PERSUASIVE ARGUMENTS FOR OPPOSING THE UNVERIFIABLE, INEFFECTUAL CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION

(Washington, D.C.): Last week, the U.S. Senate
adopted a “unanimous consent” agreement
affecting the status of two arms control agreements and
numerous ambassadorial nominations. The first of these,
the START II Treaty, is to be taken up before the end of
the current session of Congress — presumably, shortly
before Christmas.⁽¹⁾

The second is the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC),
which purports to impose a world-wide ban on inexpensive
and universally available chemical weapons of mass
destruction. According to the “u.c.” agreement,
this treaty is to be placed on the Senate’s executive
calendar by 30 April — irrespective of whether it has
been reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. The Clinton Administration and its allies in
the Senate sought such a forcing mechanism in order to
circumvent the Committee’s chairman, Sen. Jesse Helms
(R-NC), who correctly opposes it on the grounds that the
CWC is wholly unverifiable and ineffectual. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

The Center for Security Policy believes that before
the full Senate is asked to consider the Chemical Weapons
Convention, it needs to take a fresh look not only at the
Convention’s inadequacies but also its prospective
burdens and costs. In this regard, it commends to
Senators’ attention the attached,
extremely important op.ed. article published in
today’s Washington Post by Dr. Kathleen Bailey.
Dr. Bailey is one of the Nation’s foremost experts on the
CWC having served as a former Assistant Director of the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. She is currently a
Senior Fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.

Among Dr. Bailey’s most important findings is the
conclusion that “The chemical ban is not good for
this country because it entails high costs and little or
no benefit.” She reports that such costs
include: reporting, bookkeeping and inspection-related
expenses that would have to be borne by “companies many
of which have not even heard of the treaty“; the
impact of industrial espionage; overhead support for vast
new international and domestic bureaucracies; and
possibly unconstitutional search and seizure
arrangements. (Emphasis added)

The Center strongly seconds Kathleen Bailey’s
suggestion that the Senate use the next few months to
examine these implications with far greater care than it
has to date. Should Senators fail to do so, they will
likely not only compound the military risks associated
with chemical warfare threats that will persist despite
the treaty. They may also unintentionally impose
unjustifiable and heavy burdens on unsuspecting
constituents and the businesses that employ them.

(1) For more on the START II
Treaty, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Will
the ‘World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ Deliberate About
the Flawed START II Treaty? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_103″>No. 95-D 103, 11 December 1995).

(2) See the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Profile in Courage: Jesse Helms
is Right to Block a Fatally Flawed Chemical Weapons
Treaty (No. 95-D 92, 14
November 1995).