Police also regularly use tear gas against US citizens. These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (a follow-on to the 1925 "Geneva Convention") allows for the use of riot control agents (like tear gas) for law enforcement purposes.
I think that's inline with what the point the GP was trying to make. Tear gas would otherwise fall into the definition of a weapon that would violate the Geneva Convention if not for the specific earmark that its okay for law enforcement to use it.
Its a bit of a logical loop based only on definitions. Its not against the convention because the law includes the exception, but the exception otherwise goes against the principles of the convention.
> As explained in the military manual of the Netherlands, the prohibition of the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare is inspired by the fact that use of tear gas, for example, in armed conflict “runs the danger of provoking the use of other more dangerous chemicals”. A party which is being attacked by riot control agents may think it is being attacked by deadly chemical weapons and resort to the use of chemical weapons. It is this danger of escalation that States sought to avert by agreeing to prohibit the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare in armed conflict. This motivation is equally valid in international and non-international armed conflicts.
This would be all well and good except that society is not actually constructed by neutral arbiters outside the world, as much as certain parties have their pretensions to that -- they are created by the interactions of interested parties. In other words: class struggle.
Can you elaborate on your point here? It seems that you're linking to documentation of where the exception was made, but I don't think the existence of that exception was in question here.
I don't have a dog in this fight as it were, but the GGP comment was taking issue with the exception allowing a tool that would violate the Geneva Convention in war being used against civilians in a context where law enforcement considers it crowd or riot control.
> A party which is being attacked by riot control agents may think it is being attacked by deadly chemical weapons and resort to the use of chemical weapons. It is this danger of escalation that States sought to avert by agreeing to prohibit the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare in armed conflict.
The implication of the statement “These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.” is that riot agents are considered too barbaric to be deployed even in war, which is not the reason these agents are prohibited in wartime use. Instead, there was a worry that it would be too difficult to differentiate riot agents from chemical weapons (e.g. chlorine or mustard gas), which could lead the party attacked with riot agents to retaliate with chemical weapons.
In the case of the Bonus Army, it was Herbert Hoover's intent to deny a means of existence with bullets to deny existence of vets and their families even sooner. History really wants to rhyme again soon, which is unfortunate.
The Geneva Convention bans all chemical weapons. Part of the rationale for a total ban is to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents. Helpful r/AskHistorians thread:
Chemical weapons are tactically useless to the American combat doctrine, as described in that article. As we have seen, the Russian doctrine (and Ukraine's doctrine) relies on much more brute force to push a meter at a time and much more indiscriminate damage. It's hard to imagine chemical weapons being useless.
He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war. Incidentally, if you looked at how the Roman army used short swords and concluded that "long swords are useless for fighting a war," I bet he would have something to say about it.
> He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war
Keep reading.
"And, so, where do we still see chemical weapons used? In static-system vs. static-system warfare. Thus, in Syria – where the Syrian Civil War has been waged as a series of starve-or-surrender urban sieges, a hallmark of static vs. static fighting – you see significant use of chemical weapons, especially as a terror tactic against besieged civilians. The limited manpower and capabilities of regime forces have caused the war to deteriorate into a series of sieges, sometimes stretching out years (fighting in Aleppo lasted for four years, for instance; the final siege itself ran from February 2014 to its conclusion in December 2016). Anti-regime forces are often poorly equipped (often completely unable, for instance, to engage regime air-assets) and the civilian populace was completely unprotected against chemical munitions, making them far more vulnerable targets.
But a major factor here is actually weakness, in the Syrian regime forces. Assad simply didn’t have a lot of modern air-to-ground munitions; chemical munitions weren’t being compared for cost- and mission-effectiveness against such modern weapons, but against barrels loaded with explosives, nails and scrap – weapons which would have been primitive by the standards of the 1940s, much less now. And – let’s be honest here – his ground forces lack manpower, but also perform quite poorly. Remember: the question for the effectiveness of chemical weapons is value-over-replacement – while the vulnerability of anti-regime forces increased the value, we also must note that Assad’s heavily weakened, static system forces also substantially reduced the value of the replacement. In a fight between what are, in the last analysis, two weak forces, the calculation on the effectiveness of chemical weapons changes."
I read the analysis. I think he's being far too dismissive of the doctrinal considerations in his analysis. Frankly, he is also not an expert on modern warfare in any way, too.
There is a good book called "eating soup with a knife" (and the author has given talks on this) that talks about the importance of doctrine and culture in constructing a fighting force (in this case, the book is mostly about counterinsurgency doctrine and how the American and British militaries are uniquely unsuited to it). An American-style doctrine simply does not work in Russia, even given unlimited resources, because of how the culture and the military work. The weapons are then built to fit the doctrine, not the other way around.
In other words, the "static system" actually is the way to get the Russian military (and the Ukrainian military) to work. That difference in doctrine, by the way, caused a lot of headaches because US weapons are not made for it.
Why would e.g. sarin be useful for indiscriminate damage when A) you could drop a conventional or thermobaric bomb instead, and B) you can circumvent sarin by wearing a $200 suit from AliExpress? I'm not seeing how it's meant to fit into Russian military doctrine other than in niche circumstances.
> Chemical weapons are tactically useless for modern militaries [1]. You’re pretty much always better off pounding with high explosives.
Maybe you know something I don't but in country we were always MOPP Ready:
MOPP Ready – Protective mask is carried. First set of suit, gloves, and boots are available within two hours, second set within six hours.
My mask was usually in the truck or in my pack. We qualify with our masks on a yearly basis. It could be argued that the chance of chemical deterrents that require MOPP 0 and above is negligible due to the our current landscape but that can honestly change based on the opponent or geography.
I similarly condemn such actions. But unless we are in a position to enforce any change in behaviour on Serbia then being unhappy on a web forum doesn't count. It's as useful as "thoughts and prayers".
Take some meaningful action away from this forum and we'll see. I am not in a meaningful position to do so unfortunately.
Action isnt the only measure of meaning or the only determinate of caring.
Caring exists on a spectrum, and isnt black and white.
Thoughts and prayers are a form of caring as well, and an important one. It isn't always what a utilitarian wants, but it is part of a package deal when working with real humans with emotional and social lives.
I think you and I are largely in agreement in that caring is good. Without such caring then no such meaningful actions would ever happen. We need to care, it is a good part of society. But care without action can be ignored.
So as far as Serbia is concerned "no meaningful consequence = the world is fine with.. just about anything."
It is an obvious fallacy to conflate the usage of tear gas canisters with the usage of mustard gas in WWI. They differ drastically in amount/concentration, area of effect, and long term health risks, thus should be treated differently in considering their usage.
Tear gas clearly sits on a spectrum of non-lethal arms with various other options that are more or less harmful. While it's entirely fair to criticize its use on a case by case basis, insofar as disorderly public gatherings can have varying levels of violence/destruction, it would stand to reason that some instances warrant the use of tear gas.
> These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
Isn't that a category ban that came out of a couple specific members of that category that were used and had particularly nasty effects? And then countries' domestic law enforcement rules tend to be defined in different terms.
It is. People think that the "Frangible bullets and teargas banned by the Genevan Conventions" means that they're seen as too cruel to use in war. Unfortunately the "wisdom of crowds" that we've created on social media has decided that it does.
The reality is that we're talking about the views of people in 1925, as informed by a previous group of people in the late 1800's. They were far more concerned with avoiding the use of gas as a weapon than in dealing with the LD50 of the various gasses.
Likewise with frangible/hollow-point ammunition, it isn't even banned by the Geneva Conventions, it was banned under the now-defunct Hague Convention. For better or worse they thought that these "tumbling" or "expanding" bullets were designed to inflict intentionally greater suffering. Who knows maybe the versions that existed in the late 1800's did too, the ones today aren't used because they're worthless against even modest body armor.
But again, people just see text on a picture in a meme and take it to heart.
Except they are used today. Russian 5.45 is famously highly prone to tumbling due to its design with bubble of air in the front of the bullet (even more so than rifle rounds in general). If we look at American 5.56mm, the original M193 was prone to fragmenting, which the original study reports on what would eventually become M16 noted as the reason why it's capable of creating more devastating wounds then the then-standard M80 ball. And modern M855A1 fragments even more reliably (at lower velocities) while still punching through armor.
Pretty much any OTM round is effectively expanding and/or fragmenting (depending on velocity) as well...
So for all practical purposes this convention hasn't been followed for literally decades now. The pretense is that we claim that all these bullet designs just happen to do what they do. Although IIRC the US military authorized use of 9mm JHP in some circumstances, as well, so I think even that veneer is mostly gone by now.
> Who knows maybe the versions that existed in the late 1800's did too
The ones now and back then aren't any different. They do inflict greater suffering when the injury isn't immediately lethal. They essentially maim the target.
There's a legitimate case to be made for home defense because they won't penetrate common building materials nearly as far. It makes them much safer to anyone in the surrounding area.
There are also cases where the additional stopping power is invaluable, for example against a pack of dogs.
You can argue that any GSW that isn't immediately lethal inflicts suffering, I'm not sure how an expanding head changes that. In a handgun round mushrooming is absolutely about terminal ballistics rather than protection against over-penetration, but it is true that expanding .223 and frangible rounds are focused on over-penetration
But again the biggest reason you don't see expanding rounds in war is (especially modern) armor defeats them far more easily than standard .223.
An argument that modern body armor has largely negated the incentive does not imply that the ethical concerns don't exist. They are entirely separate points of discussion.
> You can argue that any GSW that isn't immediately lethal inflicts suffering, I'm not sure how an expanding head changes that.
It's a matter of intent and degree. If we collectively threw up our hands every time we encountered a grey area we'd never be able to agree on anything.
The point is that in the event that a weapon fails to kill the target, there are ethical concerns if it does more damage, particularly long term damage, than absolutely necessary. There's no need to make warfare even worse than it already is.
It's because of the direct effects; chlorine gas for instance will almost instantly blind anyone exposed to it, and tear gas can also be fatal. My great-grandfather was gassed in the First World War and only narrowly survived. Chemical weapons were technically already banned by this point, but it was WW1 that prompted the modern Geneva Protocol (not the Geneva Conventions; these are slight different). Unfortunately, none of the Geneva treaties cover their use outside of wartime.
Many people don't realize this but many of the banned weapons are ones with a decent chance of maiming people but leaving them alive. This is worse for everyone involved in a war (everyone here meaning politicians and generals, not soldiers) than killing them. Cluster munitions, flamethrowers, and anti-personnel mines all fit in this category, too.
AIUI they are mainly banned because they could lead to escalations in chemical weapons usage. If your enemy uses tear gas vs cs gas, it could be hard to tell right away and you might feel pressure to use all the tools you have available (including lethal chemical weapons) vs. Play by the rules.
Of course if you are fighting a real war, there is probably going to be chem weapons used. It happened in Syria. It is happening in Ukraine. It will keep happening. Geneva convention is wishful thinking.
something to consider is that in the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) the military used a bunker buster on a Sarin gas storage facility and shot the sarin high into the atmosphere, where it then floated far downwind and landed on US troops. Ofc, reporting on it doesn't really consider Iraqi civilians and is only weepy about US soldiers.
Murder is generally punished. Unless you spew pollutants with known biological harm leading to numerous cancerous deaths and cover it up and pay off enough politicians. Then it is generally rewarded or at least tolerated.
Some weapons are intrinsically forbidden because of their effects on individuals: soft-point bullets for instance. These are as discriminate as you want them to be, but are nonetheless prohibited in conflicts. Thus it's not just indiscriminate weapons that are banned by international agreement!
When asked why tear gas is banned, the answer I gave was "the weapon is indiscriminate and chemical" not "all banned weapons are indiscriminate and chemical".
For example lasers used to blind soldiers are generally banned as well and as you point out, lasers are basically arbitrarily discriminate.
Most of Geneva Convention items are things that are huge liabilities to the own sides. e.g., there were such chemical gases that react with gas mask filters so to specifically bypass filtering. No one in Europe wants to pay welfare costs for factory leaks or downwind collateral damages in neighboring countries or army of veterans maimed with that thing, but they will have to if their enemies would use it to their advantages. Agreeing to a universal ban solves that problem.
They have been used against US citizens in the United States? That is news to me.
If they have been used in other countries against US diplomatic corps that is an act of war.
Now if a US citizen uses a visit to a foreign country to protest against a government they’re on their own. I’m sorry, but US citizens shouldn’t be engaging in that and the US state department has no obligation to protect that condition.
Was an especially commonly discussed topic in 2020 during the George Floyd related protests. Some notable video resources on how to defend against these devices and what one can expect: [0] and [1]. To save you time, if i remember correctly, the most effective is one of those plastic riot shields held in reverse to direct the sound back at the sender (notably pretty difficult when you don't want to just hit other protesters, or don't know where the sound is coming from and/or are getting hit by reflections).
I went hiking in Honolulu once with this woman who worked for the US gov I met on tinder. We went through this bamboo grove behind the city. All of sudden there was this overwhelming tiredness that took me over and I had to sleep. I needed to sit down by a rock and fell asleep very quickly. Then I woke up really quickly but it seemed like avea have passed. It was crazy. I was super healthy back then and don't have any issues or take any medicines. It was crazy, let me tell you, that woman was very precise but very strange.