‘We Told You So’: Center Releases Six-Month Review Of The Unverifiable, Ineffective & Unenforceable C.W.C.

(Washington, D.C.): To mark the end of the first six-months after entry into force of the
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the Center for Security Policy has just issued an analysis
of developments during this interval — developments that validate critic’s warnings about the
treaty’s fatal shortcomings. This analysis is particularly timely insofar as it comes on the heels of
the decision last Friday by the lower house of the Russian Duma to ratify the CWC and on the eve
of possible action in the House of Representatives on legislation to implement this accord.

Russia’s action is being trumpeted by the treaty’s proponents as a major step forward toward
realization of the CWC’s goal of globally banning the production and stockpiling of chemical
weaponry. To the contrary, the Russian ratification is just one example of the ways in which the
assumptions and wishful thinking of CWC enthusiasts are unraveling. The following are among
the points dealt with at greater length in the Center’s newly-released analysis:

• Russia’s accession to the treaty will simply move it from one category (a non-party) to
  another (a party that will violate the CWC): Even as it ratified the accord, the legislature
  actually formally announced that Russia cannot afford to comply with the accord’s weapons
  dismantling requirements.

Unacknowledged, but far more ominous, is the certainty that the Kremlin will also
violate the CWC by continuing its vast chemical weapons modernization program —
including the manufacture of new classes of “binary” weapons that are far more toxic
than anything known in the West and specifically designed to circumvent the CWC’s
inspection regime. Clearly, the Russians calculate that the United States and its allies
can be induced to defray the costs of such compliance, namely those associated with
eliminating Moscow’s huge stocks of obsolete chemical arms. And the Clinton
Administration seems quite willing to go along.

• As predicted, the CWC is going to facilitate economic espionage. This problem is already a
  serious one for the United States, entailing by some estimates losses on the order of $2 billion
  per year with the U.S. chemical industry a prime target.

Last spring, the treaty’s proponents blithely dismissed fears that its intrusive inspection
regime would assist foreign operatives in gaining access to and ripping off American
businesses’ proprietary information. No one made this case more forcefully than the
Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) — a trade group whose membership of
192 large companies with a well-heeled political action committee assured them
deference in Congress when they claimed (erroneously) to speak for all of American
industry.

With its recent publication of a 38-page report, however, the CMA seems to have
adopted a much more realistic, and dire, view of the threat. In Economic
Espionage: The Looting of America’s Economic Security in the Information Age,
the trade association cites examples where even limited access to American
facilities was exploited by both friendly nations and unfriendly ones to try to
steal U.S. competitive business information.

• To make matters worse, key jobs at the new international bureaucracy created to
  implement the Chemical Weapons Convention have gone to nationals hailing from two
  of the most inveterate practitioners of economic espionage: France and Japan. A retired
  French Major General got the job of director of Verification; the director of the organization’s
  Inspectorate is a former senior official in Japan’s Self-Defense Force.
• As predicted by its opponents, the CWC is actually going to have the absurd effect of
  contributing to proliferation, and to protecting those who engage in it. It is now evident
  that the CWC’s notorious Article 11 — a section that obliges states parties to facilitate the
  fullest possible transfer of non-military chemical manufacturing technology and know-how to
  other parties — will provide cover for those seeking to acquire for military purposes what are,
  inherently, dual-use capabilities.

The Washington Times reported last week that U.S. intelligence believes that in June
China completed the transfer to Iran of a factory for manufacturing glass-lined
equipment. Such a plant is assessed to be “capable of producing chemical warfare
equipment as well as equipment for producing civilian chemicals like detergents.” As
long as the Chinese and Iranians stick to their cover story, other CWC parties are
supposed to refrain from impeding this “cooperation.” If they do so, one can safely
anticipate that it will be a model for other covert chemical proliferation operations.

• As critics of the CWC warned last spring, the Convention’s verification regime — while the
  most intrusive ever negotiated in an arms control agreement — is wholly inadequate to the job
  of detecting and proving the existence of covert chemical weapons production and stockpiling
  by nations determined to persist in such activities. For proof, one need look no further than
  Saddam Hussein’s success in thwarting the work of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM)
  inspectors who have, at least until now, been able to use a far more intrusive and effective
  regime to search for concealed Iraqi arms.

As one UN official put it a few months ago: “UNSCOM has shown that it is very, very
easy to conceal this sort of thing. We’ve been here six years and have a very intrusive
mandate. We can…go anywhere and take anything away. But we still can’t confirm
we know everything. It raises questions about what other countries can get away
with.” This is true in spades of the relatively weak inspection mandate that is supposed
to underpin the CWC.

Last April, the Clinton Administration euchred the U.S. Senate into agreeing to ratification
of the Chemical Weapons Convention, relying heavily on the argument that the United States
would otherwise be unrepresented and have no influence as the treaty’s implementation went
forward. Like so many of the other claims for the CWC, this one proved unfounded — as the
Russians’ six-month demurral demonstrated.

The real reason for such haste is now apparent for all to see: It was required in order to
prevent the passage of time from further validating the opponents’ critique. The Nation has
been badly served by this flim-flam — and by those in the executive branch and in the Senate who
brought it about. One further prediction can now be safely made: The price for having
foolishly done so will only grow in the years ahead.

This would surely be the case if the Congress heeds the advice offered in today’s
Washington Post by Amy Smithson, one of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s most
assiduous supporters. Smithson assails the U.S. Senate for attempting, in preparing CWC
implementing legislation, to limit the damage this unverifiable, ineffective and unenforceable treaty
will do to U.S. business and national security interests. Reversing changes that would, in
Smithson’s words, “allow the President to refuse a challenge inspection and block samples from
leaving America for additional analysis,” will not materially worsen the Convention’s verification
inadequacies. They would, however, greatly compound the risks of economic and strategic
espionage in this country and should be adamantly resisted by legislators in both houses of
Congress.

See the Center for Security Policy’s six-month review of the Chemical Weapons Convention,
entitled C.W.C. Watch # 2: After First Six Months, Fears About Treaty’s Unverifiability,
Unjustified Costs and Ineffectiveness Vindicated (No. 97-D 163, 1 November 1997).

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