Truth or Consequences #10: Clinton’s White House Snow Job Cannot Conceal the Chemical Weapons Convention’s Defects
(Washington, D.C.): The latest
installment in the Clinton
Administration’s campaign to browbeat the
United States Senate into ratifying a
fatally flawed Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC) failed to live up to its
advance billing — in more ways than one.
Despite repeated press reports to the
effect that former President George Bush
and General Colin Powell were to play
active roles in an “event” on
the South Lawn of the White House, the
former was nowhere to be seen and the
latter had a letter he signed
acknowledged by the President, but was
otherwise scarcely in evidence. (The
Center for Security Policy would like to
think that the force of its argument in a
paper released last night
encouraged these two influential figures
to reconsider the active role as flacks
that the Clintonistas have in mind for
them.)
Please…
Even more disappointing was
the case the President made for this
treaty. On issue after issue, he
persisted in grossly overselling the
benefits of this Convention,
misrepresenting its terms and/or
understating its costs. Consider
the following:
- Item: The CWC
Will Not ‘Banish Poison
Gas’
The President declared that by
ratifying the CWC, the United States has
“an opportunity now to forge a
widening international commitment to
banish poison gas from the earth in the
21st Century.” This is
the sort of wish-masquerading-as-fact
that has been much in evidence in
presidential statements to the effect
that “there are no Russian missiles
pointed at our children.”
The truth — as even more-honest CWC
advocates acknowledge — is that not
a single country of concern, or for that
matter any sub-national terrorist group,
that wishes to maintain a covert chemical
weapons program will be prevented from
doing so by this treaty. Neither
are they likely to be caught at it if
they do. And even if they are, there is a
negligible chance the “international
community” will be willing to punish
them for doing so. This is hardly the
stuff of which effective banishment is
made.
- Item:
‘Poisons for Peace’
The President claimed that: “The
Convention requires other nations to
follow our lead, to eliminate their
arsenals of poison gas and to give up
developing, producing and acquiring such
weapons in the future.” There is
clearly no such requirement on the rogue
states that decline to participate in
this treaty (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Libya,
Sudan and North Korea).
What is more, the Convention’s
Articles X and XI may well accelerate
the proliferation of chemical weapon
technology. This is because these
provisions obligate parties to
“facilitate the fullest
possible” transfers of technology
directly relevant to the manufacture of
chemical weapons and those used to defend
against chemical attack — a highly
desirable capability for people
interested in waging chemical wars.
- Item: The CWC
Will Not ‘Help Shield
Our Soldiers’
President Clinton repeated a
grievous misrepresentation featured in
his State of the Union address: On the
South Lawn he declared, that “by
ratifying the Chemical Weapons
Convention…we can help shield our
soldiers from one of the battlefield’s
deadliest killers.” As noted above,
the CWC may actually make our soldiers more
vulnerable to one of the
battlefield’s deadliest killers — not
least as a result of the insights shared
defensive technology will afford
potential adversaries about how to
reverse-engineer Western protective
equipment, the better to exploit its
vulnerabilities.
- Item: The CWC
Will Not Protect Our
Children
President Clinton shamelessly claimed
that “We can give our children
something our parents and grandparents
never had — broad protection against the
threat of chemical attack.” Just how
irresponsible this statement is can be
seen from a cover article published last
month by Washington City Paper.
The report disclosed that the
people of the Washington, D.C. area and,
indeed, the rest of the Nation are sitting
ducks for chemical attacks.
This problem, which arises from a
systematic failure to apply resources to
civil defense that are even remotely
commensurate with the danger, will only grow
as people like the President compound the
CWC’s placebo effect of this treaty by
exaggerating its benefits.
- Item: The CWC
Will Not Help in the
Fight Against Terrorism
While the President proclaimed that
ratifying the CWC will “bolster our
leadership in the fight against
terrorism,” the reality is that this
treaty may actually facilitate terrorism.
This could come about as a result not
only of the dispersion of chemical
warfare relevant technology and the
placebo effect but also by dint of the
sensitive information the Convention
expects the United States to share with
foreign nationals. At least some of these
folks will be working for potentially
hostile intelligence services —
including those of states, like Iran,
known to sponsor terrorism. Compromising
what U.S. intelligence knows about
international terrorists and their
sponsors will only intensify the danger
posed by such actors.
- Item: Flogging a
Phony Deadline
The President further claimed that
“America needs to ratify the
Chemical Weapons Convention and we must
do it before it takes effect on April 29th.”
While the treaty will enter into force on
that date, with or without the U.S. as a
party, the dire consequences that are
endlessly predicted if America is not in
are being wildly exaggerated. Anytime the
United States joins, the 25 percent of
the tab that it is supposed to pick up
will give Washington considerable
influence in the new UN bureaucracy set
up to implement the CWC.
The Clinton Administration’s real —
but largely unacknowledged concern — is
that this arms control house-of-cards may
collapse if the United States
does not ratify the treaty. After all, in
its absence, not one party to
the Convention is likely to be an
acknowledged chemical weapons state. The
unfunded costs, combined with the
inability to inspect American companies while
possibly exposing their own to undesired
inspections, will almost certainly
prompt most states parties to think
better of the whole idea.
- Item: The CWC
Will Harm American
Business Interests
President Clinton further claimed
that, “If we are outside this
agreement rather than inside, it is our
chemical companies, our leading
exporters, which will face mandatory
trade restrictions that could cost them
hundreds of millions of dollars in
sales.” The truth is that no one
has yet been able to document the $600
million cost the Chemical Manufacturers
Association incessantly claims will arise
from trade restrictions on U.S. industry
if America is not a treaty party.
What is more, the actual cost
(probably closer to $30 million) arising
from such restrictions will be
insignificant compared to the additional
costs treaty participation will impose on
taxpayers and private companies
(conservatively estimated to be in the
billions of dollars).
Jane’s Underscores
the Irresponsible Nature of the Clinton
Snow-Job
Today’s CWC photo opportunity at the
White House seems all the more
ignominious against the backdrop of a
news item carried in this morning’s Washington
Post. It seems that the forward to Jane’s
Land-Based Air Defense 1997-98, a
highly respected London-based defense
publication, confirms that “Russia
has developed a new variant of the lethal
anthrax toxin that is totally resistant
to antibiotics” — in flagrant
violation of an earlier
“international norm” governing
biological weapons activities.
More to the present point, Jane’s notes
that the Russians have also
developed three nerve agents “that
could be made without using any of the
precursor chemicals, which are banned
under the 1993 Chemical Weapons
Convention.” It added that
“two of the new nerve agents are eight
times as deadly as the VX nerve
agent that Iraq has acknowledged
stockpiling, while the other is as deadly
as VX.” (Emphasis added.)
Unfortunately, this information is but
the latest indication of bad faith on the
part of the Russian government of Boris
Yeltsin. One would have thought, for
example, that the Kremlin’s complete
reneging on the Wyoming Memorandum and
the Bilateral Destruction Agreement would
have shamed their co-author, former
Secretary of State James Baker, into
staying away from the White House
fandango for a CWC that was supposed to
have been critically underpinned by these
earlier agreements.
The Bottom Line
The Center for Security Policy
believes that it is becoming increasingly
clear why the Clinton Administration and
its allies on the Chemical Weapons
Convention are relying on razzle-dazzle
power-plays like today’s — and eschewing
opportunities for a real debate: The
CWC is unlikely to be approved if its
fate is determined on the merits.
By contrast, critics of the CWC are
committed to fostering a real, thorough
and informed debate. Toward that end, it
looks forward to the start of hearings
next week in the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, led off by three of this
century’s most distinguished American
public servants: Former Secretaries of
Defense James Schlesinger
Donald Rumsfeld and Caspar Weinberger.
Let the debate begin!
– 30 –
1. See Just
Which Chemical Weapons Convention Is
Colin Powell Supporting — And Does He
Know The Difference? (
April 1997).
2. For more on this
absurd ‘Poisons for Peace’ aspect of the
CWC, see Truth or
Consequences #8: The
C.W.C. Will Exacerbate The
Proliferation Of Chemical Warfare
Capabilities (
March 1997).
3. See “Margin
of Terror: In the two years since the
Tokyo subway incident, local and federal
officials have had a chance to prepare
Washington for a devastating chemical or
biological attack. So why haven’t
they?” by John Cloud in the 14 March
1997 issue of the Washington City
Paper.
4. For more on the
threat of chemical weapons, see Truth or
Consequences #6: The C.W.C.
Will Not Prevent Chemical
Terrorism Against the U.S. or its
Interests (
February 1997).
5. For more on this
fraudulent timeline, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Truth
or Consequences #2: Senate Does Not Need
To Sacrifice Sensible Scrutiny of C.W.C.
to Meet an Artificial Deadline
(No. 97-D 18,
31 January 1997). For more on the
non-declaration problem, see Truth
or Consequences # 9: C.W.C. Proponents
Dissemble About Treaty Arrangements
Likely To Disserve U.S. Interests
(No. 97-D 46,
27 March 1997).
6. For more on the
costs — both direct and indirect to
American firms– see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Truth
or Consequences #5: The C.W.C. Will Not
Be Good for Business — To Say Nothing of
The National Interest (
February 1997).
7. For more on
Russia’s chemical weapons programs, its
behavior on the Bilateral Destruction
Agreement and their implications, for the
Chemical Weapons Convention, see the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Russia’s Covert
Chemical Weapons Program Vindicates Jesse
Helms’ Continuing Opposition to Phony
C.W. Arms Control (
February 1997).
8. While all three
of these gentlemen have held other,
distinguished positions, it is noteworthy
in the present context that Secretary
Schlesinger also served as a Director of
Central Intelligence in the Nixon
Administration and as a Secretary of
Energy for President Jimmy Carter, a
Democrat.
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