The world’s chemical weapons watchdog said on Friday that all declared stocks had been “irreversibly destroyed” after the United States revealed it had finally got rid of its last toxic arms.
President Joe Biden announced that the Blue Grass Army Depot, a US Army facility in Kentucky, had eliminated its decades-old stocks, completing a global effort started in 1997 to rid the world of chemical weapons.
The munitions destroyed in Kentucky are the last of 51,000 M55 rockets with GB nerve agent, AKA sarin, that have been stored at the depot since the 1940s.
The move completes a decades-long campaign to clear a stockpile that by the end of the cold war totaled more than 30,000 tons.
“The end of destruction of all declared chemical weapons stockpiles is an important milestone”, Fernando Arias, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said in a statement.
The US faced a 30 September deadline to eliminate its remaining chemical weapons under the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997 and was joined by 193 countries.
“One thing that we’re really proud of is how we’re finishing the mission. We’re finishing it for good for the United States of America,” said Kim Jackson, manager of the Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant.
The Hague-based body said that the step by the US, the “last possessor state”, meant that “all declared chemical weapons stockpiles [were] verified as irreversibly destroyed”.
But recent use of chemical weapons meant the world still had to be on guard, the Nobel peace prize-winning OPCW warned.
The watchdog has in recent years blamed Syria for carrying out chemical attacks during its civil war, and investigated the use of Soviet-era nerve agents against a former Russian spy in Britain and Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny in Russia.
“Recent uses and threats of use of toxic chemicals as weapons illustrate that preventing re-emergence will remain a priority for the organisation,” Arias cautioned.
Chemical weapons were first used in modern warfare in the first world war, where they were estimated to have killed at least 100,000 people. Despite their use being subsequently banned under the Geneva Conventions, countries continued to stockpile the weapons until the treaty calling for their destruction.
Officials say the elimination of the US stockpile is a major step forward for the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only three countries – Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan – have not signed the treaty. A fourth, Israel, has signed but not ratified the treaty.
Still, arms control advocates hope this final step by the US could nudge the remaining countries to join. But they also hope it could be used as a model for eliminating other types of weapons.
“It shows that countries can really ban a weapon of mass destruction,” said Paul F Walker, vice-chairman of the Arms Control Association and coordinator of the Chemical Weapons Convention Coalition. “If they want to do it, it just takes the political will and it takes a good verification system.”
• This article was amended on 9 July 2023 because an earlier version said that “chemical weapons were first used in modern warfare in the second world war”. That should have said the first world war.
