Blowing Smoke About Chemical Arms Control

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy today sharply criticized recent leaks to the press concerning ostensible diplomatic breakthroughs in U.S.-Soviet discussions on chemical arms control. The Center urged the Bush Administration to acknowledge the reality that an effectively verifiable, and enforceable global ban on chemical weapons (CW) is simply unattainable. It called upon the President, instead, to concentrate his diplomatic energies on shoring up the existing — and frequently violated — CW arms control regime which bans the first-use of chemical arms.

"These leaks, attributed to State Department officials, seem calculated to convey a misleading message, namely that effective solutions are now in hand to the problems that have historically plagued efforts to negotiate such a chemical weapons ban," the Center’s Director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. said. "In reality, the reported understandings reached by the United States and the Soviets in discussions two weeks ago do not address the real ‘show-stoppers’ in these negotiations. To his credit, U.S. CW negotiator Max Friedersdorf acknowledged as much in response to these leaks."

The Center believes no solutions have been identified — much less negotiated with the Soviets and the rest of the world — to fundamental conundrums like the following:

• The difficulties in accurately characterizing and validating data concerning chemical weapons capabilities (e.g., development, production, storage and use) that continue to defy resolution;

 

• The fact that even a very small amount of chemical agent can have a decisive effect in time of conflict, greatly increasing the military significance of the verification uncertainties, and creating possibly irresistible temptations to cheat through covert development and stockpiling of chemical weapons;

 

• The presence throughout the world of a commercial chemical industry that provides the essential infrastructure for chemical weapons production and that can readily be converted to such production. There is no certain way to distinguish between legitimate facilities producing a range of chemical products for civilian use such as fertilizers, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, etc. and weapons facilities;

 

• The ready availability of technology that will permit lethal chemical agents to be produced virtually without fear of detection, for example, by use of modern pharmaceutical manufacturing devices;

 

• The reality that numerous states, particularly in the Third World, possess or are acquiring chemical weapons as a sort of "poor man’s atom bomb." Such nations may not join — and in any event are unlikely to comply with — any international ban; and

 

• The demonstrated reluctance of the international community to acknowledge, much less do anything effective (such as applying sanctions) about, violations of existing CW arms control agreements. The pathetic international conference in Paris earlier this year was a monument to the fecklessness of the world community in dealing with such issues.

According to Sven Kraemer, Deputy Director of the Center and former Director of Arms Control in the National Security Council, "U.S. government experts have long known that the objective of a truly verifiable, world-wide ban on chemical weapons is unachievable. The effect of entering into such an agreement will simply be to deny the United States and its allies a modest, in-kind deterrent to chemical attacks upon their forces."

Kraemer added: "Against this backdrop, leaks by U.S. government officials to the effect that negotiating breakthroughs are actually bringing a global, effectively verifiable CW ban closer to realization are cynical in the extreme. They serve simply to mislead the public and unrealistically inflate expectations. The result in an arms control context is as predictable as it is dangerous: pressure is vastly intensified both domestically and from allied governments to reach agreement on any terms, with vital U.S. security interests being sacrificed along the way."

The Center believes that, as the President and his senior advisors conduct their review of the work of U.S. and Soviet technical experts in Geneva, they must be honest with themselves and come clean with the public: Neither the agreements reached to date nor any in prospect will ensure the effectiveness, verifiability or enforceability of a treaty purporting to effect the global elimination of chemical weapons. As a result, the Bush Administration should make clear that for the foreseeable future the United States will require a small but effective binary chemical stockpile. It should also redirect its CW arms control efforts toward halting the violation of the existing convention that bans first-use of chemical weapons and toward preventing the proliferation of these armaments to countries not now possessing them.