[atoav]

Things like these are hard to judge, but a ban is a sign of intent and not a perfect solution to prevent a certain situation.

We collectively agree to ban certain things (e.g. murder), because there are multiple reasons to do so. Some of these reasons are humanitarian, some rational, some economic etc. Yet we see proof each day that neither laws nor punishment will stop murder from happening.

The idea of a ban is not to stop things — but to increase the (social, economical, ...) cost of certain behaviour.

Any actor who fears that cost will abstain from chemical weapons for example. But just like with murder you will always have actors that either decide it is a prize worth taking, or they never ever thought about it at all.

Hard to say how effective those bans were, but they certainly helped to nudge some actors into adopting higher standards.

And once there is a standard the majority agrees on it is hard to go back to a lower standard..