“Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile — bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons,” stated Biden.
US destroys its last chemical weapons: Though several nations are thought to have hidden stockpiles of chemical weapons, the United States was the final signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention to finish the work of destroying its “declared” stockpiles when it went into effect in 1997.
More than a century after the uncontrolled use of chemical weapons during World War I resulted in widespread soldier casualties and maiming, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons hailed the milestone as a “historic success” of disarmament.
The US statement meant that all of the chemical weapons stockpiles throughout the world had been “verified as irreversibly destroyed,” according to the OPCW.
OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias remarked, “I congratulate all States Parties, including the United States of America in this occasion, on this tremendous achievement for the international community.
The elimination of “an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction” has, according to Biden, never been independently verified.
sarin, deadly mustard gas, and VX
A declaration was made shortly after the US military, at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, a US Army site, destroyed the last batch of deadly chemical agents, totaling 500 tonnes. The destruction of these agents took four years to accomplish.
The US had long-standing stocks of rockets and artillery projectiles loaded with mustard gases, nerve agents including VX and sarin, and blister agents.
After witnessing the terrible outcomes of these weapons during World War I, they received widespread condemnation.
During World War II, these weapons were not heavily utilized, but many nations preserved and developed them in the years that followed.
Iraq’s deployment of nerve gas against Iran during their 1980s war was the most notable application since the 1970s.
More recently, the OPCW and other organisations claim that Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria used chemical weapons against opponents during the country’s civil conflict.
Extremely hazardous work
The Chemical Weapons Convention, signed in 1993 and effective since 1997, requires the United States to destroy all of its chemical agents and munitions by September 30 of this year.
According to the OPCW, other deal members have already destroyed their holdings, totaling about 72,000 tonnes since the agreement went into effect.
The United States, after Russia, had the second-largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world in 1990, according to the US Arms Control Association.
The Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated by the superpowers and other nations as the Cold War came to an end.
Eliminating the stocks posed a risky task as it required neutralizing both the chemical agents and the weapons in which they were hidden.
In 2017, Russia finished eliminating all of its disclosed stockpiles.
The US had less than 600 tonnes left to destroy by April 2022.
Additionally, Biden called upon the four nations of Egypt, Israel, North Korea, and South Sudan to sign or ratify the pact to guarantee the destruction of all chemical weapons in the world.
At this time, experts suspect that Myanmar, Iran, Russia, and Syria, four signatory nations, are not in compliance due to suspicions of holding undeclared stockpiles.
“Biden stated, ‘Russia and Syria should resume compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and admit their undeclared programs, which they have used to commit egregious atrocities and attacks.'”