NationStates Jolt Archive

For destroying is entire chemical weapon stockpile, making it the first nation to do so.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/31C1AFB4-4DD4-4023-96C0-53D452F38405.htm


Albania destroys chemical weapons
UN inspectors are working to destroy 71,000 tonnes
of chemical weapons [File: AP]
Albania has become the first country to destroy its entire arsenal of chemical weapons, a United Nations agency said.

More than 16,000 kilogrammes of mustard gas and other chemical agents banned under an international treaty were disposed of by the Albanians, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said on Friday.

"Albania is the first nation completely and verifiably to destroy all of its chemical weapons," the agency said.

Inspectors had visited the country on Thursday to verify the destruction.

The United States funded and assisted the destruction of the weapons, which had apparently been acquired in the 1970s by Enver Hoxha, the country's former Stalinist leader.

Forgotten weapons

According to the Washington Post newspaper, the weapons were stored in bunkers in mountains about 40km from the capital, Tirana, and forgotten about after Hoxha died in 1985.

They were later found and declared to the United Nations and United States.

Exposure to Mustard gas can cause severe blisters and result in blindness.

The Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997, outlawed the production, acquisition, development or transfer of chemical munitions, and set up a tough verification system for dismantling stockpiles.

Six members of the disarmament agency have declared a total of more than 71,000 metric tonnes of chemical warfare agents and by the end of June 2007 one third of them had been destroyed, the agency said.

The US and Russia control the vast majority of chemical weapons but efforts to eliminate them are behind schedule.

I say good on them! This is a step in the right direction for the world. Who do you think will be next to destroy their chem weapons????

Oh and here is one for the RO type that seem to think that all muslims are bad and all. Albania is around 60% muslim, and yet here they are destroying all their chemical weapons. Kind of takes away frm that "ZOMG EBUL MOSLEMS!!!" idea that people tend to have :p

Good on them.
However, everybody destroying their chemical stockpiles isnt likely. For one thing, there ARE legitimate reasons to have some chemical weapons, IE: Researching means to defend against them, developing antidotes, various commercial products, etc.
Although why the US has some 50,000 tons of mustard gas from WWI (IIRC) is a bit beyond me.
Which is not to say that I dont think the US government is only using its chemical weapons stock for the betterment of mankind. Far from it. Im pretty sure we're just better at keeping it a secret than the Russians with their fancy new hallucinogenic war gases.

The US will never get rid of their weapons of mass destruction.

The US will never get rid of their weapons of mass destruction.

We'll get rid of ours as soon as Russia and China get rid of theirs ;)

We'll get rid of ours as soon as Russia and China get rid of theirs ;)

Well you might wanna try equitable disarmament, as in the US can dismantle to the amount that Russia and China currently have, then all can dismantle on an equal basis. No use dismantling when the US still has thousands of warheads.

Well you might wanna try equitable disarmament, as in the US can dismantle to the amount that Russia and China currently have, then all can dismantle on an equal basis. No use dismantling when the US still has thousands of warheads.

The problem is, nobody wants to disarm :P
Its like when the Great Powers carved up China.
"Oh, we'd LIKE to leave, but, y'see, those dirty British/French/Russians will take over the whole thing if we do, and we simply cant have THAT!"
*shrug*
Maybe when the Revolution comes we can talk about disarmament, until then, I think the various governments of the world would like to think they spent billions (or trillions) of dollars (or local currency) for some purpose.

Well, I can see why. Albania is, and always will be, an insignificant country unworthy even for attack. Besides, with their demographic stagnation and crippling poverty (the worst in Europe), Albania needs some love from the international community.

Destroying chemical weapons isn't that big of a deal. Making them is well within the industrial capacity of most nations. Heck, household chemicals can make a quite toxic gas just from accidental mixing.

Albania had chemical weapons? How the hell did Hoxha pull that one off, considering his economy was decrepit even by Soviet standards...

Albania had chemical weapons? How the hell did Hoxha pull that one off, considering his economy was decrepit even by Soviet standards...
Post-Soviet state, for a few years Kazakhistan had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world if I remember.

Post-Soviet state, for a few years Kazakhistan had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world if I remember.

But they didn't even get along all that well...I imagine they bought them from the Soviets at some point and just held on to them.

But they didn't even get along all that well...I imagine they bought them from the Soviets at some point and just held on to them.

I thought Albania was an Iron Curtain state, wasnt it? The Soviets probobly ditched some VX there and left it at some point or other. They just didnt bother taking it with them when they left.

I thought Albania was an Iron Curtain state, wasnt it? The Soviets probobly ditched some VX there and left it at some point or other. They just didnt bother taking it with them when they left.

Actually, they weren't, at least not since the early 60's when they broke from the Eastern Bloc. It would've been before 1961, when Hoxha broke off relations with the USSR because he didn't like the fact that Khrushchev was undoing the damage caused by Stalinism.

That means most likely they got them from the Chinese during the 1960's, who got them from the USSR in the 1950's.

Actually, they weren't, at least not since the early 60's when they broke from the Eastern Bloc. It would've been before 1961, when Hoxha broke off relations with the USSR because he didn't like the fact that Khrushchev was undoing the damage caused by Stalinism.

That means most likely they got them from the Chinese during the 1960's, who got them from the USSR in the 1950's.

So, basically, they were still Russian, just in a roundabout fashion.

In any case, yay destruction of chemical weaponry. Apart from what is needed for research in defending against such stuff as well as medical concerns and all that jazz, we ought to do the same thing.

Actually, they weren't, at least not since the early 60's when they broke from the Eastern Bloc. It would've been before 1961, when Hoxha broke off relations with the USSR because he didn't like the fact that Khrushchev was undoing the damage caused by Stalinism.

That means most likely they got them from the Chinese during the 1960's, who got them from the USSR in the 1950's.

Huh...I'll have to send a letter to whoever illustrated my colleges textbook, 'cause they show Albania as an iron curtain state >_>
Of course, American textbooks often have trouble with world history outside of America...

Huh...I'll have to send a letter to whoever illustrated my colleges textbook, 'cause they show Albania as an iron curtain state >_>
Of course, American textbooks often have trouble with world history outside of America...

Well thinking of the Eastern block as a coherent entity gives the wrong impression, their were two sides really, the post-Stalin Soviets, who comprised the Soviet Union and Vietnam (etc) who denounced stalinism and believed in a more democratic socialism, and the PRC, Cambodia, Albania and other minor socialist states, who were opposed to 'Soviet revisionism' the perceived betrayal of communism, who mostly followed Maoism. The two fought a proxy war through sino-vietnamese,cambodian wars and the border classes between the soviets and prc.

Albania had chemical weapons? How the hell did Hoxha pull that one off, considering his economy was decrepit even by Soviet standards...

I wonder what Hoxha means - do you know? It's just that about 3/4 of the Albanians I've known have had their name start with Hoxha-something. I figure it's something significant in their language. ;)

I wonder what Hoxha means - do you know? It's just that about 3/4 of the Albanians I've known have had their name start with Hoxha-something. I figure it's something significant in their language. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enver_Hoxha
Education is your friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enver_Hoxha
Education is your friend.

Did you read the question I was asking? :p

Unless people only started changing their names to Hoxha after he was elected, the question still stands.

Well you might wanna try equitable disarmament, as in the US can dismantle to the amount that Russia and China currently have, then all can dismantle on an equal basis. No use dismantling when the US still has thousands of warheads.

If we wanted to get to equal amounts as Russia we'd have to build several thousand more.

Oh and here is one for the RO type that seem to think that all muslims are bad and all. Albania is around 60% muslim, and yet here they are destroying all their chemical weapons. Kind of takes away frm that "ZOMG EBUL MOSLEMS!!!" idea that people tend to have :p

Obviously, Albania is run by the 40% that aren't Muslim. :p

If we wanted to get to equal amounts as Russia we'd have to build several thousand more.

Your ignorance (deliberate or indirect) is astounding to the extreme, even at the height of the Cold War the Soviets only had about 4000 nuclear ICBMs, while the US had about 30,000 warheads, including the Turkish based Jupiter's which are like 97% more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Your ignorance (deliberate or indirect) is astounding to the extreme, even at the height of the Cold War the Soviets only had about 4000 nuclear ICBMs, while the US had about 30,000 warheads, including the Turkish based Jupiter's which are like 97% more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Your right, it wasn't until the mid-1970's that Russia's total numbers surpassed the USA's - during the 1950s and 60s, the height of the Cold War, the USA had a vast amount more than the USSR.

Unfortunately for you a long time has passed since then, and the numbers game has changed.

http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat.asp

Russia: 4,978 strategic warheads,1 approximately 3,500 operational tactical warheads, and more than 11,000 stockpiled strategic and tactical warheads.
...
United States: 5,968 strategic warheads,1 more than 1,000 operational tactical weapons, and approximately 3,000 reserve strategic and tactical warheads.

http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/c4120650912x74k7/fulltext.pdf
Has a nice overview of it all, someone actually made a graph of it, :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles.svg/608px-US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles.svg.png

owned ^