PROFILE IN COURAGE: JESSE HELMS IS RIGHT TO BLOCK A FATALLY FLAWED CHEMICAL WEAPONS TREATY

Precis: The usual suspects — the
Clinton Administration and other, discredited advocates
of ineffectual arms control agreements — are currently
mau-mauing Senator Jesse Helms over the Chemical Weapons
Convention. It appears, however, that Sen. Helms has
recognized this Convention for what it is: a diplomatic
placebo that will do nothing to prevent the proliferation
of deadly chemical arms but may, nonetheless, induce the
unwary to believe that the problem they pose is being
effectively addressed. Sen. Helms is to be applauded for
his courageous stance and strongly supported by the
security policy community.

(Washington, D.C.): Earlier this month, the Senate
Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations —
under the leadership of its chairman and ranking member,
Senators William Roth (R-DE) and Sam Nunn (D-GA),
respectively — held two days of hearings intended to
highlight the growing problem of the proliferation of
chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. One
thing was made abundantly clear at these hearings: The
United States faces a future in which the likelihood of
chemical and biological weapons being used against it and
its allies by terrorist groups and rogue states is
increasing at an alarming rate.

Unfortunately, the hearings did little to illuminate
what the United States can and must do to prevent the
proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction. To
be sure, witness after witness pleaded with the Senators
present to support the quick ratification of the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC). It fell to Senator William
Cohen (R-ME) to point out arms control’s dirty little
secret: It is, as a practical matter, impossible to
write a treaty that will prevent a determined actor from
violating its prohibitions on the production and
stockpiling of chemical arms.

Thank God for Jesse Helms

Thankfully, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), appears
to have recognized this reality, as well. As noted in an
article in yesterday’s Washington Post, Senator
Helms believes that the CWC is “riddled with flaws
and is prepared to block its ratification
indefinitely.”

Sen. Helms outlined his objections to the Chemical
Weapons Convention in a recent letter to President
Clinton. They include “compelling questions about
verification, Russian compliance, Russian binary weapons
programs — and the cost of the Chemical Weapons
Convention.” Mr. Helms also raised concerns about
Russian Lieutenant General Anitoly Kuntsevich, the former
chairman of a key Kremlin committee overseeing aspects of
Russia’s largely illegal biological and chemical weapons
program. Kuntsevich is now reportedly under house arrest
for the unauthorized sale of chemical weapons components
to terrorists in the Middle East. The Foreign Relations
Committee chairman correctly suggests that the arrest of
Gen. Kuntsevich on trafficking charges raises serious
doubts about the integrity of the Chemical Weapons
Convention and Russian adherence thereto.

Showstoppers for the CWC

The Center for Security Policy commends Senator Helms
for his determination to resist the intense pressure for
ratification of the CWC being brought to bear by the
Clinton Administration and its allies among the cadre
that advocates for dubious arms control initiatives for a
living. The Center has argued in formal presentations to
Sen. Helms’ committee and elsewhere that the CWC is
fatally flawed for, among others, the following reasons: href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

• Multilateral arms control agreements simply
  cannot rid the world of a class of weapons —
  particularly chemical weapons — which are based
  upon relatively simple, inexpensive and widely
  available technologies. It is a utopian and
  dangerous delusion to believe otherwise.
• Even if the CWC’s limitations were completely
  efficacious, its loopholes ensure that the
  ingredients for deadly chemical weapons can be
  legally retained by states parties. The
  simple truth is that the Convention is not, as
  its proponents argue, comprehensive. It
  does not ban all chemicals that can be used as
  warfare agents. In fact, the chemical agents that
  were used with horrifying effect in World War I
  — chlorine and hydrogen cyanide — are explicitly
  exempted from the treaty because they are so
  widely used for legitimate industrial purposes.
• The CWC is simply not verifiable. Its
  extensive verification regime fails the most
  basic and important test: No U.S. official can
  state with any degree of confidence that if a
  state party (say, an Iraq, North Korea, Russia or
  China) chooses covertly to violate the
  convention, U.S. intelligence agencies will be
  able to detect the violation.
• The CWC will impose undue costs on a large
  universe of American industries that produce or
  even simply utilize chemicals in the course
  of their business operations. Such costs will
  arise as a result of new reporting requirements
  and support on-site inspections. Indirect costs
  will likely include the loss of proprietary
  business information during intrusive inspections
  by international monitors and lost production
  time due to these inspections. U.S. businesses
  and their employees would probably be willing to
  pay these costs if they would genuinely allow the
  world to be rid of chemical weapons. Should they
  have to do so, though, even if no such outcome
  is in prospect?
• The CWC will have the unintended result of
  liberalizing export controls governing
  potentially dangerous chemicals. As an
  inducement to Third World nations to join the
  treaty, it assures them access to chemicals and
  chemical manufacturing technologies that are
  currently controlled and could be used, in the
  wrong hands, to advance a covert chemical weapons
  program.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy hopes that Sens.
Helms, Roth, Nunn, Cohen and their colleagues will build
upon the useful parts of this month’s Senate hearings to
demand that the growing danger of chemical and biological
weapons proliferation be addressed seriously and as a
matter of the utmost urgency. In this regard, they would
be well advised to consider the information and
recommendation contained in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_92at”>attached op.ed. article
published in the 2 November 1995 edition of the Wall
Street Journal by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr. They should
also ensure that the Senate withhold its approval from
illusory solutions like the Chemical Weapons Convention.

(1) For excerpts of the Center’s
Senate Foreign Relations testimony concerning the
Chemical Weapons Convention, see ‘Inquiry
Interruptus’: Will the Senate Get to the Bottom of the
Chemical Weapons Convention’s Fatal Flaws? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-P_83″>No. 94-P 83, 19 August
1994).