Chemical Reaction: A bad treaty on chemical weapons

By Douglas J. Feith, New Republic, 24 March 24

It would seem an indisputable good: a
treaty to eliminate poison gas from
Beijing to Buenos Aires. Yet the new
Chemical Weapons Convention is having
trouble in the Senate. And the more the
treaty is debated, the deeper the
trouble. In congressional hearings and
public forums, even the treaty’s
champions have been forced to concede our
severely limited ability to monitor
compliance and enforce the ban.

As a result, the chief pro-treaty
argument is no longer that the CWC, as
the treaty is acronymically known, will
abolish chemical weapons–for it
obviously will not–but that the CWC is
better than nothing. Administration
officials, in their standard pitch to
skeptical senators, now stress that the
treaty is on balance worthwhile, if
flawed, and rebuke critics for measuring
the treaty against an unrealistic
standard of “perfection.”
“The limits imposed by the CWC
surely are imperfect,” former
National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft
and former CIA Director John Deutch
contended in a recent Washington Post
op-ed, “but … it is hard to see
how its imperfect constraints are worse
than no constraints at all.” The
it’s-better-than-nothing argument has
some potency. After all, no decent person
wants poison gas to proliferate.
Conservatives and liberals alike want to
continue to destroy the entire U.S.
chemical arsenal regardless of what
happens to the CWC. So even a small step
in the direction of global abolition
would be valuable. But the treaty is not
such a step. It is not better than
nothing. Indeed, it would eliminate
export controls that now impede rogue
states from developing their chemical
warfare capabilities. And, as many
senators have discovered after examining
the treaty’s 186-page text, it would
exacerbate the problem of poison gas
proliferation around the world.

Article XI, for instance, states that
parties to the treaty shall:

Not maintain among themselves any
restrictions, including those in
any international agreements,
incompatible with the obligations
undertaken under this Convention,
which would restrict or impede
trade and the development and
promotion of scientific and
technological knowledge in the
field of chemistry for
industrial, agricultural,
research, medical, pharmaceutical
or other peaceful purposes.

What this means is that the United States
must not restrict chemical trade with any
other CWC party–even Iran and Cuba, both
of which are CWC signatories. Similarly,
CWC Article X obliges countries to share
with other parties technology relating to
chemical weapons defense. “Each
State Party,” the article says,
“undertakes to facilitate, and shall
have the right to participate in, the
fullest possible exchange of equipment,
material and scientific and technological
information concerning means of
protection against chemical
weapons.”

Once Iran and Cuba
ratify the treaty, our current export
controls against them will surely be
attacked as impermissible. Furthermore,
those countries, upon joining the CWC,
will claim entitlement to the advanced
countries’ ” scientific and
technological information” on how to
protect their armed forces against
chemical weapons. A crucial element of an
offensive chemical weapons capability is
the means to protect one’s own forces
from the weapons’ effects.

Even if the U.S. government decides
to maintain export controls against Iran
and Cuba, Articles X and XI will invite
other countries to transfer dangerous
technology to them. Germany can be
expected to invoke the treaty against any
U.S. official who protests a planned sale
of a chemical factory to, say, Iran.
Indeed, Bonn could not only argue that
its firms are allowed to sell chemical
technology to Iran, but that they are
actually obliged to do so, for
Iran will have renounced chemical weapons
by joining the CWC.

Articles X and XI are modeled on
similar provisions in the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty, called “atoms
for peace,” which even admirers
acknowledge have spread the very nuclear
technology the treaty was intended to
contain. When Iran, Iraq and North Korea
became signatories, they quickly gained
access to this sensitive technology,
ostensibly “for peaceful purposes.
” Yet it helped these outlaw states
to develop their nuclear weapons
programs. The CWC encourages the same
abuse. Even Scowcroft and Deutch
acknowledge “we must ensure that the
CWC is not exploited to facilitate the
diffusion of CWC specific technology …
even to signatory states.” Alas, the
perverse product of the CWC will be
“poisons for peace.”

Without the treaty, any country that
wants to destroy its chemical weapons can
do so, as is the United States. But, for
the sake of declaring an unenforceable
ban on chemical weapons possession, the
CWC will undermine existing export
controls that are, in fact, doing some
good. It is a stunning, though not
unprecedented, example of arms control
diplomacy resulting in the opposite of
its intended effect. The treaty brings to
mind Santayana’s definition of a
“fanatic” as someone who
redoubles his effort upon losing sight of
his goal. As this absurdity impresses
itself upon the Senate, that body appears
intent on rejecting the agreement,
thereby sending the administration and
the world a beneficial message: arms
control treaties should make us more
secure, not less.

Douglas J. Feith oversaw chemical
weapons arms control as Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Negotiations
Policy in the Reagan administration.