WHEN SADDAM SPEAKS, WILL THE SENATE LISTEN?

(Washington, D.C.) The U.S. Senate is poised to take up
several initiatives of the utmost strategic sensitivity following
its return from the August recess. These include amendments to
pending defense authorization and appropriations measures that
would: perpetuate the United States’ present vulnerability to
ballistic missile attack; endorse the utopian delusion of ridding
the world of chemical weapons through an unverifiable arms
control agreement; and affirm President Clinton’s decision
permanently to suspend nuclear testing — an important milestone
toward his self-declared goal of “denuclearization.”

Enter Saddam

Fortunately, an unlikely source has just provided powerful
arguments to Senators opposed to such dubious initiatives. In the
wake of the defection to Jordan of two of his key lieutenants,
Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein has felt compelled to part the veil
of secrecy on his weapons of mass destruction programs to an
unprecedented degree. While the full significance of some 147
boxes and two large containers filled with documentation in
Arabic remains to be assessed, a briefing last Friday to the
United Nations Security Council by Rolf Ekeus — the chairman of
the UN’s Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) — has already
established a number of important insights that should be
relevant to Senate deliberations.

The most important of these is that, in violation of Iraq’s
treaty obligations and contrary to all previous Iraqi assurances,
Hussein amassed a huge biological warfare (BW) capability
which was available for use against allied forces in the Gulf War.⁽¹⁾ Some of this deadly
arsenal involving highly virulent botulinum toxin and anthrax
virus was actually uploaded on Iraqi ballistic missiles
(as well as bombs and artillery shells) prior to the start of
Operation Desert Storm. If these agents had been unleashed
against U.S. and allied forces, the losses could have run to the
hundreds of thousands. Worse yet, had coalition forces used
Patriot missiles — the only American anti-missile defense system
deployed at the time (and, for that matter, even today),
successful intercepts might have had the effect merely of
dispersing the deadly biological materials more efficiently and
over a larger area.⁽²⁾

Deterrence Worked, Despite the USG’s Best Efforts

Why, if such enormous military potential was in hand, did
Saddam Hussein not unleash his biological weapons during his time
of need? According to Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz,
Baghdad feared that the United States would retaliate with
nuclear weapons. In other words, nuclear deterrence worked
against Saddam — even though the U.S. government had formally
renounced the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear Iraq.

These findings have a number of implications for the coming
debates on: (1) a so-called “bipartisan compromise”
that would reverse earlier Senate votes in favor of promptly
deploying anti-missile protection for the American people; (2) an
amendment to be offered by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) that would
endorse the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC); and⁽³⁾ an amendment proposed
by Sen. Jim Exon (D-NE) that would affirm President Clinton’s
recent decision to forego all nuclear testing for the foreseeable
future. (The Exon amendment would also require the Senate to
recant a vote taken on 5 August that authorizes preparations for
low-yield testing critical to maintaining an effective, reliable
nuclear stockpile.)

Unreliable Threat Assessments

First, the Iraqi BW operation obliterates the
principal argument currently offered against building missile
defenses, i.e., the assertion that there is no imminent threat of
long-range missile attack against the United States. In fact,
the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General
James Clapper, has been repeatedly cited by Senators as saying
that he believes that no country (other than the purportedly
peaceable Russia and China) has the means or even the
intention to acquire such capabilities for at least the next
decade. Accordingly, the Clinton Administration and its allies in
Congress argue that the U.S. does not need to worry about
deploying anti-missile systems for years to come.

Unfortunately, U.S. intelligence is not omniscient. It did
not know for sure at the time of Desert Storm that Saddam Hussein
had uploaded biological weapons on ballistic missiles capable of
attacking Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel. For that matter, it
cannot say whether Saddam is once again lying when he claims to
have destroyed his entire BW arsenal shortly after the Gulf War
ended.

Even in cases where at least some intelligence officers
correctly assess threatening situations, there is no guarantee
that the policy-making community will act appropriately — take,
for instance, the accurate warnings given in July 1990 of an
imminent Iraqi attack on Kuwait. Today, thoughtful analysts
recognize that the opportunity to buy intercontinental-
range ballistic missiles on the world market (rather than develop
them indigenously) could change the picture practically
overnight. Opponents of missile defenses in both the executive
and legislative branches are determined to ignore such
inconvenient estimates.

Still, it is only prudent to expect that Saddam Hussein —
and his totalitarian counterparts in Iran, Libya, North Korea,
Syria and elsewhere — will strive to complement their present,
shorter-range missile capabilities with longer-range systems
capable of delivering biological, chemical or even nuclear
payloads to the U.S. Clearly, the Senate should stick to its
guns: It is time to begin defending America against these
predictable threats.

Dangerous Arms Control Delusions

Second, it is of great import that Saddam Hussein
successfully hid evidence of his massive biological weapons
program for four years — despite the presence in his country of
the most intrusive international inspection regime imaginable.
At that, it was defections, not inspections, that
“broke the code” on Iraqi BW capabilities circa Desert
Storm. And no one yet can say when, if ever, Iraq will be
correctly found to be free of all biological weaponry.

This is relevant because Iraq is a party to the 1972
convention banning biological and toxin weapons from the face of
the earth. Like too many other nations to name, including
Russia and China, Iraq has responded to this utopian, but utterly
unverifiable, accord by systematically violating its prohibitions
on the manufacture and stockpiling of BW agents.

It defies credulity to believe that the new Chemical
Weapons Convention will not meet a similar fate. To be sure,
the CWC has an array of verification provisions and monitoring
arrangements where the Biological Weapons Convention has
essentially none. But the CWC’s authorized inspection activities
do not begin to compare to UNSCOM’s powers; if a major, covert
weapons of mass destruction program could be successfully
concealed from UNSCOM, the likes of Saddam Hussein can
confidently violate the CWC with impunity. The Senate would look
foolish endorsing such a convention in the wake of the latest
Iraqi revelations.

The Abiding Importance of a Credible U.S. Nuclear
Deterrent

Finally, the success of U.S. nuclear forces in
deterring Saddam from using biological weapons against the Gulf
War coalition is a reminder of the importance that attends
preserving the credibility of the American nuclear arsenal. This
is all the more true insofar as the United States remains
unprotected against missile attack and may have to confront
adversaries equipped with illegal stocks of weapons of mass
destruction.

While the Clinton Administration, which is bent on
“denuclearizing” the United States, glibly asserts the
Nation can retain a credible nuclear stockpile without ever
conducting another underground test detonation, the truth is
otherwise. Nuclear testing remains critical to the preservation
of a safe, reliable and effective deterrent.(3) If the Senate had
good reason to challenge President Clinton’s denuclearization
policy by preserving the option for low-yield testing before last
Friday’s disclosures, it surely has cause to do so now.

The Bottom Line

With his most recent, almost certainly incomplete, admissions
about an illegal biological warfare program, Saddam Hussein has
provided the United States with a sorely needed wake-up call. Whether
the Senate hears the alarm — and responds appropriately
by rejecting any “bipartisan compromise” that would
postpone deployment of national missile defenses, the Levin
amendment lauding the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Exon
amendment foreclosing nuclear testing — will be critical for the
national security and a real test of leadership for Senator Dole
and his colleagues in the Republican majority.

(1) For more on the nature and
implications of the Iraqi biological warfare program, see the
Center’s recent Decision Brief entitled Guess What?
Saddam is Still Lying, Preserving a Biological Warfare Capability
That is a Risk to the U.S. (No.
95-D 56, 24 August 1995).

(2) To avoid such unintended and
undesirable effects, the U.S. can and should deploy defensive
systems capable of performing exo-atmospheric and/or boost-phase
intercepts of attacking ballistic missiles.

(3) For more on the essential role nuclear
testing plays in maintaining the credibility of the U.S. nuclear
deterrent, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Vive
La France! French Determination to Perform Necessary Nuclear
Testing Should Be Wake-Up Call to U.S. (No.
95-D 47, 14 July 1995).