National Asset: Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Warns of Perverse Effects, High Costs of Bogus Arms Control

(Washington, D.C.): The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has yet again
made invaluable
contributions to U.S. national security policy. Twice in recent days, it has published
eloquent
warnings about the dangers of unverifiable, ineffective and unenforced arms control
agreements. These warnings are especially timely insofar as they critique with
devastating effect
the Clinton Administration’s latest misguided initiative in this area: The President’s intention,
announced in January’s State of the Union address, to enhance the verification and enforcement
mechanisms of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

On 27 February, the Journal ran an editorial entitled “BW Scare” that succinctly
described both
the growing threat posed by biological weapons and the imperative of taking practicable and
useful steps to reduce the American people’s present, utter vulnerability to this danger.
Highlights of this important editorial include the following points:

“[A] dangerous proposal…that the Administration is pushing [envisions] extending the 1972
Biological Weapons Convention to introduce an international inspection regime along the lines
of the one in the new Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). President Clinton called for it in
his State of the Union address last month. That’s just what we don’t need — another
phony verification scheme intended to dupe citizens into thinking that we are ‘doing
something’ about a national security threat.

“To understand how ineffective any inspection regime necessarily would be, consider the one
that’s been searching out weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for the past seven years.
This is
the most intrusive inspection regime imaginable; it’s inconceivable that an international
treaty would mandate anything like it. Highly trained inspectors are on the spot in Iraq,
with authority to visit any facility and question any individual on a moment’s notice.

“Even so, they haven’t been able to find all the BW material that Saddam is known to
be hiding. Of course, even if these crack inspection teams eventually find and
destroy it all, as they promise, there’s nothing to stop Saddam from cooking up
some more the day after the inspectors go home. Just because a factory isn’t
producing BW today doesn’t mean it wasn’t doing so yesterday or won’t do so
tomorrow.

“That’s the scary thing about BW (and CW). They can be concocted by just about
any
determined terrorist in a lab coat. The materials and technology are commonly
available for legitimate uses, and you don’t need a Ph.D. to figure out how to combine
them
for lethal ends; consult the world-wide web for a recipe du jour. There’s a good reason the
FBI acted so fast in Nevada last week.

“The highly competitive pharmaceutical industry is dismayed at the prospect of giving an
international inspection agency the same kind of access to its factories that the chemical
industry must now endure under the CWC. The threat of industrial espionage is
particularly worrisome in this industry, where a spy needs only to help himself to a drop
of a substance to reverse-engineer something that took millions of dollars to develop.
So
far the industry has been raising its objections sotto voce, apparently afraid of being
tagged as
more interested in its bottom line than in world security; it would help if it made them loud and
clear.

“An effective defense against BW and CW attack will include many elements —
among
them an informed citizenry, strong intelligence networks at home and abroad, the
proper training of local emergency-response teams, and R&D into possible
countermeasures….It would be hard to find anyone in Congress or the Executive Branch
who
wouldn’t agree that we ought to do more in all these areas. But a comprehensive
defense
against biological attack isn’t aided by an expanded arms control ‘convention’ that lulls
people into believing that an international law somehow protects them from the
internationally lawless.” (Emphasis added throughout.)

Enter Fred Iklé

Today, the Journal complemented this trenchant critique with an op.ed. article
entitled “Saddam’s
Lessons in Arms Control” by former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and
Under Secretary of Defense Fred Iklé (see href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-P_38at”>the attached). With this essay, Dr. Iklé, a long-time
member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors, returns to a theme he elucidated in
print thirty-eight years ago in an historic Foreign Affairs article headlined “After
Detection,
What?”: Verification is not the issue. Even when proof of non-compliance
is irrefutable,
“no violation goes punished under international arms control regimes.”

Particularly noteworthy is Dr. Iklé elaboration on the Journal editorial
board’s concern that such
regimes are not merely useless, they can actually make matters worse. As Dr.
Iklé put it:

“The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors compliance with the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, used to employ Iraqis in sensitive positions.
According to the agreed rules, citizens from all member states are supposed to act
as international civil servants. Thus an Iraqi must not take instructions from
Baghdad. Yet, after the Gulf War, it was discovered that these ‘international
civil servants’ misused what they had learned at the IAEA to teach their
fellow Iraqis how to outwit the IAEA inspections.“

The Center for Security Policy commends the Wall Street Journal and its
own valued
Board member, Fred Iklé, for their efforts to arouse the American people to the real
dangers
posed by proliferating weapons of mass destruction — dangers likely to be compounded by
unreal
arms control initiatives like the President’s new BWC enhancements, the CWC and the
Comprehensive Test Ban he now wants ratified.