Chemical Weapon Proliferation
Despite numerous efforts to reduce or eliminate them, many nations continue to research and/or stockpile chemical weapon agents. Most states have joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires the destruction of all chemical weapons by 2012. Twelve nations have declared chemical weapons production facilities and six nations have declared stockpiles of chemical weapons. All of the declared production facilities have been destroyed or converted to civilian use after the treaty went into force. According to the United States government, at least 17 nations currently have active chemical weapons programs.
To the right is a summary of the nations that have either declared weapon stockpiles, or are suspected of secretly stockpiling or possessing CW research programs.
Read more about Chemical Weapon Proliferation: Chemical Weapon Details, Per Nation
Famous quotes containing the words chemical and/or weapon:
“If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary to fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The weapon of the Republic is terror, and virtue is its strength.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)