The Geneva Protocol at 90, Part 1: Discovery of the dual-use dilemma

[Cross-posted from The Trench.]

Today, 17 June, the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare celebrates its 90th anniversary. Short as the document is, it laid the foundations for the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). How critical that document was to disarmament—the total elimination of a given weapon category—the global community can only appreciate through the growing frustration with the lack of progress in the elimination of nuclear weapons. As the negotiators of the Geneva Protocol came to understand in 1925, without a global ban on use, no other weapon-related activities could legally be curtailed.

This three-part analysis retraces the origins of the Geneva Protocol and identifies its implications for disarmament.

Part 1 focusses on the discovery of the dual-use dilemma posed by toxic chemicals and the conclusions the negotiators drew from their new insights.

Part 2 analyses how the negotiators resolved the dual-use dilemma in meetings preparing the disarmament conference of the 1930s, and in the process came up with solutions that make up the pillars of disarmament today.

Part 3 reflects on how the Geneva Protocol experience may point to a tangible nuclear disarmament strategy in view of the failure of the 2015 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the difficulties in reaching a satisfactory agreement with Iran to shed more transparency on its nuclear activities.

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