Getting Rid of Unpleasant (Nerve) Gas

Horns of a Dilemma

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we hear from author and journalist Joby Warrick about his new book, Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America's Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World. Warrick details the international effort to find, collect, remove, and destroy Syria's stockpile of Sarin nerve agent in 2013. Although the story was largely overshadowed at the time by the subsequent increase in violence in Syria's civil war and the rise of the organization that became ISIL, this effort was unprecedented in destroying an arsenal that, had it fallen into the hands of terrorists or been further used by the Asad regime, could have caused untold thousands of deaths and injuries. Warrick spoke at the University of Texas, Austin, and is introduced by Paul Edgar, Associate Director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, Austin.