Is the United States also exporting chemical weapons manufacturing technology?

A Dangerous New U.S.-Soviet Joint Venture

In the midst of a major diplomatic crisis with one of its closest allies, the Federal Republic of Germany, over the transfer to Libya by the latter’s nationals of equipment and technical know-how needed to manufacture chemical weapons, the United States to have approved a joint venture with the Soviet Union that could have even more damaging results.

In a rushed decision taken just before Christmas, the Reagan Administration has apparently given the go-ahead to the Louisiana-based Bailey Controls, Inc. and Honeywell to supply the Soviet Union with the wherewithal to manufacture extremely sophisticated automated production controls. These devices have the potential to enhance significantly Soviet military capabilities. Unless reversed, the Administration’s decision on this transfer will:

1. Put into Soviet hands modern technology exceedingly well suited to efficient chemical — and nuclear — weapons production;
2. Call into question the sanctity of the existing East-West export controls system (COCOM) — at the very moment the United States is trying to encourage a new arrangement to curtail chemical weapons proliferation;
3. Send a signal to the Soviets and to domestic industries that even joint ventures with manifestly dubious implications for U.S. security will be approved.

The incoming Bush Administration should make one of its first acts in office a suspension of government approval for this joint venture. Such a suspension will afford an opportunity to perform a needed review of the deal’s national security implications, including the chemical warfare proliferation dimension.

Facts and Discussion:

• In the period just before the Christmas holiday, the United States government was asked to approve a proposed joint venture between two U.S. companies (Bailey Controls, Inc. of Louisiana and Honeywell, Inc.) and a state-run organization in the Soviet Union.
• The venture would entail the transfer of the necessary machinery and continuing technical support needed to permit the Soviets domestically to produce highly advanced automated control devices.
• Comparable devices are currently used by, among other American companies, E.I. Dupont at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River nuclear weapons production plant.
• These controls are well suited to the sort of precision manufacturing entailed in the production of modern chemical weapons.
• Nearly as worrisome as the outcome of the U.S. government’s decision-making process on this proposal was the quality of the process itself.

Acting under pressure from Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston to approve the joint venture, and from Secretary of Commerce William Verity and the State Department, who generally take a forthcoming attitude toward such endeavors, the Reagan Administration acted on this proposal with extraordinary and undue dispatch.

As a result, there was insufficient time to document — to say nothing of consider — the national security implications of this transfer.

Such was the haste that it is still not clear how the United States will attempt to justify such a transfer to its allies as being consistent with COCOM guidelines.

Conclusions:

• The outgoing Reagan Administration’s hasty and unwise decision to approve the Bailey Controls-Honeywell joint venture with the USSR should be suspended at once.
• The Bush Administration must have an opportunity to assess the wisdom of providing the Soviet Union with key systems that will allow it to manufacture chemical and nuclear weapons more efficiently.
• At a minimum, the inconsistency of this technology transfer with the U.S. government’s efforts to curb the export from Western countries of systems applicable to the manufacture of chemical weapons must be reviewed.