CENTER-SPONSORED DEBATE HELPS TO ILLUMINATE THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION’S FATAL FLAWS
(Washington, D.C.): Shortly after the United States
Senate returns from its August recess, it will consider
whether to approve ratification of an arms control
agreement that purports to ban the production and
stockpiling of chemical weapons world-wide.
Unfortunately, there has to date been very little
informed and public debate on the wisdom — or lack
thereof — of ratifying this Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC).
In the hope of informing Senate consideration of the
CWC, the Center for Security Policy and Business
Executives for National Security (BENS)
yesterday jointly hosted a debate in the Hart Senate
Office Building concerning this treaty’s merits and
shortcomings. The importance of the event was both
confirmed and increased by substantive welcoming remarks
given by two of the Senate’s leaders on the issue: Senator
Richard Lugar (R-IN), who will be the CWC’s
floor manager, and Senator Jon Kyl
(R-AZ), a member of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence who opposes ratification of the treaty in
its present form.
Tom Moore, the Deputy Director of
Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Heritage
Foundation, served as the debate’s moderator. Arguing in
favor of ratification were Lt. Gen. Thomas
McInerney (USAF, Ret.), President of Business
Executives for National Security, and Richard
Burgess, a senior counsel for the Chemical
Manufacturers’ Association. Arguing against ratification
were Douglas J. Feith, former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense and a founding member of
the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors, and
the Center’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
who also held senior positions in the Reagan Defense
Department. In addition, Mr. Gaffney read a statement by
former CIA Deputy Director Richard Kerr
reflecting that career intelligence officer’s insights
into the difficulties associated with verifying the CWC
and the limitations that will likely reduce its value to
the U.S. intelligence community — if not actually
compromise important sources and methods.
The Center’s representatives took strong exception to
claims made by Messrs. McInerney and Burgess to the
effect that the CWC is a sound treaty that will: enhance
U.S. security; greatly reduce — if not eliminate
altogether — the threat of chemical warfare; impose
little if any significant burdens on industry; and be
consistent with the constitutional rights of American
citizens and companies. The following were among the
points made in rebuttal:
- The CWC is not global
in its reach. No country that currently
has an offensive chemical weapons capability is a
party to the treaty, and the countries that
present the greatest threat (e.g., Iraq, Libya,
Syria and North Korea) have made it clear that
they do not intend to become parties. - The CWC is not verifiable. No
U.S. official has been able to state with any
degree of confidence that if a state party (e.g.,
an Iraq, North Korea, Russia or China) chooses
covertly to violate the convention, U.S.
intelligence agencies will be able to detect the
violation. - The experience of United Nations
inspections in Iraq has demonstrated the
impossibility of verifying an agreement such as
the CWC. For more than five years, there
have been some 1,000 international inspectors in
Iraq attempting to determine the scope of Saddam
Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons
programs. - The CWC creates a massive U.N.-type
bureaucracy to oversee its implementation.
The United States will provide 25 percent of this
organization’s funding. The cost to the American
taxpayer of this and other implementation
measures is estimated to run as high as $200
million per year. - The CWC jeopardizes U.S. constitutional
rights. Under the CWC, the U.S.
government would allow international inspection
teams to search thousands of privately-owned
industrial facilities without probable cause,
without a search warrant and without due process.
What is more, if — in the course of these
inspections — foreign nationals abscond with
proprietary information crucial to a company’s
competitiveness, the owners will be denied
compensation or other legal remedies. - In addition, the CWC will impose a
complex and costly regulatory burden on U.S.
industry. As many as 8,000 American
companies may be subjected to new reporting
requirements entailing uncompensated costs of
between thousands of dollars to
hundreds-of-thousands of dollars per year to
comply. The Chemical Manufacturers’ Association,
which often claims to speak for American industry
when it advocates ratification of the CWC, only
represents 190 companies. - The CWC — as interpreted by the Clinton
Administration — will severely limit the use of
non-lethal riot control agents (RCA) by the
military. This would prohibit, for
example, the use of tear gas to rescue a downed
pilot or to disperse a crowd of hostile civilians
being used as a shield for combatants moving
against U.S. positions. As a result, in
situations where non-lethal means could be used
effectively, American forces will be obliged to
use lethal fire to protect themselves and
accomplish their missions. The Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the Nation’s
Commanders-in-Chief have repeatedly and formally
rejected an interpretation of the Chemical
Weapons Convention that would have such an absurd
and undesirable effect.
By any measure, their methods are much more
far-reaching and intrusive than the inspection
provisions contained in the CWC. Yet major new
discoveries are made about Iraq’s covert chemical
and biological programs every few months. It is
unreasonable to expect that periodic challenge
inspections lasting eighty-four hours will turn
up conclusive evidence of a clandestine chemical
program if a five-year inspection in Iraq has yet
fully to ferret out Saddam Hussein’s various
covert activities.
Among the non-CMA companies that will
be subjected to one or more of the CWC’s
provisions are: automotive, food processing,
biotech, distillers and brewers, electronics,
soap and detergents, cosmetics and fragrances,
paints, textiles, non-nuclear electricity
operators and even ball-point pen ink
manufacturers.
Interestingly, in response to this point, Gen.
McInerney volunteered that BENS would oppose such
an interpretation of the CWC. That
interpretation has, nonetheless, been explicitly
embraced by the resolution of ratification —
authored by Sen. Lugar and adopted by the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee — that will shortly
be considered by the Senate.
Center looks forward to working with General
McInerney and his organization in educating
Senators about the unacceptability of the Clinton
RCA interpretation.
The Center for Security Policy is pleased to have
contributed with its sponsorship of this debate to a
closer examination of both the benefits claimed for the
Chemical Weapons Convention and the serious flaws that
appear to far outweigh those benefits. The Center hopes
that this event will be but the beginning of an intensive
review of the balance between these competing factors
that every member of the United States Senate needs to
conduct before voting on ratification of this agreement.
– 30 –
1. For more on the Lugar
resolution of ratification, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Why the Senate Must
Not Approve the Chemical Weapons Convention
(No. 96-D 45, 9 May 1996).
Other Center Decision Briefs dealing
with the CWC’s flaws include ‘Inquiry
Interruptus’: Will the Senate Get to the Bottom of the
Chemical Weapons Convention’s Fatal Flaws? (
1994) and Profile in Courage: Jesse Helms Is
Right to Block a Fatally-Flawed Chemical Weapons Treaty
(No. 95-D 92, 14
November 1995).
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