The opprobrium attached to napalm also derives from the intense fear that the weapon provokes not only to those who are exposed to it, but to those who observe its effects. Napalm burns to the bone but does not cause bleeding: persons hit by napalm die most often because of internal hemorrhage, suffocation or intense burns. The same type of effects can be observed in people exposed to chemical or biological agents. Yet, several authors who studied chemical weapons believe that these weapons which kill without causing bleeding would create an intense fear for they would blur the founding anthropological barriers of our societies between women who bleed from the inside and men who bleeds outside For the same reasons as with chemical weapons, napalm is an anti-chivalric weapon: bravery, engagement and heroism cannot save the combatant.
Several testimonies of soldiers, but also of military historians tend to support this argument. Men begged to be shot. The repeated use of napalm to terrorize civilian populations in Vietnam, shed light on the dual necessity to reinforce the legal rules which frame this destructive weapon and to condemn the United Sates for the terrible violence in Vietnam. The emergence of incendiary weapons on international consciousness was the result of their use in Vietnam War.
Secretary General U Thant was alerted to the problematic aspect of napalm during the Teheran Conference which investigated the need for additional humanitarian international conventions to prohibit certain means of warfare that threatened civilians and the environment.
He was also deeply concerned with the situation in Vietnam and wanted to limit the terrible exactions committed by the United States inter alia, the use of agent orange 38 , the massacre of civilians and the deployment of napalm. For reasons which are no doubt clear to all of you, the UN has still not been able to play the role that I feel it should in contributing towards a solution of this problem.
In the past the UN repeatedly was criticized for not dealing actively with the war in Vietnam. As you are aware, I have recently taken the step of presenting a memorandum to the President of the Security Council.
On 22 September , the UN General Assembly met for the Conference of the Committee of Disarmament, whose goal was to discuss how the existing rules framing the use of conventional weapons i. These discussions eventually led to the creation in of a new convention called the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons CCCW , Napalm was one of the main topics on the agenda. Yet it provided a good overview of the trajectory of napalm utilization and the technical characteristics of the weapon.
First, they questioned the nature of the legal constraints imposed on napalm: should napalm be banned from the battlefield or should the conditions of its use be redefined more precisely? Second, they disagreed on the target of the legal constraint: should napalm or the broader category of incendiary weapons be the object of legal constraints? If napalm is explicitly mentioned, the legal treaty might be regarded as too restrictive, and therefore not very constraining the state can find a weapon with a different name but with very similar effects.
On the other hand, the lack of consensus on the definition of incendiary weapon i. Discussions continued with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which organized the preliminary conferences of Lucerne September and Lugarno January These two conferences helped to produce additional documentary basis on the effects and the legal issues raised by napalm. It reiterates the principle of distinction, that is the prohibition, in all circumstances, of attacking the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects with incendiary weapons.
It forbids the use of incendiary weapons on the ground when directed against military objectives not clearly separated from civilians. It also reiterates the necessity to take all feasible precautions when incendiary weapons are deployed from the ground or through air delivery to limit the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoid incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.
Finally the Protocol prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against forests or other kinds of plants — except if such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objective. In sum, Protocol III does not deem the use of napalm as always illegal: yet, it warns of it use against civilians or close to civilians areas. Today, states are parties to the Convention.
While this reservation reiterates the principle of all feasible precaution, it also extends the right of the US to use incendiary weapons as the latter remain less destructive than many other weapons in the arsenal, such as thermite bombings or small nuclear weapons. This article offers new perspective on the shift in US military doctrine and practice of bombing and the subsequent decrease in napalm utilization: napalm was framed after the Vietnam War as an inhumane means of warfare by activists, as a problematic weapon with regard to the laws of war by the United Nations and, finally, as a non-strategic weapon by the US military.
The proposed approach of this article, which emphasizes normative aspects commonly overlooked when it comes to understanding practices of war i. More generally, it shows that the historiography of bombing can be enriched by the historiography of the weapons deployed.
When they mixed this with gasoline, they got a viscous sticky brown liquid which burned more slowly and produced higher temperatures, making it a very effective weapon for fire-bombing cities, for example. Since then this formula has been refined many times.
Despite the fact it contained neither naphthalene nor palmitate, it became known as napalm B. It came into combat use in the Korean War and even though it has been used by many countries in different conflicts since then, it is imperishably associated with the Vietnam War.
There is a photo of a nine-year-old Vietnamese victim of a misdirected napalm attack running down a road. She is naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes. Napalm has not been outlawed as a weapon of war, but a United Nations convention forbids its use against civilian populations. Napalm is not beautiful, it is obscene. Decarbonising Transport: How do we work together to make an impact?
But even after the company stopped making napalm in , the protests continued. Not all the consequences of student demonstrations were negative, though. According to director of public relations Ned Brandt, "you could not have gotten What no one suspected at the time was that the product that would prove most costly to Dow had not generated any protests; the company also manufactured the defoliant Agent Orange.
Its use would be linked to cancer and other illnesses among Vietnam veterans for years to come. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies.
By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead.
It was the largest fire in American history. Company recruiters faced virulent protests on college campuses, in some cases finding themselves barricaded in buildings. In response to criticism, Dow said that it had a responsibility to the U. The company also claimed that napalm only represented a small fraction -- 0. After Dow's contract expired, American Electric Inc. Some other companies that produced napalm for the government faced protests and some did not submit bids for future napalm contracts , but no other company remains as linked with napalm as Dow.
Today, America's sole incendiary bomb is the MK , or Mark 77 bomb. This "dumb" bomb -- as opposed to a precision-guided or " smart" bomb -- is a mix of 63 gallons liters of jet fuel mostly kerosene and 44 pounds 20 kilograms of a polystyrene-type gel [source: Buncombe ].
Although technically an incendiary bomb, the MK is often referred to colloquially by soldiers and experts, and even in some military documents, as napalm. Remember the previous discussion of napalm as a catchall term? During the Persian Gulf War, U. These bombs were used on trenches that Iraqi forces had dug and filled with oil. Iraqi soldiers were going to light these oil-filled trenches on fire when U.
At the end of that conflict, Iraqi Kurds led a revolt against Saddam Hussein's government. In its reprisal attacks, Hussein's forces also used napalm to brutally crush the rebellious Kurds. Although the U. They contend that while the old form of napalm isn't used, a similar, reformulated compound, also a jelled incendiary substance, has been used, most notably in the form of the MK bomb.
In , U. One American commander told The Independent newspaper that commanders like napalm for its "psychological effect" [source: Buncombe ]. In the same article, a Marine spokesman said that Mark 77 bombs -- specifically the MK Mod 5 used in Iraq -- were "remarkably similar" to napalm bombs although less environmentally harmful , but referred to them as "firebombs" [source: Crawley ]. There have been allegations that napalm was used when American forces assaulted Fallujah in November [source: Iraq Analysis Group ].
But there has been considerable debate about whether this is true. The use of napalm or napalmlike weapons has drawn some controversy for countries working with U. Protocol III but were working with or under the command of U.
The eventual revelation that U. Whatever the final verdict, napalm, like Agent Orange , has become a loaded word, symbolizing for many the carnage and brutality of war.
But despite the ghastly images we've seen, some experts on the subject point out that while napalm produces horrific results, it's used as part of waging war, which itself contains numerous images and symbols of horror, death and destruction. Yet even if napalm is a weapon like many others, something in particular about the substance and the images that have chronicled it, have lent it a special symbolism, unlikely to fade.
Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. How Napalm Works. He loves the smell of napalm in the morning -- Robert Duvall as Lt. Kilgore on the set of "Apocalypse Now.
Napalm's Effects on Health and the Environment " ".
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