Can We Afford Any More Breakthroughs On Chemical Weapons Arms Control?

(Washington, D.C.): The Bush Administration is letting it be known that the Soviet Union has accepted an important U.S. demand concerning a treaty now being negotiated intended to produce a global, verifiable ban on chemical weapons (CW). Press reports indicate that the USSR recently notified the United States that it would agree to a long-standing U.S. demand: that on-site inspections take place before such a treaty was finalized. This is but the most recent evidence that the Soviet Union is determined to obtain American — and inevitably, therefore, Western — concurrence on an agreement purporting to effect a global ban on chemical weapons.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Director of the Center for Security Policy, took strong issue with the evident U.S. government desire to provide such concurrence at the earliest possible moment. "Far from regarding the Soviet Union’s negotiating flexibility as a sign that a truly verifiable and global ban is at hand, this mounting Soviet pressure for an accord should be a warning sign to the West," Gaffney said. "The most recent Soviet concession, like others that arose from recent working group discussions, does nothing to alter the reality that a negotiated chemical weapons ban will neither verifiably nor effectively eliminate such weapons around the world."

Gaffney added, "Instead, the furious pace with which the Soviets are trying to eliminate disputed issues blocking progress in these negotiations is evidence of the Soviet Union’s determination to lock the United States and its allies into an accord that will prevent only law-abiding nations from maintaining chemical deterrents. Every responsible expert, including senior officials throughout the Bush Administration, know a dirty little secret: in its entirety, the resulting agreement would be unable to ensure that no chemical weapons are covertly produced or stockpiled even by the Soviet Union — to say nothing of Third World countries." Even if the USSR were to accept the U.S. negotiating position

The Center for Security Policy believes that before the pace of these negotiations accelerates even further — arousing still greater public expectations of an imminent "solution" to the problem of chemical weapons proliferation — the United States government must insist upon a moratorium on the chemical arms control talks.

The Center is of the view that negotiations should not resume unless and until genuine — rather than cosmetic — solutions are found to such intractable problems as: the existence of a worldwide infrastructure capable of producing lethal chemical agents; the ease with which chemical weapons can be secretly stored and transported; the difficulty of maintaining ready defenses against chemical attack in the absence of a "legal" threat, etc. Absent a clear U.S. understanding of how these and similar conundrums can be fully resolved, making further "progress" toward a CW ban would be dangerous and irresponsible.