A Noxious Arms Control Treaty

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
The Wall Street Journal, 29 September 1994

Yesterday, Russian President Boris Yeltsin dazzled those listening to his joint press conference with President Clinton by rapidly ticking off the array of topics addressed during their summit meeting. Particularly intriguing was his passing reference to one agenda item — the proliferation of chemical weapons.

While it’s unclear exactly what the two leaders said about this frightening topic, chances are the discussions were, at best, inconclusive on the subject of Moscow’s noncompliance with its existing chemical arms-control obligations. More likely, the two presidents discussed the prospects for establishing even more ambitious chemical weapons restrictions. Diplomats, ever ready to negotiate new measures, are loath to dwell on the failure of past ones.

But in the case of chemical weapons control, there is reason to believe that the past is prelude. Under the 1989 U.S.-Soviet Bilateral Destruction Agreement, the Kremlin is supposed to have terminated development and production of new chemical arms and to have disclosed all their chemical holdings. But U.S. intelligence has confirmed reports from courageous Sakharov-style Russian scientists like Vil Mirzayanov who claim, based on first-hand involvement, that Moscow is still developing and manufacturing the most deadly chemical agents known to man.

According to the October 1994 Reader’s Digest, Mr. Mirzayanov is personally aware of Russia’s development of a class of binary chemical weapons (formed by combining two relatively safe chemicals to produce a toxic agent) nicknamed "Novichok" (Newcomer). Novichok is reportedly up to 10 times more toxic to humans than the heretofore deadliest nerve gas, VX. The Russians have thus far refused to acknowledge the existence of Novichok or any other binary weapons.

The Clinton administration wants desperately to believe that President Yeltsin does not know anything about this activity — that it is the product of "rogue elements" and bureaucratic inertia, not a breakdown of civilian control or, worse yet, a sign of a dangerous new direction in Russian foreign policy. Far from addressing the problems of the existing chemical weapons agreement, the administration wants to plunge into another, more problematic arms control pact: the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Even the Clinton administration has been obliged in congressional testimony to concede that this accord, signed in 1993 amid claims it would "rid the world of chemical weapons," will not work as advertised, cannot be effectively verified, and will be violated. Still, the administration insists on pushing the Senate to take up the treaty before its October recess. For some reasons that treaty supporters acknowledge — and some they do not — the Chemical Weapons Convention must be defeated.

First of all, it cheapens the currency of arms control and international law to enter into treaties under utterly false pretenses. The Chemical Weapons Convention will certainly not "rid the world of chemical weapons." Neither the means by which chemical weapons can be manufactured nor the ingredients necessary for doing so are (or can be) banned. For example, two chemicals — chlorine and hydrogen cyanide — that were used with devastating effect as weapons in World War I are explicitly exempted from the CWC’s prohibitions. This is not an oversight. Rather, it is a recognition of a practical reality: These chemicals are simply too widely used for civil-industrial purposes to be proscribed. As a result of pragmatic concessions like these, however, any country can retain the capability covertly to stockpile chemical arms.

The second major problem is that the CWC’s verification provisions — widely touted as the most intrusive and expensive ever negotiated — are still inadequate to detect, let alone prove, that violations are occurring. The relevant question is whether the treaty will allow us to know more about the many nations engaged in chemical weapons proliferation.

The key tests are: 1) Will the additional information give us confidence that we can detect a violation? CIA Director James Woolsey and others have testified that the answer is "no." 2) Does the additional information offset the harm that the treaty causes? Unfortunately, the answer is again negative: The CWC’s invasive inspection and monitoring arrangements amount to an exceedingly costly travesty. This treaty will come into force — and be binding upon the U.S., assuming its ratification — once 65 of the world’s nations have ratified it, even if dangerous states like Libya, North Korea, Syria and Iraq decline to become parties to the convention.

If these were not grounds enough to sack the Chemical Weapons Convention, another one looms large: The treaty will impose substantial new cost, inspection and reporting requirements on a host of industries that have nothing to do with chemical weapons — or even chemical manufacturing. Among the industries affected: fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, plastics, food processing, electronics, cosmetics, textiles and mining. The Commerce Department has contacted some 25,000 U.S. companies it believes might fall under the CWC.

One trade group — the Chemical Manufacturers Association — has been active in drafting the CWC and, presumably, its members are familiar with its terms. But the CMA represents a trivial fraction of those who will be affected by the treaty, and the rest, most of whom simply use chemicals rather than manufacture them, appear to have no idea about the onerous burdens they will shortly be asked to bear. Since many of the companies at risk are world leaders in their fields, the information they will be obliged to serve up to international inspectors and government agencies could result in serious damage to their market position.

These companies probably would be willing to accept such risks and sacrifices if the treaty actually meant ridding the world of heinous chemical weapons. Since it will not, however, it is folly to impose upon them these large costs — by some estimates up to $300 million annually.

Against all these grounds for rejecting the Chemical Weapons Convention, the administration and other proponents have been reduced to claiming that the treaty will establish an "international norm" against the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. This is a worthy goal. Unfortunately, we know from past experience that such global norms are woefully inadequate to deter prohibited activity.

Indeed, the main impetus to conclude the CWC arose from the world’s failure to respond to Iraq’s violations of an earlier international norm — the 1925 ban on first use of chemical weapons. Similarly, the global norm against biological weapons has become a sad joke as many of the same nations (e.g., Russia, China, Cuba) that can be expected to sign the CWC are flouting the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

If the Senate ratifies the CWC, moreover, the administration has announced that it intends to interpret the treaty so broadly as to deny American troops the use of humane, nonlethal weapons like tear gas — which are likely to come in handy in places like Haiti. As a result of this interpretation, our troops could be put in the absurd, not to say obscene, position of having to kill people rather than simply disperse them.

The guiding consideration for the Senate as it considers whether to ratify the CWC should not be wishful thinking about how wonderful the world would be if only we could rid it of chemical weapons. Instead, the Senate should recognize that, if we want to promote a new global norm against chemical warfare, it would be no less effective but far more responsible, safer, and certainly cheaper to do so via hortatory United Nations Security Council resolutions rather than by means of fatally flawed arms control agreements. We are better off with no treaty than this one.

Mr. Gaffney, a Reagan Defense Department official, heads the Center for Security Policy in Washington.