Soviet Union chemical weapons stockpile

It had long been clear that verification would prove a sticking point. In 1970 the US representative at the CCD had argued the appropriate verification for a ban on chemical weapons was still to be developed. Six years later the US representative at the CCD noted that his country maintained that in the absence of verification measures capable of detecting clandestine chemical weapon stockpiles, the objective of a complete prohibition of chemical weapons could not be realized in a single comprehensive agreement . The Soviet Union, on the other hand, argued that the possibilities of national control. .. were sufficiently broad and were based on scientific methods of analysis . 

This political and military environment influenced the concepts built into the CWC. On the one hand, the negotiators attempted to create a legal instrument that would provide reliable assurances that a global ban on the acquisition and possession of chemical weapons and on their destruction could in fact deal with the huge stockpiles that had been accumulated by the Soviet Union and the United States. This included the need to design verification and other measures in such a way that they... 

Russia inherited the world s largest declared stockpile of chemical weapons, over 40,000 metric tons, from the Soviet Union. The Russian government has identified chemical weapons destruction as one of its two priority areas of concern for the G-8 Global Partnership accord against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Although issues of economics have often dominated what has been said and written about the disposal programme, lack of local community support is also cited as a major political obstacle. Many of the same concerns detailed extensively by US citizens are also asserted by Russian citizens. Foremost is concern about the detrimental effects of chemical weapons destruction on public health and the environment . ... 

During the Cold War (ca. 1945-1991), the United States and the former Soviet Union stockpiled massive chemical and biological weapons arsenals. Yet, in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Evil Empire, the threat of Warsaw Pact forces employing chemical and biological (CB) weapons against the Western... 

Chemical and biological proliferation accelerated rapidly during the course of the Second World War (until vast stockpiles of unused agents and chemical munitions were accumulated), but the process ebbed almost as quickly as it had erupted. This recession almost certainly reflected the defeat and occupation of many possessor states - not merely the Axis powers, but also many of the European chemical states other than Britain, the Soviet Union and some of the wartime neutrals. It also underscored that major wars could be fought and won without recourse to chemical and biological weapons, and that nuclear weapons had become the indisputably dominant form of strategic bombardment. Deterrence, based on the threat of retaliation-in-kind, had moved beyond a projected response to a particular form of warfare, since the nuclear threat deterred... 

Draft Convention on the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of chemical weapons and on their destruction, dated 28 March, by Bulgaria, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , document CCD/361 (1972), Cmnd. 5344 (1972-3) vii, pp. 135-9. 

CD/CW/WP.78 (2 April 1984). See also Soviet Union, Basic Provisions of a Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Chemical Weapons and their Destruction , CD/294 (21 July 1982). 

During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States were reluctant to consider any type of disarmament. Even as many nations continued to develop and stockpile chemical weapons, and as new players undertook to arm themselves with the agents, nuclear weapons took center stage. The world of disarmament was dominated by test-ban treaties and nuclear nonproliferation pacts. 

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union both maintained enormous stockpiles of chemical weapons, amoimting to tens of thousands of metric tons. The amoimt of chemical weapons held by these two coimtries was enough to destroy much of the human and animal life on Earth. 

As described above, massive stockpiles of chemical weapons (approximately 70000 tonnes declared by 2001), mainly vesicants and nerve agents, were accumulated in the cold war years, mostly by the USA and the Soviet Union. After years of negotiation, a near comprehensive chemical weapons treaty. 

For many years the Soviet Union did not confirm officially its possession of chemical weapons. In April 1987, however, it formally confirmed that it possessed chemical weapons, although without giving any details as to the size or composition of its stockpile. As was pointed out, there is nothing untoward in this latest reticence the United States does not publish details of its stockpile, nor does it communicate them to its Allies. The Soviet Union has never formally admitted to the possession of biological weapons. 

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