SENATE TO GET THE FACTS FROM CENTER ASSOCIATES ON FLAWED CHEMICAL ARMS TREATY; WILL ANYONE LISTEN?

(Washington, D.C.): Tomorrow, the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee will
for the first time take testimony from
knowledgeable critics of the 1993
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
The key question is: Are members
of that Committee going to avail
themselves of this opportunity to learn
about the myriad ways in which this
agreement will: cost their constituents
dearly; endanger the country’s security
interests; and possibly come back to
haunt them in the future?

The experience to date is not
encouraging. Thus far, the handful of
public hearings held by the Foreign
Relations Committee have been attended
by, at most, just two members.
More often than not only the Committee
Chairman, Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-RI), has
been present. As a result, there has been
no rigorous challenging of the Clinton
Administration’s untenable position that
the CWC will provide a verifiable, global
ban on chemical weapons.

In their testimony tomorrow, experts
associated with and recommended by the
Center for Security Policy will establish
why the Chemical Weapons
Convention is neither “global”
nor “verifiable” nor in the
U.S. national interest. They
include: Dr. Kathleen Bailey,
a former Assistant Director of the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency; Amoretta
Hoeber, a former Deputy Under
Secretary of the Army; and Frank
J. Gaffney, Jr., who is a former
Assistant Secretary of Defense and now
the Center’s director. All have been
intimately involved in chemical weapons
policy matters and related arms control
issues for many years.

Should members of the Foreign
Relations Committee decide to participate
in this important hearing — and,
thereby, fulfill their obligation to the
Senate to ensure that decisions it
ultimately takes concerning advising and
consenting to this treaty are fully
informed — they will be acquainted
with, among others, the following
troublesome facts:

• The U.S. intelligence
  community recognizes that the CWC
  cannot be effectively verified
  and that militarily significant
  stocks of chemical weapons can be
  covertly retained by signatories
  — to say nothing of the many
  nations who may choose not to
  sign on. Under the terms of this
  agreement, the United States will
  nonetheless be completely
  disarmed in terms of chemical
  weaponry.
• The CWC will impose
  immense, and in some cases unbudgeted,
  costs on the United States
  associated with the destruction
  of its own and Russia’s chemical
  weapons stockpiles and arising
  from the treaty’s obligation to
  provide chemical defensive gear
  to those who seek it.

What is more, even with
American help, it is already
clear that Russia cannot
meet the treaty-mandated schedule
for destroying its CW stocks
and will, as a result, retain
chemical weapons long after the
United States has eliminated all
of its chemical arsenal. Even the
U.S. ability to meet the
Convention’s destruction schedule
is now being called into question
as a result of slippage in the
environmental permitting process.

• The CWC will require the
  U.S. to offer open-ended security
  guarantees to both
  signatories and non-signatories
  threatened with chemical weapons
  attack.
• A large and unsuspecting
  portion of American industry —
  well beyond those firms that manufacture
  a wide array of chemicals and
  including those businesses that
  simply use them in the
  course of their operations —
  will be affected by the
  CWC’s reporting, monitoring and
  inspection requirements. One area
  of particular concern is the
  likelihood that international
  inspectors will be afforded an
  opportunity for industrial
  espionage.
• The CWC will not
  significantly reduce the
  likelihood that American forces
  will face chemical attack in the
  future. Instead, it may
  have the unintended — but
  nonetheless predictable — effect
  of making them less well
  prepared to defend against
  such attacks.
• In an extraordinary challenge to
  the Senate’s constitutional
  responsibility to advise on and
  consent to treaties, the
  CWC explicitly precludes the
  adoption of reservations to the
  Convention’s articles.

These problems materially affect the
value of the Chemical Weapons Convention
and warrant close examination by members
of the Foreign Relations Committee and
the Senate as a whole. Neither the
institution nor the nation will be well
served if responsible Senators decline to
participate in this critical hearing —
as they have with respect to so many
others before it.

– 30 –

1. The Center for
Security Policy has, in the past, been
sharply critical of the Senate Foreign
Relations, Armed Services and
Intelligence Committees for their failure
to include responsible opponents of arms
control agreements to participate in
hearings related to the ratification of
these accords. The Center commends the
Foreign Relations Committee for its
decision to allow some balance in the
present proceedings and urges its sister
committees to follow suit.