CENTER’S FEITH URGES SENATE TO REJECT PHONY NEW BAN ON CHEMICAL WEAPONS — AND TO ENFORCE EXISTING BAN ON THEIR USE

(Washington, D.C.): The United States Senate has just been
offered a constructive alternative to ratification of the
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) — an agreement doomed to
fail in its stated purpose of “ridding the world of
chemical weapons.” One of the Nation’s most thoughtful
security policy practitioners, Douglas J. Feith,
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 21 March 1996:

“Since 1925, a treaty has existed that bans
initiation of chemical warfare. As opposed to the new treaty,
which is a ban on possession, the famous 1925 Geneva
Protocol is a ban on the use of chemical weapons.
The old Protocol is a verifiable, sensible treaty. If it were
enforced — if violators were duly sanctioned — this would
contribute valuably to controlling the problem. It is
irresponsible — one might even say deplorable — for the
international community to fail (as it has) in its duty to
uphold the Geneva Protocol and then to claim that it is
taking chemical weapons arms control seriously by creating a
new, unverifiable treaty that by its very nature has far less
a chance of being enforced.”

Mr. Feith knows whereof he speaks. He served during
the Reagan Administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense responsible for the chemical warfare arms control
negotiations. Mr. Feith is highly regarded for his command of
diplomatic history and international law. He brings to such
subject fields both personal familiarity on the operational level
as a former senior government official and a practicing attorney,
as well as the well-honed intellectual skills of a serious
scholar in these fields. He is also a founding member of the
Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors.

The Feith intervention (excerpts of
which are attached) before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is particularly timely. It comes on the heels of
important testimony provided by another colleague of the Center
for Security Policy — Dr. J.D. Crouch — which
raised similar, serious concerns about the dubious efficacy,
verifiability, enforceability, equitableness and utility of the
CWC.⁽¹⁾ It also arrives
at a moment when this convention’s proponents are redoubling
their efforts to secure Senate advice and consent. For example,
Jessica Mathews argued in the Washington Post recently
that “the chemical weapons treaty is a substantial bulwark
against a deadly and rising threat.” Messrs. Feith
and Crouch convincingly demonstrate that such statements are
utopian delusions likely, in Mr. Feith’s words to “lessen
the fear of chemical weapons without lessening the danger.”

Most importantly, this testimony comes shortly before the
Foreign Relations Committee will be compelled to report out the
Chemical Weapons Convention. The Committee would be well advised
to heed Mr. Feith’s advice that emphasis should be placed upon fixing
the existing Geneva convention rather than exacerbating its
present shortcomings — namely its unenforceability — with a new
treaty that will be neither verifiable, nor effective nor
enforceable. Failing such an outcome, under no
circumstances should Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole allow the
fatally flawed CWC to be taken up by the full Senate.

1. For excerpts of Dr. Crouch’s testimony,
see Center’s Crouch Offers Senate Compelling Basis
for Preserving U.S. Chemical Deterrent, Rejecting the CWC
(No. 96-P 26, 14 March 1996).