WMD: The Career of a Concept

Abstract

The danger posed by “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) was the Bush administration's chief justification for invading Iraq. Amid the din of the chorus that ceaselessly repeated this phrase in 2002–2003, hardly anyone stopped to ask: what is “WMD” anyway? Is it not a mutable social construct rather than a timeless, self-evident concept? Guided by Nietzsche's view of the truth as a “mobile army of metaphors [and] metonyms… which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically,” we present a history of the metonym WMD. We describe how it was coined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1937, and subsequently how its meaning was “transposed” and “enhanced” throughout Cold War arms negotiations, in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and in US domestic law. We also discuss how, in the run-up to the Iraq war, “WMD” did not merely describe an Iraqi threat; it was rather “embellished poetically and rhetorically” in ways that produced and inflated the threat.

Notes

¹ “President Rallies Troops at Fort Hood,” January 3, 2003, < http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030103.html>.

We thank the journal's referees and the many fellow scholars—too many to list here—who have commented on earlier versions of this article. We will be remiss, however, not to acknowledge a special debt to Benoit Pelopidas for his steadfast support and many helpful suggestions.

² Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 418; see also George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), p. 298.

³ Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 434; see also James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 122.

⁴ Douglas Jehl, “U.S. Report Finds Iraq Was Minimal Weapons Threat in ‘03,” New York Times, October 6, 2004.

⁵ Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006), pp. 398, 19. For another biting critique of the “administration's subterfuge” see Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 3. The notion that the fiasco resulted from a “a major intelligence failure” was the key conclusion of the Silberman-Robb Commission, a panel appointed by President Bush to investigate US intelligence capabilities regarding Iraq's WMD; see Isikoff and Corn, Hubris, p. 382.

⁶ “Joe Scarborough and Tavis Smiley Argue About George W. Bush on ‘Morning Joe,’” Huffington Post, September 12, 2011, < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/joe- scarborough-and-tavis_n_958618.html >.

⁷ Isikoff and Corn, Hubris; Rich, Greatest Story Ever Sold.

⁸ Isikoff and Corn, Hubris; Rich, Greatest Story Ever Sold

¹⁰ Friedrich Nietzsche, in Walter Kaufman (ed. and trans.), The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Penguin, 1954), pp. 46–47; emphasis added.

⁹ Michelle Bentley's critique of essentialist understandings of WMD nicely dovetails with our analysis. See “The Long Goodbye: Beyond an Essentialist Construction of WMD,” Contemporary Security Policy 33:2 (2012), pp. 384–406.

¹¹ Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics (London, UK: Routledge, 2002), p. 233, defines a metonym as “a figure of speech that involves using one signified to stand for another signified which is…closely associated with it in some way, notably the substitution of effect [purported mass destruction] for cause [e.g., nuclear explosion; chemical reaction].”

¹² “Archbishop's Appeal: Individual Will and Action,” Times of London, December 28, 1937.

¹³ We use “article” as a generic category aggregating news reports, editorials, op-ed pieces, readers’ letters, and advertisements.

¹⁴ “Plant in Austria Bombed to Ruins,” New York Times, November 4, 1943.

¹⁵ “Truman is Urged to Bar Atom Bomb,” New York Times, August 20, 1945.

¹⁶ John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 247–253; see also Barton Bernstein, “Quest for Security: American Foreign Policy and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1942–1946,” Journal of American History 60:4 (1974), pp. 1103–1144.

¹⁷ Arthur Krock, “In the Nation: ‘In Other Words’—Truman, Attlee, King,” New York Times, November 16, 1945; emphasis added.

¹⁸ Gaddis, US and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 271.

¹⁹ Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action (New York: William Morrow, 1970), p. 296; see also Gaddis, US and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 270.

²⁰ Bush, Pieces of the Action, p. 297.

²¹ Bush, Pieces of the Action; Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 103.

²² Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 53, 58, 74.

²³ Marquis Childs, “Washington Calling: Freedom of Science,” Washington Post, November 17, 1945.

²⁴ “Text of Communiqué Issued by Big Three after the Moscow Conference,” New York Times, December 27, 1945; see also Bernstein, “Quest for Security,” pp. 1028–1029; and Gaddis, US and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 279.

²⁵ Gaddis, US and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 332; Bernstein, “Quest for Security,” pp. 1029–1032. The text of the report is available at < http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.Acheson-Lilienthal.html>.

²⁸ “Baruch's Speech at Opening Session of U.N. Atomic Energy Commission,” New York Times, June 15, 1946.

²⁶ Bernstein, “Quest for Security,” pp. 1032–1035.

²⁷ Quoted in Bernstein, “Quest for Security,” p. 1036.

²⁹ “The Texts of the Principal Speeches on the Proposals to Control Atomic Energy,” New York Times, June 20, 1946.

³⁰ Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p. 189.

³¹ Thomas Hamilton, “Molotov Says Veto Could Not Be Used in Arms Inspection,” New York Times, December 5, 1946.

³² Frank S. Adams, “U.S. Wants All Weapons Brought Under Arms Control,” New York Times, December 3, 1946.

³³ Frank S. Adams, “U.S. Wants All Weapons Brought Under Arms Control,” New York Times, December 3, 1946

³⁴ Hamilton, “Molotov Says Veto Could Not Be Used.”

³⁵ Thomas Hamilton, “Molotov Accepts Curbs on All Arms,” New York Times, December 7, 1946.

³⁶ Thomas Hamilton, “Molotov Accepts Curbs on All Arms,” New York Times, December 7, 1946

³⁷ Gaddis, US and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 334; see also Bernstein, “Quest for Security,” pp. 1043–1044.

³⁸ Herken, Winning Weapon, p. 190.

³⁹ Thomas Hamilton, “U.S. Revising Stand for Atom Primacy,” New York Times, February 1, 1947.

⁴⁰ Thomas Hamilton, “U.S. Facing Rebuff on Atom Priority,” New York Times, February 2, 1947.

⁴² Hamilton, “U.S. Facing Rebuff.”

⁴¹ Hamilton, “U.S. Revising Stand.”

⁴³ “Disarmament Meets a Test,” New York Times, February 13, 1947; see Tannenwald, Nuclear Taboo, p. 104.

⁴⁴ A.M. Rosenthal, “U.S. Asks One Body Curb Worst Arms,” New York Times, August 21, 1947.

⁴⁵ George E. Jones, “Soviet Balks Vote on U.S. Arms Plan,” New York Times, September 6, 1947.

⁴⁶ Richard M. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 144; see also Seth W. Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Occasional Paper 4, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC, 2006), p. 20; and Tannenwald, Nuclear Taboo, p. 104.

⁴⁷ Jacques Hymans, “The Roots of the Washington Threat Consensus,” in Betty Glad and Chris J. Dolan (eds), Striking First: The Preventive War Doctrine and the Reshaping of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 38. See the texts of the 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America, < http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/opanal/text/index.html>; the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, < http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/5181.htm>; the 1971 Seabed Treaty, < http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/seabed1.html#2>; the 1979 SALT II Treaty < http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/5195.htm>; and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention < http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/4718.htm>.

⁴⁸ Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” pp. 22–23.

⁴⁹ Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,”, 24.

⁵⁰ The data were generated from the archives of the New York Times online at < http://www.nytimes.com>. A similar trend is evident in the Washington Post.

⁵¹ “The Text of the Latest Letter from Bulganin to Eisenhower,” New York Times, March 8, 1958.

⁵² Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 76.

⁵³ Jonathan B. Tucker, War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda (New York: Pantheon, 2006), p. 223; see also James Joyner, “Vietnam War,” in Eric Croddy, James J. Wirtz, and Jeffrey Larsen (eds), Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005), p. 320.

⁵⁴ Thomas Graham Jr, Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2002), pp. 22–25.

⁵⁵ First quotation: “Washington Rebuts Poison Gas Charge,” New York Times, March 10, 1963; second quotation: “Soviet Assails U.S. on War Chemicals,” New York Times, August 14, 1968.

⁵⁶ Tucker, War of Nerves, pp. 190–192.

⁵⁷ Tucker, War of Nerves, 249–259, 268–272, 279–282.

⁵⁸ Patrick E. Tyler, “Poison Gas Attack Kills Hundreds,” Washington Post, March 24, 1988.

⁵⁹ Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche, p. 47.

⁶⁰ Hymans, “Roots of the Washington Threat Consensus,” p. 38.

⁶¹ Price, Chemical Weapons Taboo, ch. 6.

⁶² Quoted in Ibid., 137.

⁶³ Alan Cowell, “Iraq Chief, Boasting of Poison Gas, Warns of Disaster if Israelis Strike,” New York Times, April 3, 1990.

⁶⁴ Alan Cowell, “Iraqi Takes Harsh Line at Meeting,” New York Times, May 29, 1990.

⁶⁵ Price, Chemical Weapons Taboo, p. 148.

⁶⁶ Price, Chemical Weapons Taboo

⁶⁷ “Excerpts from Speech By Bush at Marine Post,” New York Times, November 23, 1990.

⁶⁸ “Excerpts from President's News Conference on Crisis in Gulf,” New York Times, December 1, 1990.

⁶⁹ Tucker, War of Nerves, p. 310.

⁷⁰ The text of resolution 687 is posted at < http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/ sres0687.htm>.

⁷¹ The data for Figure 2 were generated by using the Factiva.com search engine.

⁷² Tucker, War of Nerves, p. 357.

⁷³ “Transcript of the State of the Union Message From President Clinton,” New York Times, January 28, 1998.

⁷⁴ “Standoff with Iraq; War of Words: The Administration, Its Critics and Questions of Moral Right,” New York Times, February 19, 1998. See also Hymans, “Roots of the Washington Threat Consensus,” p. 39.

⁷⁵ According to William Safire, “Most arms control buffs think [WMD] is probably a Russian term.” See William Safire, “On Language: Weapons of Mass Destruction,” New York Times, April 19, 1998.

⁷⁶ Jonathan Alter, “Why This is Not a Drill,” Newsweek, November 17, 1997.

⁷⁷ Safire, “On Language: Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

⁷⁸ “Fighting in Iraq; the Big Story; an Occasional Look at What Everyone is Talking About,” Washington Post, July 8, 2003.

⁷⁹ Adam Clymer, “Decision in the Senate: The Overview,” New York Times, August 26, 1994.

⁸⁰ Michael Wines, “Clinton Renewing Push for Assault Rifle Ban,” New York Times, April 26, 1994; see also “Clinton Campaigns for Weapons Ban in Letter to Hunters,” New York Times, May 1, 1994.

⁸¹ The text of the 1994 crime act is posted at < http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-in/query/z?c103:H.R.3355.ENR>.

⁸² The text of the indictment is posted at < http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/mcveighindictment.html>.

⁸³ Pam Belluck, “Unrepentant Shoe Bomber Sentenced to Life,” New York Times, January 31, 2003.

⁸⁴ “Second FARC Terrorist Indicted for 2003 Grenade Attack on Americans in Colombia,” US Department of Justice news release, October 28, 2004, < http://justice.gov/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_724.htm>.

⁸⁵ Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” p. 10.

⁸⁶ “Botched Penis Surgery Ends in Mail-Bomb to Doc,” Associated Press, November 22, 2006, < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15849599/ >.

⁸⁷ John Shiffman, “Unhappy over Surgery, He Now Faces Prison,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 5, 2006.

⁸⁸ Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 81.

⁸⁹ Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” p. 32.

⁹⁰ Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,”, appendix D; emphases added.

⁹¹ Alice Wallace, “Arrest Made Over Rigged Device at Waldo Sex Shop,” Gainesville Sun, December 6, 2006.

⁹² Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche, p. 47.

⁹³ David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 11.

⁹⁴ Friedrich Nietzsche, in R.J. Hollingdale (trans.), Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 19.

⁹⁵ Steve Fetter, “Ballistic Missiles and Weapons of Mass Destruction: What is the Threat? What Should be Done?,” International Security 16:1 (1991), p. 28; see also Matthew Meselson, “The Myth of Chemical Superweapons,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 47:3 (1991), pp. 12–15.

⁹⁶ Philip Morrison and Kosta Tsipis, “Rightful Names,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59:3 (2003), p. 77. More recently, a similar argument was made by Christian Enemark, “Farewell to WMD: The Language and Science of Mass Destruction,” Contemporary Security Policy 32:2 (2011), pp. 382–400.

⁹⁷ Christopher Hitchens, “‘WMD’ and ‘Inspectors’: Are Saddam's Weapons Really Unconventional?,” Slate, December 26, 2002, < http://www.slate.com/id/2076026 >.

⁹⁸ Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche, p. 47; emphasis added.

⁹⁹ A transcript of Rice's remarks is posted at < http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate/>.

¹⁰⁰ “President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat,” October 7, 2002, < http://georgewbush- whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html>.

¹⁰¹ Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan, All the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth (New York: Touchstone, 2004), p. 154.

¹⁰² The data for Figures 3 and 4 were generated by using the Factiva.com search engine. The category “major US news and business publications” includes some forty newspapers and magazines “covering general news and business news that are considered key publications in their region by virtue of circulation or reputation.”

¹⁰³ Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 94. We thank Dan Nexon for bringing Marcuse's analysis to our attention.

¹⁰⁴ Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 94. We thank Dan Nexon for bringing Marcuse's analysis to our attention

¹⁰⁵ Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration's Rhetoric,” Perspectives on Politics 3:3 (2005), p. 531.

¹⁰⁶ “Full Text of Colin Powell's Speech,” The Guardian, February 5, 2003.

¹⁰⁷ Benjamin Barber, Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), p. 29. “Newly prominent or notable” is from American Dialect Society, “What's Your Word of the Year?” November 30, 2011, < http://www.americandialect.org/2011/11>. To put “WMD” in perspective, recent Word of the Year selections include “tweet” (2009), “app” (2010), and “occupy” (2011).

¹⁰⁸ Quoted in Deborah Tannen, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (New York: Cambridge University Press 1989), p. 94.

¹⁰⁹ Alex Preminger (ed.), The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 228.

¹¹⁰ Guy Cook, The Discourse of Advertising (London, UK: Routledge, 1992), p. 227.

¹¹¹ Frank Luntz, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear (New York: Hyperion 2007), p. 11.

¹¹² Preminger, Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms, p. 228.

¹¹³ Julia Bamford, You Can Say That Again: Repetition in Discourse (Bologna, Italy: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice Bologna, 2000), pp. 77–79.

¹¹⁴ Michael Kinsley, “Low Opinion: Did Iraq Have Weapons of Mass Destruction? It Doesn't Matter,” Slate, June 19, 2003, < http://www.slate.com/id/2084602/>.

¹¹⁵ We develop a fuller theoretical account of this insight in Ido Oren and Ty Solomon, “Marketing Threats: How Securitization Can Be Performed in the Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases Such as ‘WMD,’” Unpublished Manuscript, August 2012.

¹¹⁶ Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche, pp. 46–47.

¹¹⁷ Nietzsche, Portable Nietzsche

¹¹⁸ Jack Stripling, “Words of War: Terms Carefully Chosen,” Gainesville Sun, January 2, 2007.

¹¹⁹ Most notably Rich, Greatest Story Ever Told (which is based on Rich's weekly New York Times columns published largely during the lead-up to the Iraq War).