EXCERPTS OF TESTIMONY BY DR. J.D. CROUCH II of the Center for Defense and Strategic Studies, Southwest Missouri State University, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

13 March 1996

Amidst the myriad articles,
provisions, protocols, and annexes that
make up most modern arms agreements —
the CWC itself is some 120 pages in
length — it is all too easy to forget
what their purpose is: To make the United
States of America safer.

***

Arms agreements are not
concluded to make us feel good about
ourselves, or to enhance an abstract and
ill-defined global security, or even to
establish international norms of behavior
(although sometimes they do that too).
The first and only true test of arms
control agreements is whether they
contribute to the national security of
the United States of America.
The Carter Administration used
“measurable contribution” to
U.S. national security as the standard.
In so doing, agreements must be, in words
of the ACDA mission, “fully
integrated into the development and
conduct of United States national
security policy.” ….I
cannot imagine an agreement less suited
to our security needs in the post-Cold
War security environment [than the CWC].

The “deal” implicit in the
CWC is that the United States of America
— its citizens, government and armed
forces deployed at home and abroad —
will be safer by giving up its offensive
chemical deterrent in the hopes that
America’s potential enemies will give up
their chemical weapons. To comply with
the CWC, the United States must abandon
completely its offensive chemical weapons
deterrent, including any modernization
programs, existing CW stockpiles, and all
existing production facilities. It must also
give up its non-lethal CW military
capability which can demonstrably save
American servicemen’s lives. If
we do this, we are told, the states of
the world will follow our lead. If we do
not, chemical weapons will continue to
proliferate. That is the essence of the
agreement. I wish to explain why I
believe that this premise is flawed.

***

….The CWC…trades a weakening
in the overall deterrence to use for a
widespread, but by no means universal,
ban on possession. It does so by trading
our deterrent in-being for the dubious
promise that this agreement will ensure
that chemical weapons are, in the words
of President Bush, “eliminated from
the face of the earth.”

***

While it is impossible to know exactly
why deterrence works in any individual
case, we must not rule out the
possibility — and I would say the strong
probability — that our offensive
chemical weapons program played a crucial
role in deterring chemical attack on the
armed forces of the United States.
Indeed, the historical evidence of where
CW was used and where it was not used
since the Geneva Protocol went into force
strongly suggests that the ability to
retaliate “in kind” is the best
deterrent of chemical attack.

***

A Weakening of Deterrence:
All of this brings me to the judgment
that the United States is abandoning,
with the CWC, one of the most effective
deterrents to chemical use against itself
and its allies: the right to an
extant and mature offensive chemical
weapons program. No matter what
the perceived benefits of the CWC from a
diplomatic or political standpoint, the
Senate should understand that it will
contribute to the weakening of
deterrence, not to its strengthening, by
eliminating the ability of the United
States to respond in kind to chemical
attack. A weakening of deterrence
means in practical terms that American
and allied soldiers and citizens are
more, not less, likely to be attacked
with chemical weapons.

The CWC may result in fewer
chemical weapon states in the world,
although the great majority of states
that have signed and ratified the
convention have had no offensive CW
program in the past and there is no
reason to expect them to develop one in
the absence of the CWC. Many others are
our friends and allies who, like the
United States, maintained CW programs for
deterrence only. A relative few states
with active CW programs that are
potential enemies of the United States
have signed the convention and in
virtually all of these cases we believe
that their offensive CW programs will
continue after the convention
enters force. As you know, many
of the states we are most concerned about
have yet to sign the convention and are
unlikely to ever do so.

The objective of keeping a great many
states who have no interest in offensive
CW from developing CW programs might make
us feel good about ourselves, but does
it make us safer? We should care
little if most of those states have
chemical weapons programs in any case.
What we should care about is that the
states that represent interests inimical
to our own will retain an offensive CW
capability: I would list foremost among
these Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Libya,
North Korea and Iraq.

Current open source intelligence on
all of these countries’ programs leads
one inexorably to the conclusion that
they will retain an offensive CW
capability whether they join the CWC or
not. Let me briefly quote from a March
1995 unclassified Intelligence Community
Report on The Weapons Proliferation
Threat:

“CW proliferation will
continue to be a serious threat
for at least the remainder of the
decade, despite a number of arms
control efforts, such as the
Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC). Several countries of
proliferation concern —
including Libya, Syria and Iraq
— have so far refused to sign
the CWC, and some CW-capable
countries that have signed the
CWC show no signs of ending their
programs.”

***

If the history of the Biological
Weapons Convention is any guide, the CWC
will make pressing the Russians on their
advanced chemical weapons program more
difficult because it will require the
U.S. government first to acknowledge
their activities as a violation of an
international agreement — something the
current and past Administrations have
been exceedingly reluctant to do.

***

Verification and Compliance:
Virtually all of the countries
of concern that I have listed here are
embedding their CW production within
their legitimate chemical industries.
They are developing a CW production
mobilization capability indistinguishable
from commercial activities. Many are
constructing underground facilities and
developing elaborate cover operations so
that they can withstand on-site
inspections. Iraq, in particular (who was
able to hide its BW program from 28
extremely intrusive UNSCOM inspections —
a fact only discovered when defectors
provided UNSCOM with comprehensive
documentation of the program) has a base
of experience from which to develop a
well-protected program.

Indeed, I believe it is no
exaggeration to conclude that it may be
easier to hide an offensive CW program
from within the CWC than from outside it.
Membership in the CWC regime will ensure
that parties have continued access to the
chemicals necessary to produce CW
precursors and weapons. As Iraq
apparently decided that it was better to
conduct its clandestine nuclear weapons
program under the guise of NPT
compliance, including inspections from
the International Atomic Energy Agency, a
CWC member state (and its allies) could
utilize its membership in the various
implementation and compliance bodies to
cover its clandestine CW program and to
slow or circumvent the verification and
compliance process in the convention.

Another growing threat to the United
States and its allies is the possibility
that sub-state and trans-state actors
will develop the ability to make and use
chemical agents against us. The recent
use of the CW agent Sarin by the Japanese
cult group Aum Shinrikyo is probably just
the beginning of this type of threat, not
the end. President Clinton highlighted
this attack in his State of the Union
address, implying that if the CWC had
been in place this sort of attack could
have been prevented….The CWC is
functionally irrelevant to this type of
threat. This is a major loophole
in the convention as non-state groups
could maintain this capability, but
obviously at a lower level than a state
might.

***

Defensive and Offensive
Components: The CW defensive
doctrine that the U.S. armed forces has
relied on up until the CWC had two
pillars:

• First, maintain robust passive
  defense capability including
  detection, physical protection,
  decontamination and antidotes.
• Second, maintain a CW stockpile
  to use for retaliation purposes
  and, at a minimum, to force the
  adversary that used CW to adopt a
  protective posture that would
  degrade its operational
  effectiveness as much as ours.

One might ask, how has U.S.
war-fighting doctrine been modified to
compensate for the loss of the second
prong? How has military training changed
and what new acquisition programs are in
train to reflect this change? The answer
is very little. While the Pentagon has
attempted to consolidate its programs in
the area of passive CW defense, overall
funding for these programs is under
assault from the military services who
are seeking to divert funding from CW and
BW defense, as well as active defenses
such as theater and strategic missile
defense, to traditional service capital
projects. Again, if the history
of arms control safeguard programs is any
guide, we can expect funding for CW
defense programs to fall under the budget
axe shortly after the CWC has been
ratified.

There is also an important
relationship between the defensive
component of our CW capability and the
offensive component. Historically both
have led to improvements in the others’
capabilities. Reportedly, the Russians
and others are currently developing novel
CW/BW agents that may not be covered by
the CWC chemical schedules and that, more
importantly, render our current detection
techniques and antidotes useless.

***

Areas of Concern: ….It
is a mistake, in my judgment, to rely
solely or even substantially on the
deterrent effect of nuclear forces to
deter chemical weapon attack. In this
regard I have…specific
concerns:

First, for any deterrent to be
effective it must be both capable and
credible. By capable I mean
that the force must be “in
being” and capable of militarily
defeating the attack or so punishing the
attacker as to make the attack
unattractive. By credible I mean that the
deterring nation must be willing use its
deterrent if attacked, or at least
convince its opponents that it is willing
to do so.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of
relying on the nuclear deterrent to deter
CW/BW attacks comes not from a potential
enemy’s misunderstanding of how the U.S.
might respond, but from a correct
understanding of how difficult a decision
it would be for any American President to
use nuclear forces. Ironically, the
United States would in many cases not
consider nuclear weapon retaliation to CW
use as “in kind” or proper.

***

Without some credible threat actually
to respond using nuclear weapons —
however difficult such a response might
seem to be in the abstract — just saying
that we will deal with those countries
that do not join the CWC with our nuclear
deterrent is nothing more than whistling
past the graveyard. I fear that graveyard
could be filled with American soldiers
that fall victim to a chemical weapons
attack.

Moreover, by eliminating our offensive
chemical deterrent the United States will
be putting more pressure on our nuclear
forces to deter chemical and biological
attack at a time when we have essentially
denuclearized the U.S. Navy, completely
denuclearized the U.S. Army and are
vastly scaling back our strategic nuclear
capabilities.

***

We are thus in the unenviable position
of being more reliant from a deterrent
standpoint on nuclear weapons at a time
when we have a less robust and flexible
nuclear deterrent to rely on. And the
situation will only get worse as we
implement START II, complete the
dismantlement of our most effective
tactical nuclear systems, and consummate
a CTB [Comprehensive Test Ban].

A second concern I have in
relying on nuclear weapons is that, in
the future, it is quite possible, even
likely I would say, that the United
States will face opponents armed not just
with chemical weapons but with nuclear
weapons of their own.

***

Today it is not even likely that CW or
BW use will escalate toward a major
nuclear confrontation unless the Russian
Federation or perhaps the PRC are
involved but retaliation with nuclear
weapons could increase the risk of such
escalation. The corresponding constraints
on non-aligned states have all but
evaporated.

***

….[There is also a] standing U.S.
policy of providing Negative Security
Assurances to non-nuclear weapon states.
President Clinton reaffirmed this policy
recently despite our experience during
the Gulf War.

The United States has thus made a
commitment not to use or threaten to
use nuclear weapons against any
state that is not itself a nuclear weapon
state or allied to a nuclear weapon
state. This means in practice that even
the threatened use of nuclear weapons to
shore up our deterrent to chemical or
biological use could be considered a
violation of U.S. policy and even
international law.

The policy of Negative Security
Assurances itself could be interpreted by
foreign leaders as carte blanche
to use CW and BW against U.S. or other
allied forces (or even against civilian
populations friendly to the U.S.) without
the implicit risk of a U.S. nuclear
response. To my knowledge there has been
no discussion of revising the Negative
Security Assurance policy in light of the
proposed abandonment, through the CWC, of
the U.S. offensive CW capability. At
a minimum, the United States should
seek a revision of its NSA policy so that
the U.S. could threaten and use nuclear
weapons against states that possess any
weapons of mass destruction.

***

…. [Why is it] that a nation might
use CW against the United States, its
forces or its allies? The answer, it
seems fairly clear, would be to
intimidate the United States from
intervening further in a crisis or
conflict; to punish the U.S. for some
action it had already taken, such as
intervening in a conflict; or to undercut
the effectiveness of its overwhelming
advanced conventional advantage.

In none of these cases is it obvious
that advanced conventional forces will be
able to deter CW use. Such forces might
prove so overwhelming that the effect of
CW use is substantially mitigated and the
U.S. easily wins the conflict, but they
might just as easily not prove decisive,
especially if the U.S. military is
unprepared — physically and
psychologically — for the CW attack.

***

Yet the whole idea of deterrence
implies that we will hold in reserve a
military capability that would be used to
deny or punish the use of CW or BW
weapons. What advanced military
capabilities or targets for those weapons
are American forces prepared to hold in
reserve to dissuade a future Saddam
Hussein that using CW will not improve
his war outcome? If we are not
going to hold capabilities in reserve how
can we deter CW use with those
conventional weapons when we are
presumably using them in the most
operationally effective way?

***

Advanced conventional capabilities
will play a role in limiting the options
that CW/BW states have for employing
their unconventional weapons. However, it
is far from clear that these states will
be deterred from CW or BW use by the
threat of conventional retaliation,
especially if the United States or
coalition forces intend to use or are
already using those forces against them
in a conflict. In fact, the overwhelming
advantage that U.S. forces could have
against a CW-capable state might actually
create an incentive for CW use to
“level the battlefield.”

Riot Control Agents: ….Contrary
to the U.S. government position at the
time of CWC signature, the Clinton
administration has adopted a restrictive
interpretation of how the CWC controls
Riot Control Agents (RCAs). This
interpretation prohibits the use
of RCAs to rescue downed pilots and
against civilians that are used to screen
an attack. In effect, the
United States has adopted a position that
would have U.S. soldiers shoot civilians
when they are intermingled with
combatants rather than use tear gas or
other RCAs….Apparently the
ROEs for Bosnia include the use of riot
control agents. If they are needed in
Bosnia why can we give them up after the
CWC entry into force?

….These many national security
concerns I have outlined today form the
basis of my judgment that the CWC
will not make the United States, its
allies or its armed forces safer in the
post-Cold War security environment.
On the contrary, it could contribute to a
weakening of CW deterrence and increase
the likelihood that American forces will
face chemically-armed opponents.

***

…The United States should
reject the Chemical Weapons Convention.
To stand against an arms control
agreement is a difficult political
decision. But unlike perhaps so many
other areas of arms control, if the CWC
fails it will not leave these weapons
beyond control. On the contrary, the
proper international norm against the use
of chemical and biological weapons will
continue to have legal force in the 1925
Geneva Protocol. The Australia Group will
continue to cooperate in the control of
technology and materials to potential CW
states.

***

…The United States should
consider a modification of its Negative
Security Assurance policy that at least
provides for a nuclear response to the
use of non-nuclear weapons of mass
destruction against the United States,
its forces and its allies. Such
a measure would lessen the ambiguity
about the options available to the
President to respond to CW or BW use
without forcing him into an automatic
response with nuclear forces.

***

These measures, and not the
CWC, are likely to provide the most
effective deterrent to the use of CW
against U.S. military personnel. And that
objective, in the increasingly dangerous
international environment the United
States will face in the next century, is
a far more important objective than
taking an empty and ineffective moral
stand on banning chemical weapons from
the face of the earth.