Editor's Note: This essay Professor Moon has provided for the ASA Newsletter is based on an original presentation he made at the Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama on 6 September 2000.]

Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Movement Toward the End of War?

I. The Nature of War:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." On 16 July 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer, observing the detonation of the first nuclear device at Alamogordo, New Mexico, recalled the words of Vishnu in the Bhagavad-Gita: As he speculated: "I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." After the use of atomic weapons over Japan, many prophets predicted that the next war would be nuclear and that, given the subsequent development of hydrogen weapons, it could well lead to the destruction of civilization. Not surprisingly, many voices were raised asserting an either/or proposition: "Either we end war or it will end us."

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Destruction of Abandoned Chemical Weapons (ACW) in China
by Akio Suda
Director General, Office for ACW
Prime Minister's Office, GOJ

Introduction
The Japanese ACWs in China left from the last war are currently estimated to amount to nearly 700,000 munitions. Since 1990, the Government of Japan, GOJ, has been, in collaboration with the Government of China, GOC, conducting site investigations and studying the ways and means of destroying those ACWs in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. In July 1999, GOJ and GOC signed the Memorandum of Understanding on ACWs which set a framework for the destruction project. It was agreed, for instance, that the destruction of ACWs, will take place in China instead of removing them from the county. In April 1999, three months before the signing of the MOU, the GOJ established the ACW Office within the Prime Minister's Office as an implementing body of the project.

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From the ASA House in beautiful Maine all of us wish all of you a most delightful and Happy New Year 2001

The ASA family of professionals can be found in 115+ countries and they are what the ASA Newsletter is all about. Have a great 2001

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NATO Advanced Research Workshop

Warsaw, Poland. A NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) entitled "Scientific and Technical Implications of the BTWC Protocol for Civil Industry" was held in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday 2 through Saturday 4 November 2000 under the co-directorship of Col. Prof. Krzysztof Chomiczewski, Commandant of the Military Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Warsaw, Poland, and Col. Prof. Henri Garrigue, Conseiller Militaire chargé des questions biologiques, Représentation de la France à la Conference du Désarmament in Geneva, Switzerland. It was attended by 49 individuals from 17 countries.

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