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A weapon of mass destruction (WMD or WoMD) is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological or other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans or cause great damage to human-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere. The scope and application of the term has evolved and been disputed, often signifying more politically than technically. Originally coined in reference to aerial bombing with chemical explosives, since World War II it has come to refer to large-scale weaponry of other technologies, such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear. ==Early uses of the term== The first use of the term "weapon of mass destruction" on record is by Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1937 in reference to the aerial bombardment of Guernica, Spain: At the time, the United States (with help from Western Allies) had yet to develop and use nuclear weapons. Japan conducted research on biological weapons (see Unit 731),〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Biological Weapons Program – Japan )〕 and chemical weapons had seen wide battlefield use in World War I. They were outlawed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. Italy used mustard gas against civilians and soldiers in Ethiopia in 1935-36. Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II, and progressing through the Cold War, the term came to refer more to non-conventional weapons. The application of the term to specifically nuclear and radiological weapons is traced by William Safire to the Russian phrase "Оружие массового поражения" – ''oruzhiye massovogo porazheniya'' (weapons of mass destruction). He credits James Goodby (of the Brookings Institution) with tracing what he considers the earliest known English-language use soon after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although it is not quite verbatim): a communique from a 15 November 1945, meeting of Harry Truman, Clement Attlee and Mackenzie King (probably drafted by Vannevar Bush– or so Bush claimed in 1970) referred to "weapons adaptable to mass destruction". That exact phrase, says Safire, was also used by Bernard Baruch in 1946 (in a speech at the United Nations probably written by Herbert Bayard Swope).〔"Weapons of Mass Destruction", ''New York Times Magazine'', 19 April 1998, p.22. Retrieved 24 February 2007.〕 The same phrase found its way into the very first resolution adopted by the United Nations General assembly in January 1946 in London, which used the wording "...the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other weapons adaptable to mass destruction." This resolution also created the Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)). An exact use of this term was given in a lecture "Atomic Energy as an Atomic Problem" by J. Robert Oppenheimer. The lecture was delivered to the Foreign Service and the State Department, on 17 September 1947. The lecture is reprinted in ''The Open Mind'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955). ''"It is a very far reaching control which would eliminate the rivalry between nations in this field, which would prevent the surreptitious arming of one nation against another, which would provide some cushion of time before atomic attack, and presumably therefore before any attack with weapons of mass destruction, and which would go a long way toward removing atomic energy at least as a source of conflict between the powers".'' The term was also used in the introduction to the hugely influential U.S. government document known as NSC-68 written in April 1950.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=NSC-68 United States Objectives and Programs for National Security )〕 During a speech at Rice University on 12 September 1962, president John F. Kennedy spoke of not filling space "with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=John F. Kennedy Moon Speech—Rice Stadium )〕 The following month, during a televised presentation about the Cuban Missile Crisis on 22 October 1962, Kennedy made reference to "offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction.〔Kennedy JF (1962-10-22). Televised remarks to the American people re "the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba"〕" An early use of the exact phrase in an international treaty was in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, however no definition was provided. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Weapon of mass destruction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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