It is fairly easy for well-disciplined and equipped troops, like those of the ROK and the United States, to defend against chemical weapons, but civilians are more difficult to defend unless they are warned in advance of an impending attack and can therefore put on their gas masks and other personal protective equipment.
Although the international community has correctly made ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program a priority, leaving the DPRK with chemical weapons is short-sited given how easily North Korean artillery could lob artillery shells filled with poisonous gases against Seoul and other South Korean cities. A more pressing concern is that might offer chemical weapons or their components and technologies to non-state actors or rogue regimes since North Koreans seem willing to sell anything to anyone for the right price.
The U.S. Army recently announced that it was increasing its chemical weapons defense capabilities in South Korea, including by returning a special WMD decontamination unit to the Peninsula. In addition to defending South Koreans and U.S. soldiers and civilians from a DPRK chemical weapons attack, they might need to intervene in the North should the DPRK regime collapse and, as in Syria and Libya, the specter of non-state actors seizing or selling the chemical weapons to other buyers. An even more gruesome scenario would occur if DPRK leaders, fearing popular unrest, emulated Saddam Hussein in using chemical weapons against its own people.
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) bans countries from using, or threatening to use, chemical agents as weapons. The Convention’s provisions apply universally in terms of time and place. The treaty is of indefinite duration and seeks comprehensive coverage of all activities by both government and private sector actors. The CWC has achieved wide membership, facilitated the destruction of almost all the massive stocks of chemical weapons stockpiled in the 20th century, and contributed to the lack of interstate wars with chemical weapons since the treaty’s entry into force in 1997.
In 2009, India became the third country—after Albania and South Korea—to completely eliminate its chemical weapon stockpiles since the convention entered into force in April 1997. Yet, Syria, North Korea, and other states of proliferation concern have yet to join the convention. As the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which administers the treaty, has pointed out, the CWC will need to evolve from an institution primarily concerned with disarming member states’ existing weapons stockpiles, which will be largely complete within the next few years after Russia and the United States complete their elimination schedules, to an entity that prevents new countries and non-state actors, especially terrorist groups, from acquiring them.
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denis the menace
There is a TON of evidence available on the Internet pointing to deep Amerikan complicity in the supply of chemical substances to Iraq but this information has been suppressed and censored by TheDiplomat. Speaks huge volumes about the lack of moral integrity about those claiming their right to hold the moral high ground and lecture other people. Man, what is the world coming to ?
Kanes
Some countries may need them for a MAD (mutually assisted destruction) defence. National security comes first for all countries, east or west.
ram
what about india
Washington’s Double Standards
Why does Western writers like to focus on Asia and not Europe and North America and Israel? As though they have no chemical weapons? Or the capacity to rapidly produce it when the a decision is made to make it? Which is just as culpable as having stockpiles of the chemicals itself. Why are the same standards not applied to the West?
The West are like the policeman who insisted on charging a woman reading a book in the middle of a lake on the basis that her boat had all the necessary equipment to enable her to conduct illegal fishing and that she could do it any second he was gone. The woman countered with a threat to sue the policeman for sexual harassment. "Why? Asked the shocked policeman. "I have not even thought nor entertained such an action". "Yeah," says the woman. "But you have all the necessary equipment to do it any second you want".
Kangmin Zheng
@Washington’s Double Standards,
The obvious double standards are CCP wants to bring Senkaku to UN Court but refuses to do the same for South China Sea.
Diverting Issue As usual
What has Senkakus got to do with what was commented, you bl**dy CIA troll? When rational and good points arremade, your standard tactic is to divert the issue and take potshots at your target. What a d*ckhead! Get an honest job, bud.
American Patriot
@ wumao trolls
There exists a double standard because the USA has been well-established for 70 years as the world's policeman and as such, it is our responsibility to ensure that chemical weapons do not get into the hands of irrational actors such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Without the US security umbrella the proliferation of WMD's would be much greater and pose a huge threat to the continuation of the current international order. It's a tough job to carry out but you should be thanking America for taking on such a noble role.
denis
There is a ton of irrefutable evidence on the Internet pointing to deep Amerikan complicity in the supply and usage of chemical weapons by Iraq yet this information has been deliberately and severely suppressed by the editors of TheDilomat. Speaks volumes about the lack of integrity here.zo
As for why this article in particular focuses on the Asia Pacific, I draw your attention to the fact that “The Diplomat is the premier international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region” (from the ‘About’ page).
VF89
You don't wanna know what kind of ingredients they used to make food from meat bun to 'fresh' egg.
Lnrds
The only chemicals I see in Asia is China's pollution and milk scandal.