Thirty Years of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)
Description
This open-access volume consists of papers presented at the conference "Thirty Years of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC): Histories, Achievements, Challenges", held in Berlin, 5-6 October 2023, as well as of additional contributions.
The volume's twenty-two individual chapters reflect on the history and achievements of the CWC over the past thirty years and explore existing and future challenges as the world realigns itself with a new geopolitical and security environment amid ongoing conflicts in volatile regions such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Highlights of the volume include:
Contributions by government officials, renowned scholars, and esteemed members of civil society.
A keynote address by the former Director General of the implementing agency of the CWC, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), providing insights into the treaty's evolution.
A section examining the potential of the CWC as a model for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
More details
Persons
Bretislav Friedrich is a Research Group Leader at the Fritz-Haber-Institut and Honorary Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin. Apart from his research in molecular physics, he maintains an abiding interest in the history of science and is engaged in efforts to eliminate chemical and other weapons of mass destruction. Besides numerous research papers and several books, he co-authored and co-edited One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences (Springer Nature, 2017).
Ulf Schmidt is Senior Professor of Modern History at the University of Hamburg, founding-director of the Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics, and Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His interests are in the history of modern medical ethics, warfare, and policy in twentieth-century Europe and the USA. He is especially interested in the history of authoritarian regimes and modern dictatorships. He is the author, among others, of Justice at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors' Trial (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor. Medicine and Power in the Third Reich (Continuum, 2007); Secret Science. A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments (OUP, 2015); co-editor of Propaganda and Conflict: War, Media and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century (Bloomsbury, 2019), and Ethical Research: The Declaration of Helsinki, and the Past, Present, and Future of Human Experimentation (OUP, 2020). He is Principal Investigator of a six-year ERC Synergy Grant on "Taming the European Leviathan: The Legacy of Post-War Medicine and the Common Good".
Paul Walker coordinates the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) Coalition, is Vice Chair of the Arms Control Association, and is a member of the US Department of State International Security Advisory Board. He has worked on chemical weapons demilitarization since undertaking the first US on-site inspection of a Russian CW stockpile in 1994 when he was a Professional Staff Member of the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. He led the Green Cross International Program on Environmental Security and Sustainability for 20 years and was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2013 "for working tirelessly to rid the world of chemical weapons." Walker holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a Ph.D. in international security from MIT; he is also a US Army Vietnam-era veteran.
Content
Politics and Diplomacy: Perspectives on CWC, Opening Address.- Opening Remarks.- Keynote Address.- Remarks on Challenges to the Chemical Weapons Convention I.- Remarks on Challenges to the Chemical Weapons Convention II.- Histories of Chemical Weapons in the 20th Century: In Denial of the Horrors of Chemical Warfare: Expert Assessments of Chemical Weapons During and After World War One.- Coping with Crisis: Rumours, Science and Poison Warfare in Inter-War Europe.- 'Woe to You for Being a Grandchild': Mutations and the Ethical Case Against WMDs Among Post-War British Geneticists.- Participation of Civil Society in CWC Implementation: How Far We've Come: The Colorado Experience.- Civil Society Participation and Collaboration to Meet the Chemical, Weapons Convention Goals: How Far We Have Come?.- Voices from the Margins: The Unseen Impact of Chemical Weapons on Civilian Populations.- Voices from the Centre: A Mission to Destroy Chemical Weapon Stock-piles Worldwide.- CWC - A Model for the Abolition of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): From Disarmament to Abolition: Learning to Maintain the CWC Model.- The Chemical Weapons Convention as a Model for Verification of the Biological Weapons Convention.- Compliance Management - The Verification Dimension.- Preventing the Weaponization of Mid-Spectrum Agents as the Chemical, Life and Associated Sciences Converge.- Three Decades of Chemical Weapons Destruction: Successes, Failures, and Lessons Learned.- Chemical Weapons and Terrorism: Ongoing and Future Challenges.- The Chemical Weapons Convention as a Tool in the Global Fight against Terrorism.- Defence Against Terror Weapons: Why Are Chemical Weapons Still Used and How Do We Defend Against Them?.- Information Warfare: The Power of Images: The Photographic Document: Aesthetics and Politics of Militarised Photographs.