‘Inquiry interruptus’: will the Senate get to the bottom of the chemical weapons convention’s fatal flaws?

(Washington, D.C.): For the second time in as many months, associates of the Center for Security Policy yesterday provided the United States Senate with informed and withering critiques of the controversial Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The occasion was a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee and featured testimony by Dr. Kathleen Bailey, a former Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., who formerly acted as an Assistant Secretary of Defense and is currently the Center’s director.

Yesterday’s hearing followed one held on 9 June 1994 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which Dr. Bailey and Mr. Gaffney were joined by another member of the Center’s Board of Advisors, Amoretta Hoeber, a former Deputy Under Secretary of the Army. Their testimony established for the record that:

• The CWC will not, despite claims often made for it, rid the world of chemical weapons.

 

• The CWC cannot be verified.

 

• The CWC will materially degrade U.S. national security by creating conditions in which chemical defenses become even more deficient than they are today; intelligence about the threat of chemical attack is skewed; and American troops are denied humane, non-lethal weapons like tear gas in situations likely to arise in international conflicts and internal disturbances.

 

• The CWC will entail large and unjustifiable costs on American taxpayers and industries. These will come to be seen as yet another, odious "unfunded federal mandate" and few in the many affected companies (including the pharmaceutical, petroleum, mining, aerospace, electronics, semiconductor, food, textile and cosmetic industries) appreciate that they are about to be subjected to onerous and expensive data collection, reporting and inspection requirements.

The attached excerpts of Mr. Gaffney’s testimony elaborate on these points.

The hearings have also served to identify areas that require further investigation by members of the Senate if they are responsibly to exercise their constitutional duty to advise and consent to treaties like the Chemical Weapons Convention. Among these are the following: taking testimony from Russian scientists about Moscow’s continuing work on chemical and biological weapons; declassification of a CIA National Intelligence Estimate that reportedly confirms the unverifiability of the CWC; soliciting the views of the chiefs of the armed services and commanders of the unified commands about the wisdom of denying U.S. forces the use of Riot Control Agents (RCAs) and other non-lethal weapons in key contingencies; a review of the problematic implementing legislation, likely costs and views of industries that will be adversely affected by the CWC; and consideration of a number of dubious arms control initiatives that will use the CWC as a precedent (including a treaty that would purport to rid the world of nuclear weapons; unverifiable bans on fissile material production and stockpiling, land mines, nuclear testing and conventional arms transfers; and a misbegotten effort to backfit the CWC’s intrusive inspection regime onto the Biological Weapons Convention).

The Center for Security Policy commends the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees for breaking with recent practice by permitting responsible critics to testify concerning pending arms control treaties. Having done so, it is incumbent upon them now to pursue important issues raised by those critics prior to giving final consideration to the fatally flawed Chemical Weapons Convention.