Chemical Weapons: Say No to This Troubled Treaty

by Kathleen C. Bailey
The Washington Post, December 12, 1995

Last year, after Senate hearings on the Chemical
Weapons Convention revealed that the treaty is
unverifiable and could have a negative impact on U.S.
national security, its ratification was sidetracked for a
time. Now proponents of the treaty, including The Post
[editorial, Nov. 16], are urging that the treaty be
ratified, on the grounds that it would be good for both
the United States and the U.S. chemical industry. Neither
contention is true.

The chemical ban is not good for this country because
it entails high costs and little or no benefit. It would
not stop nations or terrorists from producing chemical
weapons, the materials, equipment and know-how for which
are too commonplace to be controlled. Furthermore, there
are currently no technical means to detect covert
production of chemical weapons — a point conceded by the
U.S. intelligence community during last year’s Senate
hearings. This is the key to why the treaty should not be
ratified: It is not even minimally verifiable.

There are several ways to cheat without getting
caught, including:

• Production in clandestine facilities. A secret
  production capability could be hidden amid
  chemical-industrial activity such as pesticide
  production, or it could be in an isolated
  location, perhaps underground or in a
  mountainside. A facility can be small; a 100 ton
  per year production plant for phosgene, for
  example, can fit into a space only 40 by 40 feet.
  Even challenge inspections would be unable to
  address this problem, because there are no
  technical means to locate secret chemical
  installations.
• Retention of undeclared stockpiles. There is no
  way to know whether a nation has declared all its
  chemical agent or weapons. (Terrorists won’t
  declare any.) Chemical weapons can be hidden
  almost anywhere — in underground tanks,
  warehouses or rail cars. The case of Iraq proves
  the point that well-hidden chemical weapons are
  unfindable. U.N. officials revealed in October
  that Iraq may still have chemical caches, despite
  four years of anytime-anywhere inspections.
• Production of new types of chemicals. The treaty
  lists the agents and precursor chemicals that
  will be subject to control. Inspectors will look
  for the presence or misuse of these compounds
  only. To avoid detection, a cheater need only
  make agents that do not depend on controlled
  compounds. It is important to note that Russia
  apparently has made chemical weapons agents that
  do not depend on compounds “on the
  list.”

In addition to being unverifiable, the treaty would
be exceedingly expensive. The greatest costs of treaty
implementation would be incurred by American companies
(many of which have not even heard of the treaty!).
Reporting and bookkeeping requirements would be
expensive, and operations might have to be shut down
during inspections, for safety.

But the greatest cost could be the losses associated
with industrial espionage. There is no guarantee against
unscrupulous inspectors clandestinely collecting samples
and conducting off-site analysis to glean information on
the chemical content of American products and the
processes involved in making them.

The costs to the U.S. taxpayer would also be very
high. New bureaucracies would be required at the national
level to handle the immense reporting requirements on
chemical production and disposition. The United States
would be called upon to shoulder much of the burden for
nations that are unwilling or unable to handle the costs.
Russia, for example, has said that it will be unable to
pay the $ 100 million per year required for its treaty
compliance bureaucracy.

On the international level, costs are hard to
estimate because no decision has been reached on how many
inspections there will be. Personnel costs for inspectors
alone may be over $ 150 million per year. Already there
are signs that the treaty bureaucracy is becoming an
international works project, with countries demanding
that an ever greater number of positions be
“reserved” for them.

In addition to low benefits and high costs, there may
be another complication with the treaty: the possibility
that treaty inspections will be found unconstitutional in
the United States. It is virtually certain that companies
disadvantaged commercially by the treaty in inspections
would declare that their rights against illegal search
and seizure are violated.

Proponents of ratification ignore the treaty’s severe
problems. They say it should be ratified because not
doing so would hurt the U.S. chemical industry. This is
not true. Even if the treaty were to come into force
without the United States (which is doubtful, because
other countries are waiting for the United States to
ratify so that it will pay the costs of implementation),
the American chemical industry would not be hurt because
it doesn’t rely on imports from countries likely to be
treaty parties. U.S. exports would be unaffected.

No ratification hearings have been held this year on
the chemical ban. It is important for the Senate to do
so.