escalate to chemical weapons use.
A sizable delivery of NATO countermeasures, including protective
clothing, gas masks and canisters, field decontamination stations for personnel
and vehicles (as gasses can penetrate into the paint of vehicles), and medical
supplies like Atropine, would significantly reduce Ukrainian battlefield losses.
However, stockpiles from the Cold War and the 1991 Gulf War, have long been
depleted, and the West will need to make a major industrial effort to produce
the protective gear at scale. The degrading effects of corrosive chemicals,
which are typically deployed in conjunction with nerve agents, requires
protective clothing to be replaced every few days.
Severe overheating, muffled communications, and the poor visibility
typical of chemical protection suits will cause soldiers to lose over 50 percent of their
operational efficiency, compromising the demands of detailed work like aircraft
piloting and maintenance, and stealthy movement required of the infantry. Worse
still, exposure anxiety has the same symptoms as actual exposure, which can
lead to the erroneous administration of antidotes like Atropine, which can have
their own severe side-effects.
Even worse, a sustained Russian chemical attack against Ukraine cities
would yield an order of magnitude greater losses than current missile and drone
strikes, producing huge refugee flows, and would have a calamitous effect on
morale, almost certainly leading to concessionary ceasefire negotiations by
Kyiv. There are no surviving records that explain why Germany did not use
chemical weapons against civilian targets during the First World War, but it is
assumed by most scholars that mutual deterrence enforced restraint.
Non-use in the European theatre of the Second World War was established
by an explicit Anglo-German declaration at its outbreak in 1939, but sustained
by the reciprocal deterrence of British biological agents (principally
weaponized Anthrax) and German nerve gasses. Despite China’s weakness, implicit
U.S. threats restrained Japan’s war in China, resulting in
only a few lethal applications of blister agents as
in 1944 at Hengyang. There were
occasional casualty-producing accidents, such as the German bombing of a U.S. ship carrying 100 tons of HD mustard gas in 2,000 M47A1 mustard gas
bombs in Bari harbor in Southern Italy, in December 1943.
Although Russia confirmed the destruction of the last of the USSR’s Cold War 40,000 ton arsenal of chemical
agents in 2017, large-scale accumulation of agents as a biproduct of chemical manufacturing is easy.
Though obsolete as a CW agent, chlorine is widely available. In more recent
memory, it saw reported use in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka, and, out of
their abundance, cannot be listed as a controlled agents. Hydrogen cyanide is
highly toxic and used extensively in mining. Thiodiglycol, the precursor to mustard gas, is used as a solvent in textiles and
dyes. In 1988, Iraq was producing 70 tons of mustard and 6 tons of nerve
agents, monthly. On December 3, 1984, the Union Carbide cotton pesticide plant
at Bhopal, India, released 42 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate that
killed 2,500 people and injured 200,000 (50,000 continue to suffer chronic injuries).
With contemporary computing power, generative AI models can design new chemically stable and
increasingly deadly molecules. Novichok, a nerve agent developed by Russia,
is not listed as a scheduled substance out of
the concern that disclosing its molecular structure would allow for other
actors to replicate and proliferate it.
Simply seeking to establish norms and relying on states’ moral reservations not to use chemical
weapons is not a reliable means of deterrence, since conditions and discourse
can change. Furthermore, some have argued that Washington’s policy of promoting
norms of restraint is cynically the result of a strategic calculus that has concluded
that the U.S. comparative advantage is with nuclear weapons. The most significant multilateral effort to ban the stockpiling,
production, and use of chemical weapons, is the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Its attendant verification agency is the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW), whose most severe challenge is that while there is a
list of proscribed agents, most chemicals are dual-use and have no precise regulations
method for limiting their manufacture, and most
chemicals have substitutes.
Despite being dependent on voluntary compliance, the CWC contributes to
deterrence against a Russian chemical weapons attack on Ukraine through
certified verification, enabling a coordinated response, and delegitimation.
First, in an instance of the use of chemical agents in Ukraine, the OPCW will
provide a prompt confirmation of the evidence, as it did in Syria in 2015,
despite non-cooperation from the
Damascus government. Second, this validation of the incident then enables the
coordination of an international response, in the form of targeted sanctions, as in the case of Syria. Although the CWC does not have any independent
role in enforcement, it has, for example, anticipated Russian chemical weapons
use by condemning Moscow’s false claims of Ukrainian use. In t6he event of a chemical attack, states
allied with Moscow and engaging in the commerce of chemical manufactures, such
as Iran, North Korea, and China, may be subject to further trade penalties.
Third, Putin’s popularity is contingent on him delivering a balance of security
and prosperity, as well as satisfying the Russian people’s self-identification
of Russia as engaging in legitimate and moral behavior. The OPCW, as a
super-national organisation, while it may be toothless, benefits from being a
multilateral organ of 193 countries, and
therefore operates with the credibility of international norms, and not simply
representing the interests of Ukraine’s allies. As well, Russia lacks a veto
power in the OPCW’s dispute-settlement process.
The OPCW measures identified above, in conjunction with an increase in
the provision of conventional military supplies to Ukraine, are the optimal
response to a battlefield use of nuclear weapons by Russia. Enabling a
retaliatory chemical weapons response by Ukraine, even if limited, would be
entirely counter-productive: it would erode the support of Ukraine’s allies,
and alienate neutral states beyond the point of recovery. Russian chemical
tactics could be used to justify equipping Ukraine with long-range systems
aimed at safely striking at military targets in Russia’s interior. This is
because Russia would likely use nuclear weapons to signal geographic redlines,
such as over possession of Sevastopol in the Crimea, whereas chemical weapons
are more typically used by leaders who want to preserve the political freedom
to back down. However, in the event that the Kremlin uses chemical weapons as
an instrument to depopulate Ukrainian cities, the scale of which would
constitute genocide, then the only remaining solution is the entry of NATO
ground troops into Ukraine.
Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is
associate professor of international relations at Concordia University, and
author of Militarization and War (2007) and of Strategic Nuclear Sharing
(2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms
control and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification
at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and the then Ballistic Missile
Defense Office (BMDO). He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India,
Indonesia, and Egypt, and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer, 3
Field Engineer Regiment, from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after
9/11.
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