Biden Administration Announces That the Last Chemical Weapons in the U.S. Arsenal Have Been Destroyed

The Biden administration announced that the job of complying with the Chemical Weapons Convention signed in 1993 is over after the last chemical munitions were destroyed.

As a technical achievement, the destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile is remarkable. At least 34,000 tons of chemical weapons have been destroyed or their lethal elements made inert since the 1990s when the U.S. began to dismantle its weapons.

Almost 30 years went by, and untold billions of dollars were spent at eight facilities in the continental U.S. and one site on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

“For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate our chemical weapons stockpile,” Biden said, “bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons.”

In truth, it’s not a very big step as both Syria and Russia has proven in recent years with the widespread use of chlorine gas on civilians during the Syrian civil war.

Technically, there’s nothing illegal in the manufacture of chlorine. There are dozens of legitimate uses of the substance. But using chlorine in bombs and as an aerosol to kill civilians is forbidden under a treaty signed by both Syria and Russia.

Not that it mattered. Barack Obama threatened to go to war against Bashar Assad’s Syria in 2013 over the use of gas but then decided the political cost of backing down was less than the political cost of actually bombing Syria.

“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons,” Obama said. “As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical weapons on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and use them to attack civilians.”

Support from Congress was not forthcoming, and Obama reached a deal with Vladimir Putin to save his political hide. He got Putin to certify that Assad had “dismantled” his chemical stockpiles — a blatant lie that Obama swallowed whole and got the media to move on to some other topic.

The U.S. destroying its chemical weapons stockpile isn’t going to bring the world “one step closer to a world free” of chemical weapons. As of now, Egypt, Israel, North Korea, and South Sudan are not even signatories to the agreement, and several other nations — Russia, Syria, and China — have used chemical weapons despite being signatories to the CWC.

It’s delusional to claim any kind of success when lethal chemical weapons can be manufactured in a third-world lab with little trouble. The world has not seen the last of chemical weapons attacks, and the U.S. disarming itself may not be the best course of action.