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C.W.C. Watch # 2: After First Six Months, Fears About Treaty’s Unverifiability, Unjustified Costs & Ineffectiveness Vindicated

November 1, 1997Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): On Friday, the lower house of the Russian Duma agreed to the ratification
of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This step has been trumpeted by the treaty’s
proponents as a major step forward toward its goal of globally banning the production and
stockpiling of chemical weaponry.

In fact, assuming that the Duma’s upper house goes along, 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). It will certainly not mean the end of Russia’s vast chemical weapons program. In fact,
the Kremlin continues to engage in such activities covertly — 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.⁽¹⁾

Trick or Treat: Sticking Uncle Sam With the Tab for Russian CW Destruction

Indeed, the winning argument in the Duma appears to have been that CWC ratification would
enable Russia to offload a substantial portion of the costs of destroying its vast arsenal of
obsolete chemical arms onto the United States and other states parties.⁽²⁾ The Clinton
Administration has clearly signaled its readiness to provide substantial support as well —
notwithstanding assurances to the contrary made at the time of the CWC debate in the U.S.
Senate, which were reflected in Condition #18 in the Senate’s Resolution of Ratification.⁽³⁾
According to the New York Times on 16 October 1997 — when it appeared that Russia might not
ratify the treaty: “In Washington, officials have taken the position that once Russia ratifies the
convention, the costs of putting it into effect can be settled fairly easily.”

The ultimate costs to the U.S. taxpayer of this shakedown are not known at this writing. Just as it
was predictable Americans would wind up picking up part of Russia’s tab,⁽⁴⁾ however, it is a safe
bet that the costs of doing so will likely be huge.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example during the six-month period since the CWC entered
into force of the critics’ dire predictions coming to pass. Consider the following warnings issued
during the course of the Senate debate — and indications that they are being proven correct:

Item: ‘The CWC Will Facilitate Economic Espionage Against U.S. Companies’

During the initial debate, opponents of the CWC warned that the CWC’s verification regime
would compound the already serious problem posed by foreign economic espionage against the
United States.⁽⁵⁾ According to the Annual Report to Congress on Foreign Economic Collection
and Industrial Espionage, America loses an estimated $2 billion dollars per year as a consequence
of economic espionage.⁽⁶⁾

As it happens, U.S. chemical companies are an especially lucrative target for commercial
intelligence collection since they are world leaders in their industry. On 13 May 1997, Dr. Bruce
Merrifield — a professor at the Wharton School of Business and former Under Secretary of
Commerce with long experience in the chemical industry and other high technology fields —
reiterated concerns he expressed prior to the CWC’s ratification in testimony delivered to the
Senate Judiciary Committee then considering the Treaty’s implementing legislation (see below).
Dr. Merrifield warned that the U.S. chemical industry is a primary focus for foreign industrial
espionage. He also advised Senators that access provided to foreign nationals under the CWC
would permit a trained engineer or chemist to identify, and therefore to steal, a company’s trade
secrets, sometimes without having actually to enter a production or research facility.

Interestingly, similar concerns are now being voiced by one of the most outspoken advocates of
the CWC: the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA). In the course of the CWC debate,
the CMA incessantly made representations to the effect that the CWC’s intrusive verification
provisions would pose no threat to the U.S. chemical manufacturing business.⁽⁷⁾ For example, in
one of its “fact sheets” CMA noted, “Routine inspection of chemical facilities can quickly and
efficiently verify compliance with the Convention, with little or no disruption in production
activities….Sensitive commercial information is not jeopardized by the CWC.”⁽⁸⁾

In a recently released 38-page report, however, the Chemical Manufacturers Association seems to
have adopted a much more realistic, and dire, view of the threat. Judging by Economic
Espionage: The Looting of America’s Economic Security In The Information Age,⁽⁹⁾ the CMA
now seems seized with the very problem it was assiduously downplaying just a few months ago.
For example, this report observes:

“America, its businesses, their ability to be competitive, innovative and to expand and
create new jobs and technologies — in short, the Nation’s economic security — are
under assault from foreign spies who are stealing vast amounts of America’s most
sensitive and valuable business data at an unprecedented and alarming rate….Economic
espionage is a direct threat to the economic security of the United States.“
(Emphasis added.)

Specifically, the CMA analysis cites evidence of the ease with which foreign operatives can
obtain coveted Confidential Business Information if given even limited access to American
competitors’ facilities. “The techniques used by spies range from ‘dumpster diving’ or ‘trash
trawling’ (that is, searching through companies’ office trash), to elaborate multi-faceted efforts
including high-surveillance and other information-collection methods designed to assemble
important segments of what the experts call a ‘corporate puzzle.'”

Two specific examples quoted by the CMA are worthy of note: First, “In 1983, a delegation of
Soviet scientists invited to tour a Grumman aircraft plant on Long Island were told they could
carry no cameras and take no notes. Still, by putting adhesive tape on their shoes, the scientists
were able to collect slivers of metal alloys being used for new U.S. fighter planes.”⁽¹⁰⁾ And
second, “Plant managers became suspicious when, during [a] tour, three visiting South Koreans
were caught dipping their ties into a lab sample of the product.”⁽¹¹⁾

Fears that the Chemical Weapons Convention will be exploited for the purpose of conducting
economic espionage have only been further reinforced by the nature of the appointments to key
posts by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The job of Director
of Verification has gone to Major General Jean-Louis Roland who previously served as the
chief of the Arms Control Division of France’s Defense Staff. And the Director of the OPCW’s
Inspectorate is a former senior official in Japan’s Self-Defense Force, Ichiro Akiyama. The
French and Japanese intelligence organizations are among the world’s most aggressive in pursuing
competitive advantages for their companies through official conduct of industrial espionage. It
would be extraordinary indeed if these countries were not to seek to use the placement of their
nationals into such sensitive positions for the purpose of advancing their priority agendas.

Item: ‘The CWC Will Contribute to Proliferation and Protect Those Who Engage in It’

One of the most contentious issues in the U.S. Senate’s debate on the Chemical Weapons
Convention arose from hard experience with an earlier arms control agreement: the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative, which encouraged the
transfer of “peaceful” nuclear technology and know-how to non-nuclear states parties served as
the model for the CWC’s Article XI. Just as the former has been exploited by the likes of Iraq,
Iran, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Algeria, Brazil and Argentina as a cover for their respective
nuclear weapons programs, Article XI⁽¹²⁾ — derisively dubbed by critics the “Poisons for Peace”
provision⁽¹³⁾ — seemed sure to be used to justify and conceal transfers of technology, equipment
and know-how directly relevant to the production of chemical weapons.

A case in point was revealed on 30 October 1997 by the Washington Times’ National Security
correspondent Bill Gertz. Mr. Gertz cites a classified U.S. intelligence report as concluding that
“Chinese technicians completed work in June on a factory [in Iran] that makes ‘glass-lined
equipment.'” Such equipment is said to be “essential in the production of chemical warfare agent
precursors.”

Since “the equipment factory is a ‘dual-use’ production facility capable of producing chemical
warfare equipment as well as equipment for producing civilian chemicals like detergents,” China
and Iran — both of whom have ratified the CWC (although Iran has not yet completed the process
by depositing its instruments of ratification in The Hague) — can be expected to insist that such a
transfer is not only legal, but unobjectionable. After all, states parties have an affirmative
obligation not to “hamper…the economic or technological development of States Parties, and
international cooperation in the field of chemical activities for purposes not prohibited under this
Convention including the international exchange of scientific and technical information and
chemicals and equipment for the production, processing or use of chemicals for purposes not
prohibited under this Convention.” (Emphasis added.)

Although CWC proponents attach great weight to the italicized portion of the text, the
Sino-Iranian chemical cooperation makes clear that there is no way confidently to differentiate
between dual-use technology transfers that will be used for prohibited and non-prohibited
purposes. As a result of the CWC, it is predictable that more such dangerous technology will be
flowing into threatening hands in the future.

Item: ‘The CWC is Unverifiable’

Opponents of the CWC warned that the treaty’s verification regime — while the most intrusive
ever negotiated — would be 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.
This critique has been abundantly borne out by Saddam Hussein’s success in defeating the far
more intrusive and effective inspections that have been scouring Iraq since 1991 in search of
prohibited chemical and other weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.

In an interview in early August, Amb. Rolf Ekeus, former chief UN weapons inspector, reported
that during the last six years the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) has uncovered
a large portion of the Iraqi chemical weapons program. However, Mr. Ekeus claims Iraq is still
hiding chemical weapons and chemical weapons technology, and does not intend to surrender
these capabilities: “We have documentary evidence about orders from the leadership to preserve
a strategic capability …. UNSCOM uncovered work on the nerve gas VX and says that 3,000
kilograms of VX is missing.”⁽¹⁴⁾

In a report issued on 7 October 1997, Ekeus’ successor, Amb. Richard Butler, revealed the
abiding nature of Iraq’s ambition to defend and enhance its weapon manufacturing capabilities.
“The outstanding problems are numerous and grave,” writes Butler. And last week, Saddam
audaciously acted to degrade the inspection regime still further — and create the precedent for
destroying it altogether — by barring the most capable inspectors of all, the Americans, from
serving on UNSCOM teams.

The case of Iraq has been instructive of the difficulty in implementing the verification measures of
the CWC. Creena Lavery, special assistant to the director of UNSCOM in Baghdad claimed,
“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.”⁽¹⁵⁾ This is true in spades of the far less robust regime that is
supposed to underpin the CWC.

Item: ‘Rogue States Will Continue to Have Chemical Weapons‘

Iraq is, regrettably, not the only rogue state bearing out the critics’ charge that many of the most
dangerous chemical weapons nations will not even bother to become party to the CWC, let alone
eliminate their CW arsenals. Consider the following evidence that has come to light since the
treaty entered into force:

According to a report aired on 4 August 1997 by the Christian Broadcasting Network, satellite
photos have revealed that “Syria appears to be deploying deadly new nerve agents loaded onto
missiles at sites near the cities of Hama and Homs in northwest Syria.” The photos further
show a “chemical weapons plant near Homs,… where nerve agents, such as VX gas, are being
manufactured. This picture [on screen] also shows how the deadly chemicals are stored in
small tanks away from the main facility under heavy guard.”⁽¹⁶⁾

Published reports suggest that Syria has also maintained a “strategic missile capability”
for delivering its chemical weapons — an arsenal of up to 150 Scud missiles built with
the assistance of China and North Korea and capable of a devastating chemical attack
on Israel. The Syrian despot, Hafez Assad may believe that his country, with the
Middle East’s largest chemical weapons stockpile⁽¹⁷⁾ and an eroding conventional
military capability, might benefit from a preemptive strike on Israeli population centers
if the ensuing conflict could be terminated by international pressure for a cease-fire.

It has belatedly dawned on the Israelis that this reality makes it dangerous
for Israel to ratify the CWC.⁽¹⁸⁾ They now face the Hobson’s choice of
eliminating chemical weapons that constitute a key part of the Jewish State’s
deterrent posture or face sanctions that could prove, in the words of one
commentator, to be “a mortal blow to Israeli high tech firms, which are also major
exporters.”⁽¹⁹⁾

According to a report released in August by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, North
Korea has amassed a 1,000-ton chemical weapon stockpile — 70 tons of which could be used
immediately upon South Korean population centers. In addition, the reports revealed the
North continues to produce 15.2 tons of chemical weapons each day, a mere fraction of its
capacity in a time of crisis to produce up to 40 tons per day at as many as eight chemical
weapon factories in a time of crisis. The KJCS conclude, moreover, that: “We believe that the
North has no qualms about using chemical weapons.”⁽²⁰⁾

Although President Clinton asserted that, thanks to the CWC, “it will be more
difficult for terrorists and for rogue states to get or make poison gas,” the treaty is
unlikely to have any discernible impact on the North Korean threat. Its weapons of
mass destruction programs are largely indigenous⁽²¹⁾ and the CWC’s sanctions regime
will do little to deter future build up of chemical weapons in North Korea or other
countries that have developed chemical weapons on their own.

Developments in Iraq, Syria and North Korea belie President Clinton’s assurances that “by
ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention…we can help shield our soldiers from one of the
battlefield’s deadliest killers.” To the contrary, they confirm that the CWC will not: 1) banish
poison gas; 2) protect American troops from chemical attack; 3) stop rogue nations or terrorists
from building chemical weapons; or 4) give the “international community” the tools to prevent,
halt or punish those who do.

Item: ‘Declarations by States Parties Will Not Make a Difference’

Not only is the Chemical Weapons Convention not a global or verifiable ban, whatever limited
utility it has depends critically upon the good faith of its states parties in declaring the size, nature
and location of their chemical stockpiles. The preponderance of inspections and other monitoring
required by the treaty involve such declarations. Where countries decline to acknowledge their
CW capabilities — or misrepresent those they do acknowledge having — the treaty regime
becomes even more irrelevant to the persistent reality that chemical weaponry abounds.

The case of India is instructive. After repeatedly denying that they maintained a chemical
weapons capability, the Indians confessed in a declaration to the OPCW to having produced and
stockpiled a small chemical arsenal.

This revelation has been, by far, the most hyped development since the CWC entered into force.
The treaty’s champions have cited it as proof of its effectiveness and a watershed event in the
history of arms control. Far from a cause for celebration, this revelation should awaken
proponents to the hard reality: A country that has systematically lied about its CW capabilities
may still be significantly understating them. The Indians clearly have established and concealed
chemical weapons facilities in the past; it would be foolish to assume that they will stop doing so
now.

More troubling still is the fact that, in contrast to the Indian disclosure (which New Delhi saw fit
to make public, presumably as part of a deterrent calculation vis à vis Pakistan), other nations’
declarations are apparently not going to be revealed — by some accounts, even to member
governments. This makes even more of a mockery of the idea that the CWC will produce real
transparency, let alone a basis for judging that totalitarian systems like China (or even still
significantly closed societies like Russia’s) have honestly reported their CW holdings, let alone
taken all measures necessary to eliminate production capabilities⁽²²⁾ and destroy all stockpiles.

Item: ‘The CWC Will Serve as an Undesirable Precedent’

Critics of the CWC repeatedly warned that the “triumph of hope over experience” epitomized by
this treaty — the willingness to disregard objective realities concerning the impossibility of
verifiably and globally eliminating through an arms control agreement technologies as ubiquitous
as those involved in chemical weapons arms — would subsequently be cited as a prototype for
future agreements. This prediction, too, has been borne out over the past six months.

The Antipersonnel-Landmine Ban: Those promoting a treaty that purports to prohibit the
production, stockpiling and use of anti-personnel landmines (APLs) have repeatedly claimed
that the Chemical Weapons Convention proved that the international community could rid the
world of weapons deemed to be “illegitimate” or “immoral.” This argument has been used
with considerable effect in countering the responsible objections from the U.S. military to an
APL ban⁽²³⁾ — notably the fact that some countries will not sign up and others who do will
nonetheless continue to use landmines. Why, it is asked, did the same prospect not prevent the
Joint Chiefs of Staff from objecting to a chemical weapons ban that had precisely the same
shortcomings? The only satisfactory answer is that the U.S. military has learned from the
CWC experience; unverifiable, unenforceable and ineffective arms control agreements may or
may not make a moral statement but they will not provide real security. They serve instead
merely to whet the appetite of those who hope in a similar manner to eliminate a whole slew of
vital defense capabilities.⁽²⁴⁾

Improved Verification Provisions for the Biological Weapons Convention: As part of its
bid to generate private sector support for the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Clinton
Administration assured the U.S. biotech industry that it would not be subjected to the same
risks of economic espionage now arising from the CWC — assurances that deceitfully ignored
the fact that pharmaceutical and other biotech firms, and any other facility in the United States,
are already subject to intrusive challenge inspections pursuant to the CWC.

Predictably, the Administration has proceeded nonetheless to support international
efforts to amend the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) by attaching to it a
verification regime modeled after that created for the CWC. Not only does this
initiative violate its expressed commitments to the biotech industry. It is also
manifestly incompatible with U.S. security interests to facilitate the compromise of
proprietary information belonging to an industry that currently dominates the world
market — and whose technology can be so readily diverted to biological weapons of
incalculable menace.

Even the Clinton interagency appears to understand this reality. Reportedly, they
are being overruled, however, by the same National Security Council staffers whose
personal investment in the CWC transformed its approval by the Senate into a
presidential priority in 1996 and 1997. Like the proverbial bad penny, the CWC will
continue to keep coming back to haunt us.

The Bottom Line

The foregoing litany is meant to be an illustrative, and certainly not exhaustive, treatment of the
“early returns” on the Chemical Weapons Convention. In short, the treaty is not working as
advertized — nor can it.

It is especially tragic that the Senate allowed itself to be hornswoggled into agreeing to the
CWC’s ratification by the 29 April entry-into-force date. Senators fell prey to the fraudulent
argument that only by doing so could they ensure the United States had a voice in the
implementation of this treaty. In fact, as the Russians demonstrated by demurring for six-months
without losing their ability to participate in and to influence decisions by the OPCW, the real
reason for giving the Senate the bum’s rush was to avoid the further strengthening of the
opponents arguments that would occur with the passage of time.

This reality should be borne in mind now, as the Administration leans on the House of
Representatives to complete action on S.610, the implementing legislation for the CWC, prior to
its recess next week. Thanks to the hard work by treaty critics in the Senate led by Senator Jon
Kyl (R-AZ), this bill has been substantially improved over the version originally submitted by
President Clinton. In light, however, of the problems that have come to light since the treaty was
ratified — for example, those involving commercial espionage that even the Chemical
Manufacturers Association are now acknowledging — it may be desirable to take additional time
to consider further tightening of its provisions to protect U.S. civil liberties and intellectual
property.

In any event, in the interest of holding accountable those responsible for the Chemical Weapons
Convention and, where possible, mitigating the harm it is doing to American security and other
interests, the Center for Security Policy will be continuing to monitor this treaty’s implementation.
It urges those with oversight responsibility in the Senate and House to do no less.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Russia’s Covert Chemical Weapons Program
Vindicates Jesse Helms’ Continuing Opposition to Phony C.W. Arms Control (No. 97-D 19, 4
February 1997).

2. According to a press release issued by the OPCW on 24 May 1997, the European Union has
already committed 10-15 million ECU for weapons destruction upon the Duma’s ratification of
the CWC.

3. Condition #18 stipulated that the U.S. shall not allow Russia to make deposit of its instruments
of ratification contingent upon the U.S. paying for the destruction of Russia’s chemical weapon
stockpiles and production facilities.

4. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled C.W.C. Watch #1: Russia Defers Ratification, Seeks
Payments For Compliance and a ‘Seat At The Table’ Anyway (No. 97-D 59, 30 April 1997).

5. 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 (No. 97-D 27, 17 February
1997).

6. Annual Report to Congress on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage,
National Counterintelligence Center, June 1997.

7. Any concerns the CMA may have had about commercial espionage were clearly subordinated
to the conviction that the 192 large chemical manufacturing concerns that constitute its
membership could gain access to new markets pursuant to the CWC. Unfortunately, as was
observed by the treaty’s critics at the time, such new markets are almost certainly going to be in
nations with whom such trade was not previously possible for fear that chemical materials and
technology would be diverted to weapons production. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled A
Place to Start on Campaign Finance Reform: C.M.A. Should Refrain From Putting Senators
in Compromising Positions on the Chemical Weapons Convention (No. 97-D 34, 26 February
1997).

8. “Chemical Weapons Convention Fact Sheet,” Chemical Manufacturers Association. This
assessment ignores the significant distinction between “routine” inspections (the relatively
unintrusive monitoring regime to which CMA member companies’ “declared” chemical
manufacturing facilities would be subjected) and the much more invasive on-site “challenge”
inspections to which a great many non-CMA companies — in fact, any facility in the United States
not “declared” pursuant to the CWC — could be exposed.

9. Economic Espionage: The Looting of America’s Economic Security In the Information Age,
Chemical Manufacturers Association, Autumn 1997.

10. From Wall Street Journal reporter John Fialka’s 1997 book, War by Other Means.

11. R. Capps, “The Spy Who Came to Work,” Society for Industrial Security Management,
February 1997, No. 2, Vol. 41, p.46.

12. Article XI (2)b states that State Parties shall “undertake to facilitate, and have the right to
participate in, the fullest possible exchange of chemicals, equipment and scientific and technical
information relating to the development and application of chemistry for purposes not prohibited
under this Convention.”

13. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Truth or Consequences #12: The C.W.C.’s
Technology Transfer Provisions Will Exacerbate the Chemical Weapons Threat (No. 97-D 56,
22 April 1997).

14. “What Can a Defiant Nation Hide From World? Anything It Wants,” Christian Science
Monitor, 30 July 1997.

15. Ibid.

16. “Peace Melts and Threats Increase for Israel,” Christian Broadcasting Network, 4 August
1997.

17. “Israel and Foes Race to Upgrade Arms,” Christian Science Monitor, 30 July 1997.

18. According to a 15 July 1997 article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“Israel’s decision to become one of the cosignatories to the charter, which calls for
a total ban on the production, use and storage of all chemical weapons and for the
destruction of all chemical arsenals, was taken at an optimistic point of time, when
many believed that a ‘new Middle East’ was in the offing. The assumption was that
Israel’s decision would be followed by a similar move on the part of the Arab states
and that, in the final analysis, one of the most menacing unconventional threats to the
security of the region would be neutralized.

“However, since the decision taken by the then-prime minister and defense
minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin, to have Israel co-sign the covenant, there has been a
drastic lowering in the level of expectations among policy-makers in Jerusalem with
regard to the prospects for regional cooperation on security and strategic matters….The
problem is that compliance with the covenant’s terms could eliminate an important
element in Israel’s deterrence equation. This point is particularly crucial if the Arab
states persist in their refusal to sign the treaty. Under such circumstances, most of the
countries in the Middle East, except for Israel, would have chemical weapons.”

19. Ibid.

20. “North Koreans ‘Amassing Chemical Weapons,'” Daily Telegraph, 19 August 1997.

21. See an unclassified report from the Director of Central Intelligence entitled, “The Acquisition
of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional
Munitions,” released June 1997.

22. It is a further proof of the futility of the CWC and the naivete, if not the arrogance, of its
authors that virtually any chemical, pharmaceutical or fertilizer factory can be rapidly (and, if
desired, covertly) converted to weapons production. Thanks to the inherent dual-usability of such
facilities there is, as a practical matter, no prospect of actually eliminating such production
capabilities.

23. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Celestial Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why The U.S. Cannot Agree to Ban All Landmines (No. 97-D 97, 14
July 1997) and Press Release entitled Many of Nation’s Most Respected Military Leaders Join
Forces to Oppose Bans On Use of Self-Destructing Landmines (No. 97-P 101, 21 July 1997).

24. For example, the “disinventors” have announced their intention to try — in addition bans on
landmines, blinding lasers and chemical and biological weapons — to abolish: fuel-air explosives,
depleted uranium rounds, “fragmenting” bullets, non-lethal weapons and ultimately nuclear arms.

Don’t Fall for it Mr. President: Landmine Ban is Seductive, But a Bad Policy and a Formula for Killing US Personnel

August 13, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): According to press
accounts, President Clinton has one more
“to do” item before he heads to
Martha’s Vineyard for vacation: He must
decide whether 1) to continue pursuing
what will be, by definition, lengthy
negotiations for an international ban on
anti-personnel landmines (APL) in the UN
Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva
or 2) to seek such an accord in a
Canadian-sponsored forum which is
guaranteed to produce a multilateral
accord by December 1997.

Clinton’s Choice

On the face of it, the heavy betting
would appear to be that the President
will choose the latter. After all, the
Clinton Administration has already agreed
to seek a negotiated ban on APLs and it
exhibits a certain generational
proclivity for the instant gratification
afforded by signing ceremonies, rather
than the painstaking, largely thankless
and always protracted business of getting
international agreements right (to say
nothing of walking away from the table if
that is not possible).

Another factor is the intense pressure
from certain quarters known to be highly
influential with the Clinton
Administration. The New York Times,
the Washington Post and other
leading papers editorialize endlessly
that nothing but an immediate ban on APLs
will do. A bipartisan group pushing
APL-banning legislation in the Senate
offers political cover. An aroused arms
control community, fresh from its victory
— with concerted help from the Clinton
team — in effecting a no-more-verifiable
or -effective international ban on
chemical weapons, is activating its
networks to create what is often
misconstrued in Washington as widespread
popular demand for its initiatives.

And a well-financed public relations
campaign — possibly financed, at
least in part, by American tax-dollars
supplied to the International Committee
on the Red Cross (ICRC) which now regards
lobbying the U.S. government to ban
various weapon systems to be one of its
priority “humanitarian”
missions — is flooding the airwaves and
newspapers with advertizing demanding
that President Clinton and/or the
Congress agree forthwith to end the use
of anti-personnel landmines by the United
States military. Princess Diana and
General Norman Schwarzkopf have lent
their high profile personas to the cause.

The U.S. Military
Respectfully Non-Concurs

The only problem is that General
Schwarzkopf does not speak for the
American military on this issue.
To the contrary, every one of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of the
regional Commanders-in-Chief
issued on 10 July an unprecedented joint
appeal to Senate Armed Services Committee
Chairman Strom Thurmond, urging him and
his colleagues to oppose schemes that
would effectively unilaterally ban U.S.
use of short-duration or self-destructing
anti-personnel landmines. They said, in
part:

“Until the United States has
a capable replacement for
self-destructing APLs, maximum
flexibility and warfighting
capability for American
commanders must be preserved. The
lives of our sons and daughters
should be given the highest
priority when deciding whether or
not to ban unilaterally the use
of self-destructing APL.”⁽¹⁾

This view has been echoed in slightly
different words in separate
correspondence to the Senate from one of
its former Republican members, Secretary
of Defense William Cohen.

Importantly,
as the Center for Security Policy has
previously noted,⁽²⁾
the opposition expressed by the
Pentagon’s top uniformed and civilian
leaders to efforts to ban U.S. use of
short-duration APLs⁽³⁾
under present circumstances has been
forcefully seconded by twenty-four
illustrious retired four-star generals,
now retired from the Army or Marine
Corps. Among the signatories of a letter
sent to President Clinton on 21 July
were: former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff John Vessey,
former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
(and Secretary of State) Alexander
Haig, six former Marine
Commandants (Generals Leonard
Chapman, Louis Wilson, Robert Barrow,
P.X. Kelley, Alfred Gray and Carl
Mundy) and two former Army
Chiefs of Staff (Generals William
Westmoreland and Gordon
Sullivan). Interestingly,
General Gray — a highly respected combat
veteran — has been repeatedly portrayed
by the APL abolitionists as supportive of
their position; this letter makes clear
that he is not.

Just how serious the stakes are for
the U.S. military is revealed in the
following quote from the retired general
officers’ letter:

“Pentagon studies suggest
that U.S./allied
casualties may be increased by as
much as 35% if self-destructing
mines are unavailable —
particularly in the ‘halting
phase’ of operations against
aggressors. Such a cost
is especially unsupportable since
the type of mines utilized by
U.S. forces and the manner in
which they are employed by those
forces do not contribute to the
humanitarian problem that impels
diplomatic and legislative
initiatives to ban APLs.”

Deciding Considerations

In short, were President Clinton to
opt for an immediate ban on all
anti-personnel landmines, he would be
crossing the battle-tested opinion of
many of the Nation’s most highly regarded
military professionals and all
of its current leadership. Even an
Administration that displayed little
regard for those in uniform during its
first term has been properly reluctant to
take such a step despite the demands of
the landmine banners that it
“exercise civilian control” by,
in the words of an editorial in
yesterday’s New York Times,
“look[ing] beyond the narrow and
mistaken advice of the Pentagon.”

The President must understand,
however, that even if he were to accede
to the pressure from the Times and
its fellow abolitionists to disregard the
views of those who have the unique status
of actually having their lives and those
of the troops they lead on the line, there
is virtually no chance that such a treaty
could receive the approval of the U.S.
Senate. To be sure, as is
regularly pointed out, 60 Senators are
co-sponsors of legislation proposed by
Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Chuck
Hagel (R-NE) that would unilaterally
prohibit virtually all use of U.S.
landmines by the year 2000. Virtually all
of these legislators were recruited before
the depth and intensity of the military’s
opposition were evident; it remains to be
seen how many Senators will actually be
willing to force such legislation down
the throats of America’s combat forces.

Even if all 60 are supportive,
however, that number is seven short
of the two-thirds majority required to
secure the Senate’s advice and consent
to a treaty. The Clinton Administration
knows how close a call it was to get the
Chemical Weapons Convention ratified with
the active support of the Pentagon brass.
It should be assumed that an arms
control treaty that does not enjoy such
support will be a dead letter in the
Senate.

If this prospect alone is not enough
to dissuade Mr. Clinton from embracing
the Canadian option, the following
considerations — in contrast to the
agitprop put out by abolitionist organs
like the New York Times —
should suffice:

It does not matter that
“nearly 100 nations have
endorsed a draft treaty”
banning landmines. A
number of the nations that are
the largest producers of such
weapons — notably, Russia,
China, India, Brazil and Vietnam
— have not done so. And even if
they were to be among the
signatories, there is absolutely
no reason to believe that they,
or others for whom the rule of
law means nothing, will not take
advantage of the inherent
unverifiability of such an accord
to continue wholesale production
of inexpensive and crude, but
highly lethal, APLs.

Short-duration landmines do
offer an “advantage to the
high-tech American
military.” In fact,
such weapons are themselves
“high-tech,” enabling
the U.S. armed forces to deny
territory to the enemy for a
finite period of time during
combat operations, while
minimizing the danger that
non-combatants will be
inadvertently harmed by them long
after the conflict has ended.
Such weapons are also a
“high tech” response to
the earlier problem, documented
in Pentagon reports (and revealed
two weeks ago by the APL
abolitionists with much fanfare),
of long-duration U.S. mines being
used in whole or in part during
the Korean and Vietnam wars to
harm American personnel.

As noted above, some
producers of landmines will
manufacture them whether the
U.S. retains the right to use
short-duration APLs or not.
It is a pernicious canard to
suggest, as the Times
did yesterday that “allowing
the United States to keep making
[short-duration] landmines would
close off any possibility that
other nations would stop making
theirs” since that
possibility is already
“closed off” — by
dint of the character of
landmines, the unverifiability of
a ban and the indifference of
many nations to their treaty
obligations (to say nothing of
the problem of states that chose
not to participate in an APL ban
in the first place).

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy is no
fan of the Conference on Disarmament —
particularly in the wake of the Clinton
Administration’s recklessly shortsighted
decision to violate that organization’s
traditional rule of consensus
decision-making in its determination to
get a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
approved over Indian objections.⁽⁴⁾
Neither is the Center sanguine that an
effective and verifiable treaty banning
anti-personnel landmines can be achieved
in any forum; some proposals,
like a constitutional amendment
prohibiting the production and
consumption of alcohol, are simply too
hard.

Having said that, the option
of pursuing the patient approach to such
a ban — one which, at a minimum affords
time to explore whether there are,
indeed, any practicable alternatives to
the use of short-duration landmines — is
clearly to be preferred over the
alternative now being pushed on President
Clinton. Those who respect the
uniformed military’s considered judgment,
and value the lives of those who offer
it, can only hope that the Clinton legacy
in this area will be sticking with the
Conference on Disarmament approach to
restricting the use of anti-personnel
landmines.

– 30 –

1. For the full
text of this letter, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Celestial
Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why The U.S.
Cannot Agree To Ban All Landmines
(No. 97-D 97,
14 July 1997).

2. The full list
of the twenty-four signatories and the
entire text of their letter are attached
to the Center’s Press Release
entitled Many of Nation’s
Most Respected Military Leaders Join
Forces To Oppose Bans On Use Of
Self-Destructing Landmines
(No. 97-P 101,
21 July 1997). In this connection, also
see the Decision Brief
entitled The Anti-Landmine
Campaign Begs the Question: How Much More
Arms Abolitionism Can The U.S. Military
Afford? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_108″>No. 97-D 108, 31
July 1997).

3. The only
perceived continuing requirement for U.S.
use of long-duration
anti-personnel landmines is in the Korean
demilitarized zone.

4. See the
Center’s Press Release
entitled What The World Does
Not Need Is Any More Of Clinton’s
Non-Proliferation Non-Achievements
(No. 96-P
81, 9 September 1996).

Will Moscow Be Allowed To Recreate In Cuba The Nuclear Nightmare It Has Bequeathed To Bulgaria?

July 2, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Hong Kong): On the evening of 19 June
1997, the CBS Evening News broadcast a
chilling report about an incipient
nuclear catastrophe on the continent of
Europe: Five years after the U.S. and
other nations began a multimillion-dollar
repair effort aimed at correcting some of
the worst design and day-to-day operating
procedures associated with four
Soviet-designed VVER-440 reactors located
in Kozloduy, Bulgaria, this complex
remains a “ticking nuclear time
bomb.”

In fact, according to CBS, the plant
is “just as dangerous as it was five
years ago. No amount of Western expertise
or aid can change that.” During this
period, there have been over twenty
“incidents” — a euphemism for
serious nuclear problems — involving the
Bulgarian reactor complex.

Although a meltdown at Kozloduy would
have catastrophic consequences, the
Bulgarian government continues to operate
this facility on the grounds that its
economy requires the electricity
generated by the four reactors — nearly
half of Bulgaria’s total requirement. In
the absence of an alternative source of
supply, Bulgaria seems determined to keep
the Kozloduy complex on-line even though,
in CBS’ words “… the basic design
of the Russian-built reactors is
flawed.”

Unfortunately, Sofia seems tempted to
use its “ticking nuclear
time-bomb” as a means of playing
what CBS called “nuclear
blackmail”: By operating these
reactors without regard for the danger
that would arise should Kozloduy
experience a Chernobyl-style catastrophe
— disseminating lethal levels of
radiation over populations downwind,
Bulgaria evidently hopes to euchre
Western nations into paying
“millions in aid for maintenance and
repairs” at a plant that is, as CBS
notes, “unrepairable.”

The Next Nuclear
Blackmailer — Castro’s Cuba

As it happens, the folks who brought
the world Bulgaria’s dangerous VVER-440
reactors — Russia’s Ministry of Atomic
Energy (Minatom) — remain determined to
create a similar nuclear nightmare and
the potential for nuclear blackmail
180 miles from the United States. Agence
France Presse reported on 6 June 1997
that Russian and Cuban officials had
reached agreement to “relaunch”
construction of two VVER-440 reactors at
Juragua, Cuba.

Just last January, Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro declared that he was
“indefinitely halting” work at
the Juragua complex, despite the roughly
$1.2 billion investment (nearly the
equivalent of Cuba’s annual hard currency
income) made to-date in trying to bring
his VVER-440 reactors on-line.

The proclamation by Russian Minister
for Nuclear Energy Yevgeny Reshtnilov
came on the heels of the signing by Cuba
and Russia of the final document of the
Intergovernmental Commission for
Economic, Scientific, and Technical
Cooperation, which calls for the two
nations to promote cooperation for mutual
benefit in the scientific, technical and
trade spheres. It also follows blithe
assurances by both nations that
installations at the Juragua plant
“are in excellent condition and meet
all contemporary safety
requirements” and that “[the
plant] poses no danger to [Cubans], much
less to others.”

The reality, of course, is very
different. As the Center has repeatedly
documented, ⁽¹⁾
the partially completed Cuban VVER-440s
have, if anything, more serious
problems than their Bulgarian
counterparts. According to defectors from
Cuba’s nuclear industry, the General
Accounting Office and other experts, the
following are among the reasons why the
Juragua complex is every bit as serious a
time-bomb as its sister plant in
Bulgaria:

As many as fifteen
percent of the 5,000 welds
joining pipes used in the
reactors’ auxiliary cooling
system, containment dome and
spent fuel-cooling system are
believed to be defective. In the
United States, a flaw in a single
weld would cause the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission to suspend
operations.

Sixty percent of the
materials supplied by
the former Soviet Union are of
uncertain — if not deficient —
quality. Moscow’s representatives
reportedly told Cuban officials
they could not guarantee that
valves installed in the first
reactor’s emergency cooling
system would function under
certain conditions.

Much of the reactor’s equipment
— including the reactor vessel,
six steam generators, five
primary cooling pumps, twelve
isolation valves and other
sensitive gear — was left exposed
to the elements and the
sea air for as long as three to
four years. In tropical areas,
such machinery must be stored in
climate-controlled facilities to
avoid serious corrosion and other
damage. In addition, equipment
designed for one specific
function has been used for other
purposes when the appropriate
components were unavailable, a
formula for failure.

Construction supporting
components of the primary reactor
contain numerous
structural defects.

The first reactor’s dome would not
be able to contain overpressures
associated with meltdown
conditions. The upper portion of
the containment dome has been
designed to withstand pressures
of just seven pounds-per-square
inch — versus some fifty
pounds-per-square-inch required
of U.S. reactors.

In the event one or more of these
problems translated into a catastrophic
accident should the Juragua reactors come
on-line, the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration has estimated
that the prevailing winds could expose
much of the U.S. eastern seaboard or
southern United States to dangerous
levels of radiation. By some official
estimates the number of Americans that
could be affected by a Cuban-originated
radioactive plume may be as high as 50 to
80 million.

These realities are now being
acknowledged, at least implicitly, by the
Russians. According to the French wire
service, Minister Reshtnilov said on 6
June that a consortium involving Russia,
Cuba and German, Brazilian and British
companies were “reviewing documents
to finance construction of a nuclear
power plant [in Cuba] as early as
1998″ but that it might “choose
to build a different facility…” In
that event, “some of [the existing]
facilities would be used in construction
of the new plant, which could also mean
cannibalizing Juragua’s most valuable
elements.”

In point of fact, it seems
improbable that a genuinely new
facility will emerge given the immense
investment already made in the Juragua
complex. With both Russia and
Cuba strapped for cash and notoriously
willing to cut corners on safety and
environmental concerns, prudence dictates
that the United States should expect the
“new” quality of the revived
Cuban reactor program to be more cosmetic
than real.

Why Is the Cuban Nuclear
Menace Still Abuilding?

The Center for Security Policy has
long believed that the very viability of
Castro’s despotic regime is contingent
upon finding a way to address Cuba’s
severe economic problems associated with
its reliance on imported oil supplies.
The Agence France Presse report confirms
this view, noting that “With 11
million people, Cuba’s energy shortfall
remains among its key obstacles to
continued economic growth. Blackouts
plunge most of the country into darkness
on a weekly basis.” Arguably, to an
extent even greater than Bulgaria, the
Cubans must satisfy not only domestic
energy requirements but also those of
Canadian, Spanish and other investors who
might otherwise decline to underwrite
development of Fidel’s infrastructure and
tourism sector.

Regrettably, there is probably
another, even more worrisome dimension to
Castro’s determination to proceed with
the Juragua project: The Cuban despot is
second to none, certainly not the
Bulgarians, when it comes to blackmail.
In fact, an article by Martin Arostegui
in the 30 June 1997 edition of National
Review entitled “Return of the
Godfather, Part II,” documents any
number of shakedown operations Castro has
mounted. For example, Mr. Arostegui
describes how Fidel has utilized the
influence he enjoys with terrorist cells
in Latin America — thanks to the
financial, logistical and training
support he offers them — to run a
protection racket against the Japanese,
Argentine and other governments.

It is entirely possible that,
like the Bulgarians, Castro sees an
opportunity to exploit Western concerns
about nuclear safety as a desperately
needed tool for leveraging concessions
from the United States. Not
since the abortive Cuban missile crisis
of 1962 has Fidel had the means for
engaging in nuclear blackmail against
this country. It seems possible that at
no time has he felt a greater need for
such a capability than now as his regime
totters toward collapse.

For the Russians, the imperatives for
bringing the Juragua complex on-line are
more complex — probably involving both
business and strategic interests:

The Russian Ministry for Atomic
Energy (Minatom) is in the midst
of a world-wide marketing
campaign aimed at defraying the
costs of — and otherwise shoring
up — Moscow’s decaying nuclear
infrastructure by selling
reactors to nations like Iran,
China and India. Obviously, it
would not be good for business if
one of Russia’s premier overseas
initiatives remained an
inoperable white elephant.

The sales campaign is already
reeling from the track record of
other VVER-440 reactors. One of
West Germany’s first orders of
business after reunification was
to shut down four East German
reactors of this basic type.
Bulgaria’s reactors are, as noted
above,
disasters-waiting-to-happen.
Clearly, neither Russian national
pride nor marketing efforts can
tolerate the sort of public
relations setback that an aborted
Cuban program would represent —
despite Moscow’s bids to
repackage its VVER technology
with new model numbers and
promises of technical upgrades.

The promise of help with the
Juragua project has also proven
helpful to the Kremlin in
finessing Castro’s periodic
demands for increased payments —
some reports suggest a five-fold
increase from the $200 million
annual charge — to permit
continued operation of the Russian
signals intelligence facility at
Lourdes, Cuba. The truth
is that Moscow is in a tough
spot: Its cash flow remains
inadequate to accommodate major
new outlays, yet the declining
condition of its space-based
“national technical
means” makes Russia
unusually dependent upon the
Lourdes facility to collect
intelligence against the United
States. ⁽²⁾
Keeping Castro happy by arranging
for U.S. embargo-busting foreign
funding to underwrite completion
of the reactor complex is
probably seen by the Kremlin as
the least negative alternative.

What is more, it may
serve Russia’s perceived
interests to have the United
States subjected to nuclear
blackmail by its client, Fidel’s
Cuba. Such blackmail
could come in handy in euchring
the U.S. into (a) participating
in multilateral efforts
ostensibly aimed at
“fixing” Cuba’s fatally
flawed reactors and/or (b)
getting America to agree to help
ease Castro’s economic plight in
other ways.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that every effort must
be made promptly to shut down the
dangerous Bulgarian VVER reactors and to
prevent those still in prospect in Cuba
from ever coming on-line. Until
these results are achieved, the United
States should:

impose sanctions on Bulgaria,
e.g., by cutting off any taxpayer
money for the Bulgarian regime;
barring Bulgaria’s entry into
international organizations; and,
if necessary, adopting
legislation to block U.S. support
for disbursements to multilateral
institutions like the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund.

Russia — and any other
prospective foreign suppliers
(e.g., German, British, French,
Italian and Brazilian firms)
reportedly now poised to supply
equipment and services to help
complete Fidel’s dangerous
nuclear reactor program — should
be put on notice that they will
face a choice: Supply the Cuban
market or participate in the
American market. Specifically, Congress
should serve notice that foreign
suppliers will be subjected, in
the event that sales to Cuba are
consummated, to immediate U.S.
import controls, thereby denying
those firms access to the
American marketplace.

The Congress should also work to
devise a strategy aimed at shutting down
Russia’s Lourdes facility — a step that
would simultaneously eliminate this
source of Castro’s leverage on Russia and
sharply curtail its malevolent
exploitation of signals intelligence
collected there for both strategic and
commercial purposes.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
Cuban nuclear reactors, see the following
Center products: How To
Respond To The Cuban K.A.L. 007: Shut
Down The Cuban Chernobyl ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_19″>No. 96-D 19,
26 February 1996 ); Center’s
Robinson Urges Congress To Thwart The
Coming Cuban Chernobyl Nuclear Crisis
(No. 95-P
51, 2 August 1995); Castro’s
Potemik Nuclear Shutdown: Chernobyl At
Cienfuegos Still In Prospect
(No. 92-D
108, 10 September 1992); A
‘Ticking’ Anniversary Present: Will
Russia Give Us A Chernobyl Ninety Miles
Off The U.S. Shore? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_41″>No. 92-D 41,
23 April 1992); and Cienfuegos
— ‘A Hundred Fires’: Muchas Gracias
Moscow, But No American Chernobyls
(No. 91-P
44, 31 May 1991).

2. For more on the
Lourdes facility, see the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Guess Who Else Was
Listening To Newt Gingrich’s Phone Call
— And To Those Of Millions Of Other
Americans Every Day? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_09″>No. 97-C 9, 16
January 1996).

The New Arms Control Gambit: Unilateral U.S. Disarmament That Masquerades as Noblesse Oblige

June 23, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): A pattern with
ominous implications for U.S. national
security has begun to emerge in recent
years: Time and again, arms control
enthusiasts declare that “something
must be done” about the dangers
posed by weapons in the hands of someone
other than the United States. Bans on
biological weapons, poison gas,
anti-personnel landmines, blinding
lasers, anti-satellite weapons and
nuclear testing have all been advanced on
the grounds that, left unchecked, such
capabilities will endanger this country,
its military personnel and/or its vital
interests.

Unfortunately, the practical
effect of initiatives like these — due
to their inherent unverifiability and
impracticality — is to eliminate such
capabilities only from the U.S.
arsenal and that of other, friendly
law-abiding nations. They are,
to put it plainly, inappropriate
responses to real problems, responses
likely to increase rather than
reduce the threats emerging to the
Nation.

The Washington Post
Promotes Bad Arms Control

In the space of less than a week, the Washington
Post published not one but two
appeals of this sort.

The Landmine Campaign: The
first appeared on 18 June 1997 and was
drawn from remarks made the day before on
the Senate floor by Senator Chuck Hagel,
Republican of Nebraska. After
establishing his bona fides
(“There is no U.S. Senator in this
body who supports more strongly the U.S.
military, what we must do to always arm
our military, never taking away the
capabilities of our military”), Sen.
Hagel endorsed a proposal that would deny
America’s armed forces capabilities they
forcefully insist they need — namely,
self-destructing anti-personnel
landmines. In fact, the Pentagon
calculates that American casualties might
increase by as much as 35% if the U.S.
military is unable to employ such mines
for defensive purposes. href=”97-D84.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Sen. Hagel believes a ban on U.S.
production, stockpiling and use of such
weapons is needed to “send a message
to the world that we are a moral
nation” and demonstrate American
“leadership.” While he did, to
his credit, acknowledge that this ban
will “not dig up” the
“more than 110 million landmines in
the ground today all over the
world,” the Senator chose not to
address one other natty problem with his
proposal: There is no reason to
expect it will actually produce a
world-wide cessation in the production or
use of devices that are as inexpensive to
make and as effective — whether as an
instrument of warfare or terror — as
anti-personnel landmines are seen to be
by, among others, Russia, China, Vietnam,
Brazil and their clients.

‘De-Alerting’ Nuclear Forces: No
less reckless is a proposal advanced in
the Post‘s Outlook Section on 22
June 1997 by former Senator Sam Nunn and
anti-nuclear activist Bruce Blair. It
calls for “eliminating the nuclear
hair trigger” by having the United
States and Russia take various steps to
disarm or temporarily disable most — if
not all — their long-range ballistic
missile forces.

Just as the campaign to ban landmines
draws political support from the
humanitarian tragedy of innocent
civilians being maimed and killed by
those who irresponsibly use
anti-personnel landmines, the Nunn-Blair
proposal identifies a genuine problem —
the menace posed by thousands of Russian
nuclear-armed missiles whose safe command
and control are increasingly
questionable.

As with the proposal to ban landmines,
however, the Nunn-Blair solution is one
rooted in moral equivalence and noblesse
oblige — not hard-headed
strategic thinking:
“De-alerting” U.S. missiles by
removing their guidance units,
disassociating their warheads, reducing
their alert status and keeping fewer
submarine-borne nuclear weapons at sea.
To be sure, Messrs. Nunn and Blair argue
for taking steps to reduce the readiness
of Russian missile forces, as well. But
the only weaponry the United States can
be certain would be degraded will be its
own.

After all, no one in the West knows
for sure how many nuclear-capable
ballistic missiles Russia actually has,
where they all are or their exact status.
Historically, the Kremlin has maintained
large quantities of so-called
“non-deployed”
intercontinental-range ballistic
missiles. The military significance of
these unaccounted-for assets grows as the
potency of “deployed” missiles
is reduced, whether by negotiated
reductions or, as Messrs. Nunn and Blair
recommend, via reciprocal — but
non-negotiated — arrangements.

In short, even if the United States
could be sure that Russian deployed
missiles were actually being de-alerted,
it is far from clear that the net effect
will be to reduce the threat posed by the
totality of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal.
What is more, while Senator Nunn and his
co-author blithely assert that their
proposal would “preserve a basic
(albeit residual) deterrent effect
virtually as powerful as the Cold War
variant,” it is most
uncertain whether the Chinese, North
Koreans or other incipient nuclear
threats will regard an American
“virtual deterrent” as a
credible one.

Why the U.S. Military Is
Susceptible to These Proposals

Noblesse oblige arms control
notions are especially insidious to the
extent that they hold out the
false promise of cheap alternatives to
costly military problems. For
example, the justification for expensive
military — to say nothing of civilian —
defenses against chemical and biological
weapons attacks can be reduced (if not
eliminated) by bans on such weapons. The
ominous implications of cheap lasers
neutralizing the pilots of costly
aircraft or various devices wiping out
critical satellites can be discounted
once such threats are prohibited. And
those, like Bruce Blair, who are
adamantly opposed to U.S. ballistic
missile defense programs can claim that
de-alerted Russian missiles obviate the
need for an insurance policy against
accidental or unauthorized launches.

In a period when there are far too few
dollars to meet the Pentagon’s highest
modernization and readiness priorities,
the U.S. military has proven susceptible
to these seductive proposals. In some
cases, congressional funding cut-offs
have been threatened or instituted to
elicit the Defense Department’s
cooperation. In other cases, the Pentagon
has seen arms control as a way to justify
cutting forces viewed by the relevant
service as a distraction from its core
mission (e.g., the Navy’s willingness to
consider radical reductions in strategic
submarines and their ballistic missiles
and the Air Force’s proclivity to permit
the atrophying of its aging strategic
bomber force). Either way, with the
notable exception of the anti-personnel
landmine ban, the armed forces have (to
varying degrees) been willing to reduce
or terminate certain American weapons
systems or capabilities — even though
potential adversaries are unlikely to
follow the United States’ moral example.

The Bottom Line

It is unclear where the logic of noblesse
oblige arms control will end. One
could just as easily “ban”
small arms ammunition as landmines; after
all, many bullets originally procured for
fighting wars wind up being used long
after conflicts end to maim and kill
civilians. (In fact, the Swiss government
formally proposed an international ban on
the use of all small caliber bullets but
those utilizing a
“non-fragmenting”
Swiss-design.) What’s next: bans on
general officers, war plans or bad ideas?

The truth is that the United States
can ill-afford utopian delusions like
those being advanced by Senator Hagel and
Messrs. Nunn and Blair. “American
leadership” that is justified as
international norm-setting but that
results in the unilateral disarmament of
U.S. and allied militaries is a formula
for disaster, not increased security.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
shortcomings of the anti-personnel
landmine ban, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Hold
That Line: JCS Objections Appear Crucial
To Retaining American Right To Use
Landmines To Save U.S. Troops’ Lives
(No. 97-D 81,
18 June 1997).

Vote On C.W.C. Proves A Defining Moment: Lott Fails Test, New Security-Minded Leaders Emerge

April 25, 1997Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): It was positively
surreal: Against the backdrop of
televised images of emergency personnel
in chemical protective gear trying to
cope with an apparent terrorist incident
that shut down the heart of the Nation’s
Capitol yesterday, the Senate Majority
Leader delivered the votes President
Clinton needed to ratify a treaty that
will do nothing to prevent
similar, but probably far more traumatic,
episodes in the future — and may
even make them more likely to occur.

There can be no doubt that,
with Senator Lott’s leadership in the
opposition to the Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC), the treaty would have
failed. After all, on four out
of the five amendments on which there
were roll call votes — concerning the
circumstances under which the U.S. would
become a party (i.e., not without
Russia); the verifiability of the treaty;
and the prospects it will result in the
transfer of dangerous technology — the
34 votes needed to defeat the treaty were
cast by Mr. Lott and his Republican
colleagues.

Majority Compromiser

Early in the afternoon, Senator Trent
Lott (R-MS) demonstrated the
characteristic that has become his
hallmark — deal-making without regard to
substance — by striking an
intellectually incomprehensible and
indefensible position: He
announced that he would vote for the
Chemical Weapons Convention and urge his
colleagues to do the same — even if its
Resolution of Ratification would be
stripped of improvements the Majority
Leader said were necessary and voted
to preserve.

Senator Lott indicated that his
contortions were justified by assurances
he received yesterday in a letter from
President Clinton. That letter spoke to
concerns the Majority Leader had publicly
expressed about the treaty’s Articles X
and XI. That provisions obligate CWC
parties to engage in “the fullest
possible transfer” of defensive
equipment and chemical manufacturing
technology with other member states,
including those with a demonstrated
tendency to divert such items to hostile
purposes. The President assured Mr. Lott
that he would “regard such actions
as extraordinary events that have
jeopardized the supreme interests of the
United States and therefore, in
consultation with the Congress, be
prepared to withdraw from the
treaty.” (Emphasis added.)

Scarlet Letter

Unfortunately, Senator Lott
inaccurately portrayed this pledge as
“an iron-clad commitment” on
the part of President Clinton,
saying that, pursuant to it, “[the
President] would exercise our right to
withdraw” if:

Article X winds up compromising
U.S. chemical protective
equipment in a way that
“significantly
degrades” American
“warfighting capabilities in
a CW environment.”

the Australia Group can no longer
be certified as “a viable
and effective mechanism for
controlling CW
proliferation”; or

parties engage in technology
transfers “under either
Article X or XI which jeopardize
U.S. national security by
promoting CW proliferation.”

It is not clear on what basis Mr.
Lott chose to describe the President as
saying “I will withdraw” under
any one of these circumstances. What is
clear, however, is that President
Clinton made no such promise.
As Mr. Lott’s deputy, Senate
Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles
caustically observed, Mr. Clinton’s
“commitment” is only to be
“prepared” to withdraw — a far
cry from actually pledging in advance to
do so.⁽¹⁾

Beware Clinton’s Escape
Clauses

The probability that the President
will go so far as “be prepared”
to withdraw from the CWC — to say
nothing of actually doing so — is
further reduced by the subjective
judgments built into each of the
conditions Mr. Clinton cites:

As Senator Nickles noted, the
qualifier
“significantly” makes
clear that some degradation
in our defensive capabilities
can take place without
repercussions.

There will always be some
prepared to attest to the Australia
Group’s viability and
effectiveness, even if
the Group were to be mutated in
ways that would clearly undercut
its viability and effectiveness.
This could occur, for example,
were Russia and China to be
included in this group of
chemical supplying nations
(assuming they become parties to
the Chemical Weapons Convention).
That approach has, after all,
been adopted in connection with
the successor to the Coordinating
Committee on Multilateral Export
Controls (COCOM) and the Missile
Technology Control Regime. Such a
step would clearly render the
Australia Group functionally
non-viable and ineffective if it
only resulted in the transfer of
dangerous chemical
warfare-relevant technology to
the Russians and Chinese.

Even more distressing is the fact
that both of these countries are
virtually certain to transfer
such technology — their own or
others’ — to whatever countries
remain on the Australia Group’s
list of proscribed designations.
After all, Russia has cited
comparable provisions in the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
as grounds for sharing technology
that could proliferate nuclear
weaponry to countries like Iran,
India and North Korea. And China
is actively engaged in sharing
chemical weapons technology with,
among others, Iran, Syria and
Pakistan — and there is no basis
for believing that such behavior
will stop as a result of the CWC.
To the contrary, China (along
with Iran, Cuba, Pakistan and
Brazil) has indicated in the CWC
Preparatory Committee that it
regards Articles X and XI as
obligating parties to eliminate
export controls or other
impediments to the transfer of
such Technology.

The Clinton Administration has,
in connection with rejecting an
amendment aimed at ensuring that
the CWC was effectively
verifiable, asserted that only
very substantial chemical weapons
programs — coupled with sizeable
efforts to train and equip troops
for chemical warfighting — would
constitute a “militarily
significant” capability. It
stands to reason that they will
likewise be inclined to downplay
or otherwise discount the danger
that any given chemical weapons
development “jeopardizes
U.S. national security.”

Lott’s Dismal Legacy

In placing undue reliance upon
assurances laced with such wiggle-room,
to say nothing of misrepresenting the
character of the President’s commitment,
the Senate Majority Leader misled enough
of his colleagues to ensure that this
fatally flawed Convention received the
two-thirds majority required for its
approval. It is highly regrettable that,
as a result, the Nation is now saddled
with obligations, costs and risks that
could have been avoided.

It is also tragic insofar as this vote
reinforces one of the most pernicious
notions to afflict American security in
the 20^th Century — namely,
the proposition that arms control
agreements signed with nations that do
not respect laws at home or abroad can
contribute to U.S. security. As Senator
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said
in powerful closing comments opposing the
CWC, this treaty will have the United
States once again relying upon pieces of
paper instead of defense for its
security. Regrettably, she concluded, it
will likely make the threat of chemical
warfare worse and hurt the
Nation’s ability to protect its people
and interests.

By advocating a treaty whose
uncorrected defects Senator Lott has
acknowledged, the Majority Leader has
aligned himself — and the Senate he
leads — with policies that may enjoy the
support of the Clinton Administration and
certain Republicans whose views seem
increasingly indistinguishable from even
those in the left-wing of the Democratic
Party. That he apparently did so out of a
belief that President Clinton would
reciprocate by helping secure Democratic
votes for a balanced budget simply
underscores the short shrift Mr. Lott
seems to give national security issues —
to say nothing of what might charitably
be called naivete on the part of someone
who prides himself on his skills as a
political operative. This was no
act of “courage”; it was an act
of folly.

The New Leaders

Fortunately, the Senate’s debate on
the Chemical Weapons Convention
established that there is a new
generation of conservative leaders who
place national security above the art of
the deal. This was evidenced by
the willingness of a large number of
truly courageous Republican Senators to
cast politically difficult but
substantively correct votes. Their
courage is all the greater since they
voted against the CWC notwithstanding the
failure of leadership exhibited by Sen.
Lott and in the face of the political
cover given President Clinton by the
likes of Bob Dole, George Bush, Jim
Baker, Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft.

The Center for Security Policy takes
special pride in acknowledging the
preeminent figure among these new
leaders: Senator Jon Kyl
of Arizona, a recipient of the Center’s
‘Keeper of the Flame’ Award in 1994,
whose mastery of the details of the CWC
and whose tireless work to fix or defeat
this treaty was indispensable to Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms’
own heroic opposition to this flawed
accord. Others among the freshman and
sophomore classes who proved their mettle
in the course of this debate and
established themselves as comers in the
Senate on national security matters
include: Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK),
Bob Smith (R-NH), Kay
Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), John
Ashcroft (R-MO), Tim
Hutchinson (R-AR) and Wayne
Allard (R-CO).

Of perhaps even greater significance
is the fact that Senator Lott was
virtually the only member of the Senate’s
Republican leadership to vote for the
Chemical Weapons Convention. In
particular, Senator Don Nickles
deserves special commendation for his
willingness to speak truth to power on
this treaty — to point out the
fraudulent nature of President Clinton’s
letter and to denounce the CWC’s
proliferation-exacerbating provisions. He
other top Republicans who distinguished
themselves by opposing Senator Lott on
this treaty were: Larry Craig
of Idaho, Connie Mack of
Florida, Paul Coverdell
of Georgia and Phil Gramm of
Texas.

Together with prominent political
figures outside the Senate who joined the
aforementioned Senators in opposing the
CWC — notably Malcolm S.
“Steve” Forbes, Jr., Jack Kemp,
Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes —
there are grounds for hope that the
Nation will be afforded a real
alternative in the future to the
manifestly defective Clinton-Bush
security policies.

The Bottom Line

While it seems likely that the Nation
will have cause to regret Senator Lott’s
decision to enable ratification of the
Chemical Weapons Convention, the Center
for Security Policy takes heart from the
fact that the new generation of national
security-minded leaders in the Senate
seem certain to exercise greater
influence over decision-making in that
body in the future. At a minimum, it
would appear that ample votes will be
available to block the raft of equally
flawed Clinton arms control initiatives
now in the wings — initiatives
affecting, for example, nuclear testing,
missile defenses, fissile materials and
landmines, but that lack comparable
Republican sponsorship.

If the debate on the Chemical
Weapons Convention has no other effect
but to establish the need for serious
national security-minded leadership in
the Congress — and to identify those
prepared and equipped to fill
that void, it may go some way to
offsetting the serious harm this treaty
will otherwise do to U.S. national
interests. The Center for
Security Policy is gratified to have
played a part in stimulating and
informing such a debate.

– 30 –

1. It is worth
noting that the President often professes
that the United States will be
“prepared” to deploy national
missile defenses thanks to his
“three-plus-three” deployment
readiness plan. Saying something is, of
course, not the same thing as it being
so.

Truth or Consequences #12: The C.W.C.’s Technology Transfer Provisions Will Exacerbate the Chemical Weapons Threat

April 22, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Proponents of the
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) are
panicked: With the fate of this treaty
now clearly in Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott’s hands, his declaration on
CNN last Sunday — to the effect that the
Convention’s provisions requiring
“the fullest possible exchange”
of technologies directly relevant to
chemical warfare represents a fatal flaw
that would have to be fixed — could be
the kiss-of-death for this controversial
accord.

In the face of growing evidence that
Senate concerns about the CWC’s
technology transfer provisions (known as
Articles X and XI) could result in the
treaty either having to be renegotiated
or scuttled, the Clinton Administration
and its surrogates have launched a public
relations blitz. This campaign seems
aimed at confusing the issue and
obscuring the clear danger posed by these
provisions, namely that they will
make the problem of chemical weapons
proliferation worse, not better.

The key arguments being made as part
of the disinformation campaign are to be
found in a publication recently released
by the Henry L. Stimson Center, entitled
“The CWC Critics’ Case Against
Articles X and XI: Nonsense.” In
fact, what does not make sense are the
arguments advanced by the CWC’s
proponents when subjected to close
scrutiny, reasoned analysis and, most
importantly, common sense:

The Fundamental Character
of Chemical Technology

The central problem is that most
advanced chemical manufacturing and
chemical defensive technologies are
inherently dual-use.

The former can be applied to
producing toxic chemicals for
commercial purposes (e.g.,
pesticides, fertilizers,
pharmaceuticals, etc.) or toxic
chemicals for chemical weapons.
Depending upon the technology
used, the change-over can be very
rapid and virtually undetectable
after the fact.

The latter can be used to protect
against the effects of another
party’s chemical attacks or as an
integral part of one’s own
offensive chemical warfighting
capabilities. It could, in
addition, aid efforts to defeat
Western protective equipment.
Interestingly, former Desert
Storm commander General
Norman Schwarzkopf was
surprised to learn, in the course
of recent congressional
testimony, that the CWC — which
he has endorsed — would have
such effects.

These realities make any commitment
on the part of the United States or other
advanced industrial nations to transfer
such technologies problematic. No matter
the intention behind providing chemical
manufacturing and defensive equipment and
know-how to potentially hostile states,
there is an inherent danger that the net
effect will be to enhance the chemical
threat posed by those nations.

The Plain Meaning of the
Words

This danger is intensified,
however, by the sweeping character of the
obligations contained in the Chemical
Weapons Convention. As the Stimson Center
paper notes, the words used in the two
Articles bearing on technology transfer
are modeled after the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty’s “Atoms
for Peace” provisions. What even the
Stimson Center now calls the CWC’s
“Poisons for Peace” sections
read as follows:

Article 11:
“…States parties
shall…undertake to facilitate,
and have the right to participate
in, the fullest possible exchange
of chemicals, equipment and
scientific and technical
information relating to
the development and application
of chemistry for purposes not
prohibited under this
Convention;” and

“[States parties
shall] not maintain among
themselves any restrictions,
including those in any
international agreements,
incompatible with the obligations
undertaken under this Convention,
which would restrict or impede
trade and the development and
promotion of scientific and
technological knowledge in the
field of chemistry for
industrial, agricultural,
research, medical, pharmaceutical
or other peaceful
purposes….”

Article 10:
“Every state party
shall have the right to
participate in the fullest
possible exchange of equipment,
material and scientific and
technological information
concerning means of protection
against chemical weapons….Nothing
in this Convention shall be
interpreted as impeding the right
of States Parties to request and
provide assistance bilaterally
and to conclude individual
agreements with other States
Parties concerning the emergency
procurement of assistance.”

What These Articles Mean

Proponents of the CWC insist that the
plain meaning of these provisions is
countermanded by two provisions:

1) The overarching obligation in
Article I not “to assist, encourage
or induce, in any way, anyone to engage
in any activity prohibited to a State
Party under this convention.”
Unfortunately, the well-established
principle of legal construction is that the
specific (e.g., Articles X and XI)
governs the general (e.g., Article I).
The interest expressed in such an
interpretation by Iran, China, Cuba,
Pakistan and Brazil (among others)
suggests that at least some
countries will find it expedient, if not
obligatory, to seek transfers of dual-use
technologies pursuant to the former
provisions, even though doing so may
result in a violation of the latter
commitment. And

2) The language in Article XI
authorizing only transfers “for
purposes not prohibited under this
Convention.” Two points are in order
here: First, thanks to the dual-use
nature of the technologies in question,
it will not be necessary for any of the
parties to such transfers to acknowledge
that the purpose for which they are being
sold is one “prohibited under this
Convention.” Second, even if this
qualifying language were more
restrictive, it only appears in
Article XI. There is no similar
condition applied to the transfer of
defensive technology mandated by Article
X. Indeed, on a recent National Public
Radio program, the Executive Secretary of
the United Nations Commission for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ian
Kenyon, affirmed his view that the CWC
obligates parties to transfer defensive
technologies to Iran — a nation widely
regarded as aggressively pursuing
offensive chemical warfighting
capabilities.

Don’t Blame Ronald Reagan href=”97-D56.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

The CWC’s proponents attempt to allay
concerns about these provisions by
suggesting that they were contemplated by
President Reagan in the draft treaty he
endorsed. There are critical differences
between the language advanced by the
Reagan Administration in 1984 and that
which appears in the final draft. The
closest one comes to language like that
contained in Article XI in the Reagan
draft text is the following commitment:

“This Convention shall be
implemented in a manner designed
insofar as possible to avoid
hampering the economic or
technological activities of
Parties to the Convention or
international cooperation in the
field of peaceful chemical
activities including the
international exchange of toxic
chemicals and equipment for the
production, processing or use of
toxic chemicals for peaceful
purposes in accordance with the
provisions of the
Convention.”

Obviously, there is a profound —
and material — difference between an
undertaking “to avoid
hampering” “insofar as
possible” the exchange of toxic
chemicals and an obligation to
“engage in the fullest possible
exchange” of such chemicals and
related manufacturing technology.
References by the Stimson Center and
others to unagreed language in
the “rolling text” (circa 1988)
that more closely resembles the final
version of the CWC should not be confused
with an endorsement of such language by
Ronald Reagan or those who served in his
Administration (particularly those who
were driving forces behind his first and
early second term — most of whom are
sharply critical of the CWC — but who no
longer held high office by 1988).

Similarly,
the Reagan language concerning
“Assistance to Parties Endangered by
Chemical Weapons” was far different
from that contained in the CWC. The 1984
Reagan draft treaty merely said:
“Each Party undertakes, to the
extent it deems appropriate, to render
assistance to any Party to this
Convention that the Security Council of
the United States decides has been
exposed to danger as a result of a
violation of the Convention.” In
other words, the Reagan
Administration preserved the U.S. option
not only to withhold defensive
technologies should it choose to do so;
it also had leverage to preclude others
from doing so via the exercise of its
veto at the UN Security Council.
While the Clinton Administration has
maintained that it would be obliged under
Article X to do nothing more than
transfer medicines and antidotes to
countries like Iran, it certainly has no
veto comparable to that contemplated by
the Reagan text to prevent others from
doing much more.

Even If the U.S. Refuses to
Sell to Iran…

The Clinton Administration and other
advocates for the Chemical Weapons
Convention claim that, despite the
treaty’s requirements, the United States
will not transfer potentially dangerous
technology to nations like Iran. Much is
made of the fact that the U.S. will only
provide medicines and antidotes — not
the detection, protective or
decontamination equipment, etc. also
identified as “options for
assistance” under the treaty — to
such states and then only when the
prospective recipient has been attacked
or feels threatened by chemical weapons.
They also reject suggestions that
American companies will be allowed to
sell chemical manufacturing technologies.

Even if this were the case and the
United States maintains its embargo
against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary
regime, Articles X and XI will
have the effect of undercutting America’s
efforts to contain Iran by legitimating
the transfer of dual-use technology to
Tehran. Despite assertions that
the Australia Group — a voluntary
chemical supplier group that currently
does not include Russia, China, Iran or
Cuba — will be unaffected by these
provisions, common sense suggests that
making such countries eligible for the
“fullest possible exchanges” of
chemical manufacturing technology, etc.
will complicate (if not undermine) the
work of this informal export control
mechanism.

What is more, one can safely predict
that the prospect of foreign competitors
closing such sales will cause would-be
American suppliers to seize upon Articles
X and XI to argue that Washington has
neither the right to penalize U.S. firms,
nor an interest in doing so. That sort of
pressure is evident in the lobbying for
the CWC being conducted by the Chemical
Manufacturers Association. This
trade association makes no bones about
its expectation that the treaty will
facilitate increased exports of its
member companies’ chemical products,
materials and technology — presumably
largely to countries to whom such
products cannot now be sold for national
security or foreign policy reasons. In
fact, in testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee last week,
CMA President Fred Webber acknowledged
that his organization had been one of the
champions of H.R. 361, legislation
adopted by the House of Representatives
last year that would have authorized
license-free U.S. trade in chemicals with
any Party to the CWC.

Needless to say, pressure to
permit the U.S. to compete in exports of
chemicals and manufacturing technology to
countries like Iran and Cuba will almost
surely weaken the American embargoes
against those countries as they apply to
non-chemical areas of trade and
investment, as well. This would
have the effect of undermining the
leverage this tool affords to weaken
those countries’ dangerous regimes. With
or without such American participation,
the net result is likely to be an
increased capability on the part of both
the Iranian and Castro regimes to
threaten the U.S., its allies and
interests with weapons of mass
destruction.

The Bottom Line

There are ample grounds for concern
that the Chemical Weapons Convention’s
“Poisons for Peace” provisions
will prove every bit as counterproductive
and damaging as have the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty’s “Atoms
for Peace” arrangements —
arrangements that have been employed as
cover for prohibited nuclear weapons
programs in Iran, Iraq, North Korea,
India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil and
Algeria, to name a few. Far from being
“nonsense,” warnings issued
about Articles X and XI are well-founded.
Only the most naïve and/or deluded
proponent of arms control or other,
similar world-order “solutions”
to intractable problems would dismiss as
“nonsense” warnings about
Articles X and XI issued by such sensible
people as former Defense Secretaries Dick
Cheney, Caspar Weinberger, Jim
Schlesinger and Donald Rumsfeld.

Senator Lott is right to express, as
he did last Sunday, his opposition to a
Chemical Weapons Convention that contains
Articles X and XI. Unless these
provisions of the CWC are deleted prior
to the U.S. becoming a state party,
American ratification of this Convention
would effectively make the United States
a party to exacerbating the
danger of chemical warfare.

– 30 –

1. See in this
regard Truth or Consequences
#4: No DNA Tests Needed to Show That
Claims About Republican Paternity of CWC
Are Overblown ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_24″>No. 97-D 24, 10
February 1997).

White House Lobbying Group Discredits Itself, Not Luntz Poll, In Attack On Finding That Americans Oppose A Flawed C.W.C.

April 17, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): On 14 April, a
U.S. government interagency team
responsible for coordinating the lobbying
effort on the controversial Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC) stooped to new
lows in the campaign to foist a fatally
flawed treaty on the Senate and the
American people. It castigated as
misleading and “fatally flawed”
a national poll conducted for the Center
for Security Policy by a respected
opinion research firm, Luntz Research
Companies — then lauded the results of
an earlier poll, whose results suited the
Administration but which was, itself,
highly misleading.

This lobbying team is dubbed the
“White House Working Group on the
Chemical Weapons Convention” and
issues periodic “News Alerts”
offering the Administration’s spin on
selected developments that might affect
the prospects for ratification of the
CWC. The degree to which this Working
Group and its sales job for the treaty
are divorced from reality can be
discerned in the motto displayed on the
Group’s Alerts: “Making the first
century of chemical weapons the
last.” There is zero prospect that
chemical weapons will cease to exist in
the 21^st Century — with or
without this treaty.

The Critique — and the
Facts

The White House lobbyists criticize
the Luntz poll for failing to tell
respondents that the United States
decided to eliminate “nearly all of
its chemical weapons with or without the
CWC.” By its own terms, this
statement acknowledges that under
the approach adopted by President Reagan,
the U.S. would have retained some
chemical weapons. href=”97-D54.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
It seems unlikely that noting this policy
context would have materially affected
the dramatic results of the Luntz poll.

The Working Group’s real complaint is
not that the Center for Security Policy
gave those polled too little information,
but too much. The White House
clearly preferred the context-free
question most often cited from the
Wirthlin Group survey conducted last
February: “Should the United States
Senate ratify a treaty which would ban
the production, possession, transfer and
use of poison gas worldwide?” Since
this formulation says the treaty would
ban poison gas — suggesting that the
result would be a world in which chemical
weapons actually would be eliminated —
it is surprising that only 84% of those
polled said they would be in favor of it.

As noted in a press release issued by
the Center for Security Policy last week,
the more interesting test is how
the public would feel about a treaty that
did not accomplish that noble — but
unachievable — goal and that had,
instead, certain undesirable results.
Unlike the Wirthlin poll, the Luntz
survey did not assert that the CWC
“would” have the effects in
question but simply asked how the
respondents would feel were the treaty to
have such effects.

In fact, testimony before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee over
the past ten days by distinguished former
officials, businessmen and other
authorities has established the validity
of each of the concerns
identified in the Luntz poll.
Consider the four questions polled, the
White House critique and the facts as
they now are known:

1. An Ineffective Treaty

“Would you support the
treaty…if only the United States and
its allies wound up obeying it while
other, potentially hostile countries like
Russia, China, Iran, Iraq or North Korea
keep their chemical weapons?”
The Luntz poll found that only 31% of
those surveyed would support a treaty
that had this effect compared to 60% who
would oppose it. (The spread among
Republican voters was even more
pronounced: 25-68%, with 50% saying they
would “strongly oppose” it
compared with 44% who did so in the
general population.)

The White House
Working Group supports its claim that
such a question is
“disingenuous” by noting that
Russia, China and Iran are all
signatories and will be subjected to the
treaty’s “extensive verification
procedures” if they become parties.
It acknowledges that other rogue states
may remain outside the treaty, but
contends that the treaty will provide
“new tools” that will make
their efforts to “acquire or produce
chemical weapons…more difficult than it
would be without the treaty.”
Finally, it asserts that allowing fears
about rogue states retaining chemical
weapons to call into question the value
of the CWC is akin to saying we should
not pass anti-drug smuggling laws for
fear they will not be obeyed.

Four former Secretaries of Defense — James
Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Caspar
Weinberger and Dick
Cheney — and a number of other
authorities have made clear that the
“extensive verification
procedures” provided by the CWC will
not be sufficient to catch potential
adversaries determined to maintain covert
chemical stockpiles. Some rogue states,
like Iran, are known by the U.S.
government to be benefitting from
assistance in building chemical weapons
from another prospective state party,
China. It is untenable to claim that such
assistance will end simply because such
countries enter into this unverifiable
Convention — particularly since the
treaty’s Article XI will actually provide
legitimacy to cover-operations (for
example, by allowing China to describe
the transfer of chemical weapons
technology as merely cooperation in the
development of Iran’s pesticide or
fertilizer industry).

Numerous witnesses have made the point
that Article XI is inconsistent with the
effort to maintain supplier controls on
the transfer of such technology to rogue
states. If, as seems likely, the most
successful such effort — known as the
Australia Group — is undermined or
effectively put out of business by the
CWC, among the beneficiaries could be
rogue states outside the regime.
Certainly having one rogue state, Iran,
which has strategic ties to others
(notably Syria, Libya and Sudan) inside
the proverbial tent makes a mockery of
the idea that the treaty will
significantly control the rogues’ access
to chemical weaponry.

Finally, there is a clear difference
between a U.S. law which the full power
of the government can be brought to bear
to enforce and an international treaty
that even the more honest CWC proponents
acknowledge is unenforceable. Even in the
case of some domestic laws — for
example, Prohibition — the infeasibility
of a making a ban work has prompted the
Nation to forego that ban in favor of
other, more practical approaches. (It is
a safe bet that many among the CWC’s
advocates on the Left would favor
decriminalizing marijuana, and perhaps
other drugs, on these grounds among
others.)

2. A Treaty That Exacerbates
Proliferation

“Would you support the
treaty…if it would result in the
transfer of technology that could help
countries like Iran, Cuba or China increase
their ability to fight chemical
wars?”

Respondents said
they would oppose such a treaty by a
19-70% margin, with Republicans again
opposing it even more dramatically (i.e.,
by a 17-76% margin with 62%
“strongly opposed” compared to
53% in the general population).

The Administration’s lobbyists dismiss
concerns that the CWC could actually exacerbate
the problem of chemical weapons
proliferation by: 1) reciting the
treaty’s general prohibition against
transferring chemical weapons and 2)
selectively quoting from the specific
obligation that would — consistent with
the practice of legal construction over
the past few millennia — govern the
general obligation.

Unfortunately, as noted above,
the treaty’s Article I prohibition can be
readily circumvented by countries willing
cynically to use its Article XI as cover
for the transfer of chemical
weapons-relevant technology. The
White House Working Group’s “News
Alert” reproduces the latter article
in the following, selective fashion:
“…States Parties shall
facilitate…and have the right to
participate in…information
relating…to chemistry.” A more
complete — and accurate — quote would
read: “…States parties
shall…undertake to facilitate, and have
the right to participate in, the
fullest possible exchange of
chemicals, equipment and scientific and
technical information relating to the
development and application of
chemistry….”

The key differences between the two
versions, of course, is that the White
House left out the inconvenient modifiers
“fullest possible” and failed
to note that much more than just
chemistry information would be shared.
Some signatories (notably, Iran, China,
Pakistan, Brazil and Cuba) have made
clear their view that this language
supercedes — and requires the
dismantling of — export controls and
other inhibitions to trade. So have U.S.
chemical manufacturers, who (despite
vehement denials that they are interested
in opening up new markets in countries
like Iran) acknowledged Tuesday under
questioning by Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Jesse Helms that they
had supported H.R. 361 last year. This
legislation would have created
license-free U.S. trade in chemicals with
states parties to the Chemical Weapons
Convention, effectively gutting American
export controls in this area.

The White House release does note that
the “fullest possible exchange”
contemplated by Article XI is supposed to
be limited to “purposes not
prohibited under this Convention.”
Unfortunately, as former Director of
Central Intelligence and Defense
Secretary James Schlesinger, among
others, has pointed out, there is
no material difference between advanced
chemical facilities designed to produce
fertilizers, pesticides or
pharmaceuticals and plants capable of
turning out large quantities of lethal
chemical agents for weapons purposes.
The transfer of the former for ostensibly
non-prohibited purposes assures the
acquisition of the latter by any state
party that wants such prohibited military
capabilities.

3. A Treaty that is Unenforceable

“Would you support the
treaty… if countries that violated its
prohibitions went unpunished?”

The Luntz poll determined that such a
treaty would be opposed by the American
people by a margin of 16-73% and by
Republicans by a spread of 16-76% (with
61% “strongly opposed” compared
to 56% in the general population).

The Clinton Administration professes
an unwavering commitment to enforce the
Chemical Weapons Convention and insists
that, by being party to this Convention,
it will have tools with which to
“prevent, stop or punish those who
would produce or acquire chemical
weapons.” Unfortunately, in
our past experience with this
Administration — or, for that matter,
any other Administration — nothing
suggests that violators will actually be
punished. Invariably, it is
argued that the evidence of a violation
is inconclusive or unpersuasive,
especially to those sympathetic to the
accused. Testimony before the Foreign
Relations Committee makes clear that this
will almost certainly be true of the
Chemical Weapons Convention as well,
since samples suggesting traces of
illegal chemical weapons activities will
lend themselves to intense scientific
challenge and debate.

In any event, in the case of
violations of the CWC — as with every
previous arms control agreement — the
argument will be made that preserving the
treaty regime is more important than
taking divisive action against a
suspected violator. To be sure, this is,
as treaty supporters contend, primarily a
matter of will. Regrettably, the
proponents of arms control agreements
always show more will to enforce their
accords at the time of ratification than
after they are in effect and being
violated.

4. A Treaty With Ominous
Inspection Arrangements

“Would you support the
treaty…if it would authorize UN
inspectors to go to any site in the
United States, potentially without legal
search warrants and potentially risking
American business or military
secrets?”

The Luntz
survey indicates that such a treaty would
be opposed by a 22-68% margin with
Republican voters opposing it 16-76%
(with 57% “strongly opposed,”
compared to 49% among the general
population).

The White House lobbying group claims
that “The United Nations will have
no role in implementing the CWC.” In
fact, the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
is, like the International Atomic Energy
Agency, affiliated with the UN. What is
more, enforcement of this treaty is, by
the treaty’s own terms, a responsibility
of the UN Security Council.

That there will be constitutional
problems with the CWC’s inspection
arrangements — a fact conclusively
demonstrated by two of the Nation’s
leading authorities on the Constitution href=”97-D54.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾
— has been acknowledged by one of the
treaty’s principal champions, Senator Joe
Biden (D-DE). Sen. Biden has agreed to
attach a condition to the resolution of
ratification that would require criminal
search warrants for all involuntary
challenge inspections. There remains
concern, however, that American citizens
and companies may find themselves euchred
into “volunteering” to accept
such inspections. For example, the
Clinton Administration’s draft
implementing legislation allows the
government to assess companies for the
cost of obtaining criminal search
warrants and/or to deny uncooperative
companies the opportunity to do work for
the U.S. government. It seems entirely
possible that those unwilling to
voluntarily submit to inspections could
also be subjected to harassment from such
agencies as the EPA, OSHA or the IRS.

As numerous industry experts,
including Donald Rumsfeld,
Malcolm “Steve” Forbes
and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s Dr. Kathleen
Bailey explained to the Foreign
Relations Committee, it is unclear
exactly how many U.S. businesses will
ultimately be caught up in the Chemical
Weapons Convention’s reporting,
regulatory and inspection regime. That
said, these experts agree that the number
of “fewer than 2,000 American
companies” being cited by the White
House lobbyists is almost certainly too
low. Neither is it correct to believe, as
the 14 April “News Alert”
contends that “any
challenge inspections are expected to be
directed largely at military
facilities.” (Emphasis added.) Even
if that were true, the result would
likely be the loss of classified
information relevant to the national
security.

In fact, in the words of James
Schlesinger, these inspections
will be a “godsend” for foreign
intelligence operatives seeking
commercial secrets. At least some of
those serving on the OPCW’s inspection
teams will be trained and assigned to
conduct economic espionage against
American companies. The opportunities and
techniques authorized by this treaty will
afford them an unprecedented chance to do
just that — with potentially devastating
effect on the competitiveness of the
affected companies. It is naive — if not
thoroughly disingenuous — to suggest
otherwise.

The Bottom Line

Notwithstanding the Clinton
Administration’s intense sales campaign,
the facts about the Chemical Weapons
Convention are getting out to the
American people. When they learn that the
treaty will not work, will have real and
unjustifiable costs and may actually make
the danger of chemical attacks worse,
they overwhelmingly oppose this treaty.
If their elected representatives in
Washington vote on the basis of those
facts — rather than the misleading
information being promulgated by the
White House lobbyists and like-minded
special interests — there is little
doubt that this public sentiment will be
translate into a rejection of the CWC by
the Senate.

– 30 –

1. It is
noteworthy that the Clinton
Administration is now prepared to
acknowledge that the decision to
eliminate all U.S. chemical
weapons was not made by Ronald Reagan or
by statute. The draft CWC negotiated
during the Reagan Administration
explicitly contemplated the retention by
the United States of a 500 agent ton
stockpile of modern, binary chemical
weapons as a credible retaliatory
stockpile until such time as the Soviet
Union and/or all other nations’ chemical
arsenals were approaching the point of
being verifiably eliminated.

2. See John Yoo’s
op.ed. article in yesterday’s Wall
Street Journal entitled “The
Chemical Weapons Treaty is
Unconstitutional” and Ronald
Rotunda’s detailed analysis sent to
Senator Jesse Helms on 6 April 1997.

Just Which Chemical Weapons Convention Is Colin Powell Supporting — And Does He Know The Difference?

April 3, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Starting tomorrow,
the Clinton Administration intends to
make General Colin Powell — the former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff —
its Poster Child for the campaign to gain
Senate approval of the controversial
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
According to the Associated Press, this
campaign will be kicked off at a
“high-powered, bipartisan gathering
of treaty supporters…featuring
congressmen, veterans’ group leaders,
arms experts, religious organization
heads and military leaders, past and
present,” including Army Gen. Colin
Powell.

Does Powell Know What He Is
Endorsing?

A warning to General Powell is in
order, however: The Senate was recently
treated to the spectacle of another
accomplished retired flag officer,
General Norman Schwarzkopf, who had to
acknowledge that — while he is on record
as supporting the CWC — he is not
familiar with its details. For example,
under questioning by Sen. Jim Inhofe
(R-OK), chairman of the Armed Services
Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee, the
following exchange occurred:

Sen. Inhofe: “Do
you think it wise to share
with countries like Iran our most
advanced chemical defensive
equipment and technologies?”

Gen. Schwartzkopf:
“Our defensive
capabilities?”

Sen. Inhofe:
“Yes.”

Gen. Schwartzkopf: “Absolutely
not.”

Sen. Inhofe: “Well,
I’m talking about sharing our
advanced chemical defensive
equipment and technologies, which
I believe under Article X [they]
would be allow[ed] to [get]. Do
you disagree?”

Gen. Schwartzkopf:
“As I said Senator, I’m
not familiar with all the details
— I — you know, a country,
particularly like Iran, I think
we should share as little as
possible with them in the way of
our military capabilities.”

Beware the ‘Bait and Switch’

General Powell
and others who served under President
Bush should also be aware that there
have been — as the Center noted
on 10 February 1997 href=”97-D48.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
— significant changes in a
number of the assumptions, conditions and
circumstances that underpinned the Bush
Administration’s judgment that the
Chemical Weapons Convention was in the
national interest. These changes
have prompted several of General Powell’s
former colleagues — including Secretary
of Defense Richard Cheney,
Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill
McPeak, Assistant Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency Director Kathleen
Bailey, Assistant to the
Secretary for Atomic Energy Robert
Barker and Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense J.D.
Crouch — to urge that the
present treaty be rejected by the Senate. href=”97-D48.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

A sample of the changes that have
materially altered the acceptability, if
not strictly speaking the terms,
of the Chemical Weapons Convention
include the following:

Item: Russia’s
Evisceration of the Bilateral
Destruction Agreement

The Bush Administration anticipated
that a Bilateral Destruction Agreement
(BDA) forged by Secretary of State James
Baker and his Soviet counterpart, Eduard
Shevardnadze in 1990, would critically
underpin the Chemical Weapons Convention.
As the Center for Security Policy
observed in early February, href=”97-D48.html#N_3_”>⁽³⁾
this agreement obliged Moscow to provide
a full and accurate accounting and
eliminate most of its vast chemical
arsenal. The BDA was also expected to
afford the U.S. inspection rights that
would significantly enhance the more
limited arrangements provided for by the
CWC.

These assumptions about the
BDA have, regrettably, not been
fulfilled. To the contrary,
Russian Prime Minister Victor
Chernomyrdin declared last year that the
Bilateral Destruction Agreement has
“outlived its usefulness” for
Russia. What is more, it is now public
knowledge that Russia is continuing to
produce extremely lethal binary munitions
— weapons that have been
specifically designed to circumvent the
limits and defeat the inspection regime
of the Chemical Weapons Convention. href=”97-D48.html#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾

Item: On-Site
Inspections Won’t Prevent
Cheating

When the Bush
Administration finalized the CWC, there
was considerable hope that intrusive
on-site inspections would meaningfully
contribute to the detection and proof of
violations, and therefore to deterring
them. Five years of experience with the
UN inspections in Iraq — inspections
that were allowed to be far more
thorough, timely and intrusive than those
permitted under this Convention — have
established that totalitarian
rulers of a closed society can
successfully defeat such monitoring
efforts.

In a 4 February
1997 letter to National Security Advisor
Samuel Berger, Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Jesse Helms noted
that:

“Unclassified portions of the
National Intelligence Estimate on
U.S. Monitoring Capabilities
[prepared after Mr. Bush
left office] indicate that it is
unlikely that the U.S. will be
able to detect or address
violations in a timely fashion,
if at all, when they occur on a
small scale. And yet,
even small-scale diversions of
chemicals to chemical weapons
production are capable, over
time, of yielding a stockpile far
in excess of a single ton [which
General Shalikashvili described
in congressional testimony on 11
August 1994 is a level which
could, ‘in certain limited
circumstances…have a military
impact.’] Moreover, few
countries, if any, are engaging
in much more than small-scale
production of chemical agent. For
example, according to [the 4
February 1997] Washington
Times, Russia may
produce its new nerve agents at a
‘pilot plant’ in quantities of
only ’55 to 110 tons
annually.'”

Item: Facilitating
Proliferation: ‘Poisons for
Peace’

In the years since the Bush
Administration signed the Chemical
Weapons Convention, it has become
increasingly clear that sharing nuclear
weapons-relevant technology with would-be
proliferators simply because they promise
not to pursue nuclear weapons programs is
folly. Indeed, countries like North
Korea, Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan,
Argentina, Brazil and Algeria have abused
this “Atoms for Peace” bargain
by diverting equipment and know-how
provided under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to
prohibited weapons purposes.

Unfortunately, commercial chemical
manufacturing technology can, if
anything, be diverted even more easily to
weapons purposes than can nuclear
research and power reactors. For this
reason, recent experience with the NPT
suggests that the Chemical Weapons
Convention’s Article XI — an article
dubbed the “Poisons for Peace”
provision — is insupportable. It
stipulates that the Parties shall:

“Not maintain among
themselves any restrictions,
including those in any
international agreements,
incompatible with the obligations
undertaken under this Convention,
which would restrict or impede
trade and the development and
promotion of scientific and
technological knowledge in the
field of chemistry for
industrial, agricultural,
research, medical, pharmaceutical
or other peaceful purposes.”

Such an obligation must now be judged a
recipe for accelerating
proliferation of chemical weapons, not
restricting it. Even if the
United States were to become a party to
the CWC and choose to ignore this treaty
commitment, other advanced industrialized
countries will certainly not refrain from
selling dual-use chemical manufacturing
technology if it means making a lucrative
sale.

Item: U.S.
Chemical Defenses Will be
Degraded

When the Bush Administration
signed the CWC, proponents offered
assurances that the treaty would not
diminish U.S. investment in chemical
defenses. Such assurances were called
into question, however, by an initiative
unveiled in 1995 by the then-Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral William Owens. He suggested
cutting $805 million from
counter-proliferation support and
chemical and biological defense programs
through Fiscal Year 2001.

This was followed by a recommendation
from JCS Chairman General John
Shalikashvili in February 1996 — a few
weeks before he told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee that the Department
of Defense is committed to a
“robust” chemical defense
program. He sought to slash
chemical/biological defense activities
and investment by over $1.5 billion
through 2003.

The rationale for both these gambits?
Thanks to a perceived reduction in the
chemical warfare threat to be brought
about by the CWC, investments in
countering that threat could safely enjoy
lower priority. Such reductions would
have deferred, if not seriously
disrupted, important chemical and
biological research and development
efforts, and delayed the procurement of
proven technologies. While the Owens and
Shalikashvili initiatives were ultimately
rejected, they are a foretaste of
the sort of reduced budgetary priority
this account will surely face if the CWC
is approved.

Changes in the military postures of
key U.S. allies since the end of the Bush
Administration raise a related point:
Even if the United States manages to
resist the sirens’ song to reduce
chemical defenses in the wake of the CWC,
it is predictable that the already
generally deplorable readiness of most
allied forces to deal with chemical
threats will only worsen. To the extent
that the U.S. is obliged in the future to
fight coalition wars, this vulnerability
could prove catastrophic to American
forces engaged with a common enemy.

Item: Clinton
Repudiates Bush Commitment to the
JCS on R.C.A.s

At the insistence of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff in 1992, President Bush signed
an executive order that explicitly
allowed Riot Control Agents (for example,
tear gas) to be used in rescuing downed
aircrews and in dispersing hostile forces
using civilians to screen their movements
against U.S. positions. The
Clinton Administration initially
indicated that it intended to rescind
this executive order outright once the
CWC is ratified. The result of
doing so would have been to compel U.S.
personnel to choose between using lethal
force where RCAs would suffice or
suffering otherwise avoidable casualties.

In the face of Senate opposition to
such a recission, Mr. Clinton has
apparently decided to allow tear gas and
other RCAs to be used in these selected
circumstances, but only in peacetime. In
wartime, however, such use would be
considered a breach of the treaty. The
Administration has yet to clarify under
what circumstances the Nation will be
considered to be “at war” since
there has been no declaration of that
state of belligerency in any of the
conflicts in which the U.S. has engaged
since 1945.

What is particularly troublesome is
the prospect that the Clinton reversal of
the Bush Administration position on RCAs
will impinge upon promising new defense
technologies — involving chemical-based,
non-lethal weapons (for example,
immobilizing agents). If so, U.S.
forces may be denied highly effective
means of prevailing in future conflicts
with minimal loss of life on either side.

Other, No Less
Distinguished National Security Experts
Disagree with General Powell

In a letter sent to Senator Trent Lott
last fall, when the Chemical Weapons
Convention was last under consideration
by the Senate, a host of former top
civilian and military officials expressed
their opposition to this treaty in its
present form. Among the distinguished
retired flag officers were:

General John W. Foss,
U.S. Army (Retired), former Commanding
General, Training and Doctrine Command; Vice
Admiral William Houser, U.S.
Navy (Retired), former Deputy Chief of
Naval Operations for Aviation; General
P.X. Kelley, U.S. Marine Corps
(Retired), former Commandant of U.S.
Marine Corps; Lieutenant General
Thomas Kelly, U.S. Army
(Retired), former Director for
Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff ; Admiral
Wesley McDonald, U.S. Navy
(Retired), former Supreme Allied
Commander, Atlantic; Admiral
Kinnaird McKee, U.S. Navy
(Retired), former Director, Naval Nuclear
Propulsion; General Merrill A.
McPeak, U.S. Air Force
(Retired), former Chief of Staff, U.S.
Air Force; Lieutenant General
T.H. Miller, U.S. Marine Corps
(Retired), former Fleet Marine Force
Commander/Head, Marine Aviation; General
John. L. Piotrowski, U.S. Air
Force (Retired), former Member of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff as Vice Chief, U.S.
Air Force; General Bernard
Schriever, U.S. Air Force
(Retired), former Commander, Air Research
and Development and Air Force Systems
Command; Vice Admiral Jerry Unruh,
U.S. Navy (Retired), former Commander 3rd
Fleet; and Lieutenant General
James Williams, U.S. Army
(Retired), former Director, Defense
Intelligence Agency.

Among the civilian leaders who signed
the open letter to Sen. Lott were: Richard
B. Cheney, former Secretary of
Defense; William P. Clark,
former National Security Advisor to the
President; Alexander M. Haig, Jr.,
former Secretary of State; John
S. Herrington, former Secretary
of Energy; Jeane J. Kirkpatrick,
former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations; Edwin Meese III,
former U.S. Attorney General; Donald
Rumsfeld, former Secretary of
Defense; and one of General Powell’s past
bosses, Caspar Weinberger,
former Secretary of Defense.

The Bottom Line

The Center regrets General Powell’s
decision to lend his authority to a
treaty that even he has freely
acknowledged is completely unverifiable.
It fears that he may also come
to regret it. In any event, the Nation
surely will, if the Clinton-Powell
razzle-dazzle campaign induces the Senate
to take its eyes off the ball — namely,
the fatal flaws that make the Chemical
Weapons Convention unworthy of that
institution’s advice and consent.

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Truth or
Consequences #4: No D.N.A. Tests Needed
To Show That Claims About Republican
Paternity of C.W.C Are Overblown
(No. 97-D 24,
10 February 1997).

2. See the
Center’s Transition Brief
entitled Here We Go Again:
Clinton Presses Anew For Senate Approval
of Flawed, Unverifiable, Ineffective
Chemical Weapons Treaty ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-T_05″>No. 97-T 05, 8
January 1997).

3. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Truth or
Consequences #3: Clinton ‘Makes a Mistake
About It’ in Arguing the C.W.C. Will
Protect U.S. Troops ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_21″>No. 97-D 21, 6
February 1997).

4. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Russia’s Covert
Chemical Weapons Program Vindicates Jesse
Helms’ Continuing Opposition to Phony
C.W. Arms Control ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_19″>No. 97-D 19, 4
February 1997).

Truth or Consequences #4: No D.N.A. Tests Needed To Show That Claims About Republican Paternity of C.W.C. Are Overblown

February 10, 1997Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton
Administration’s hole card in its bid to
persuade a Republican-controlled Senate
to agree to ratification of the
controversial Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC) appears to be the contention that
the fathers of this treaty are Presidents
Ronald Reagan and George Bush. The most
recent and visible manifestation of this
gambit was Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright’s visit to Mr. Bush in Texas
last Saturday to secure a public
statement of his support for the CWC.

The Administration’s reasoning seems
to be that Republican Senators will be
willing to disregard myriad, serious
concerns about the substance of this
accord and vote for it simply because two
Presidents of their party were involved
in its negotiation. This tactic may be
explained by the fact that any arms
control for which Mr. Clinton is seen as
principally responsible will be viewed
with skepticism by more than a third of
the Senate — a number sufficient under
the Constitution to defeat treaties. href=”97-D24.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
Still, the idea that
demonstrating Republican paternity for a
flawed agreement will be sufficient to
secure its ratification suggests a low
regard for GOP Senators and their sense
of responsibility when it comes to the
Senate’s constitutional role as equal
partner with the executive in
treaty-making.

Not So Fast — This is Not
Ronald Reagan’s Treaty

This proposition is even more
extraordinary since the degree of
Republican responsibility for the treaty
as it now stands is, in important ways,
less than the Clinton Administration
would have Senators believe.

For example, in Sunday’s New York
Times, a letter signed by a number
of senior Reagan Administration officials
takes strong exception to the suggestion
that the President they served is
implicated in the agreement ultimately
signed in January 1993. The signatories
are the following distinguished former
office-holders: Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger, U.N. Ambassador Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency Director Eugene
Rostow, Under Secretary of
Defense Fred Iklé,
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard
Perle and Deputy Assistant
Secretaries of Defense Douglas
Feith and Frank Gaffney.

This joint letter notes, in part:

“It is a distortion
of recent history for supporters
of the controversial new Chemical
Weapons Convention to describe it
as a product of the Reagan
Administration, implying that the
treaty has Ronald Reagan’s
imprimatur.

“The Convention now
being debated in the Senate is a
very different document from the
chemical weapons ban the Reagan
Administration was negotiating.
The principal difference is that
the Chemical Weapons Convention
is hopelessly unenforceable.
Cynical signatories like Iran,
China, Russia and Cuba know that
they could ratify it, make and
store nerve gas in violation of
it, almost certainly escape
detection and certainly escape
serious penalty.

“The Clinton Administration
has recently told Senate leaders
in considerable detail that it
has no intention of imposing
meaningful punishment on treaty
violators. It has also admitted
that American intelligence cannot
certify confidence in our ability
to detect illegal production and
stockpiling of chemical weapons
in secretive countries, even in
militarily significant
quantities.

“We know that the
Chemical Weapons Convention, in
its current form, would never
have been accepted as consistent
with President Reagan’s policies.
President Reagan was
clear-sighted and principled in
his opposition to arms control
treaties that could be violated
with impunity.” (Emphasis
added.)

Changed Circumstances Have
Significantly Altered President Bush’s
Treaty

What is more,
there have been significant changes in a
number of the assumptions, conditions and
circumstances that underpinned the Bush
Administration’s judgment that the
Chemical Weapons Convention was in the
national interest. These changes have
prompted several top Bush Administration
officials — including Secretary of
Defense Richard Cheney,
Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill
McPeak, Assistant Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency Director Kathleen
Bailey, Assistant to the
Secretary for Atomic Energy Robert
Barker and Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense J.D.
Crouch — to urge that the
present treaty be rejected by the Senate. href=”97-D24.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

An illustrative sample of the changes
that have materially altered the
acceptability, if not strictly speaking
the terms, of the Chemical
Weapons Convention include the following:

Item: Russia’s Evisceration
of the Bilateral Destruction
Agreement

The Bush Administration anticipated that
a Bilateral Destruction Agreement (BDA)
forged by Secretary of State James Baker
and his Soviet counterpart, Eduard
Shevardnadze in 1990, would critically
underpin the Chemical Weapons Convention.
As the Center for Security Policy
observed last week, href=”97-D24.html#N_3_”>⁽³⁾
this agreement obliged Moscow to provide
a full and accurate accounting and
eliminate most of its vast chemical
arsenal. The BDA was also expected to
afford the U.S. inspection rights that
would significantly enhance the more
limited arrangements provided for by the
CWC.

These assumptions about
the BDA have, regrettably, not been
fulfilled. To the contrary,
Russian Prime Minister Victor
Chernomyrdin declared last year that the
Bilateral Destruction Agreement has
“outlived its usefulness” for
Russia. What is more, it is now public
knowledge that Russia is continuing to
produce extremely lethal binary munitions
— weapons that have been
specifically designed to circumvent the
limits and defeat the inspection regime
of the Chemical Weapons Convention. href=”97-D24.html#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾

Item: On-Site Inspections
Won’t Prevent Cheating

In a 4 February 1997 letter to National
Security Advisor Samuel Berger, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman
Jesse Helms noted that:

“Unclassified portions of the
National Intelligence Estimate on
U.S. Monitoring Capabilities
[prepared after Mr. Bush
left office] indicate that it is
unlikely that the U.S. will be
able to detect or address
violations in a timely fashion,
if at all, when they occur on a
small scale. And yet,
even small-scale diversions of
chemicals to chemical weapons
production are capable, over
time, of yielding a stockpile far
in excess of a single ton [which
General Shalikashvili described
in congressional testimony on 11
August 1994 is a level which
could, ‘in certain limited
circumstances…have a military
impact.’] Moreover, few
countries, if any, are engaging
in much more than small-scale
production of chemical agent. For
example, according to [the 4
February 1997] Washington
Times, Russia may
produce its new nerve agents at a
‘pilot plant’ in quantities of
only ’55 to 110 tons
annually.'”

Item: Facilitating
Proliferation: ‘Poisons for
Peace’

In the years since the Bush
Administration signed the Chemical
Weapons Convention, it has become
increasingly clear that sharing nuclear
weapons-relevant technology simply with
would-be proliferators simply because
they promise not to pursue nuclear
weapons programs is folly. Indeed,
countries like North Korea, Iran, Iraq,
India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil and
Algeria have abused this “Atoms for
Peace” bargain by diverting
equipment and know-how provided under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to
prohibited weapons purposes.

Unfortunately,
commercial chemical manufacturing
technology can, if anything, be diverted
even more easily to weapons purposes than
can nuclear research and power reactors.
For this reason, recent experience with
the NPT suggests that the Chemical
Weapons Convention’s Article XI — an
article dubbed the “Poisons for
Peace” provision — is
insupportable. It stipulates that the
Parties shall:

“Not maintain among
themselves any restrictions,
including those in any
international agreements,
incompatible with the obligations
undertaken under this Convention,
which would restrict or impede
trade and the development and
promotion of scientific and
technological knowledge in the
field of chemistry for
industrial, agricultural,
research, medical, pharmaceutical
or other peaceful purposes.”

Item: U.S. Chemical Defenses
Will be Degraded

This reduction would
have deferred, if not seriously
disrupted, important chemical and
biological research and development
efforts, and delayed the procurement of
proven technologies. While the Owens
initiative was ultimately defeated, it
is a foretaste of the sort of reduced
budgetary priority this account will
surely face if the CWC is approved.

Item: Clinton Repudiates
Bush Commitment to the JCS on
R.C.A.s

At the insistence of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff in 1992, President Bush signed an
executive order that explicitly allowed
Riot Control Agents (for example, tear
gas) to be used in rescuing downed
aircrews and in dispersing hostile forces
using civilians to screen their movements
against U.S. positions. The
Clinton Administration has stated its
intention to rescind this executive order
once the CWC is ratified. The
result could be to compel U.S. personnel
to choose between using lethal force
where RCAs would suffice or suffering
otherwise avoidable casualties.

Worse yet, the Clinton reversal of the Bush
Administration position on RCAs may mean
that promising new defense technologies
— involving chemical-based,
non-lethal weapons (for example,
immobilizing agents) — may be restricted
or prohibited by this Convention. If so, U.S.
forces may be denied highly effective
means of prevailing in future conflicts
with minimal loss of life on either side.

The Bottom Line

The foregoing considerations make
clear that Senators should consider the
Chemical Weapons Convention carefully on
its merits. They should, in particular,
resist the Clinton Administration’s
pressure to ignore this treaty’s flaws
out of some sense of duty to earlier
administrations. A treaty that has little
in common with Ronald Reagan’s approach
to arms control and that has undergone
material changes in circumstances since
George Bush’s presidency must be seen for
what it is: a defective agreement that is
unworthy of the intensive — and
increasingly misleading — campaign being
mounted for its ratification by the
current resident of the White House and
his team.

– 30 –

1. Presumably, it
is for this reason, that the
Administration has strenuously resisted
demands that major changes it has been
negotiating to the Conventional Forces in
Europe and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
be submitted for the Senate’s advice and
consent.

Bad for (the nation’s) business

November 26, 1996Center for Security Policy

By: Frank Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times, 26 November 1996

Ominous international trends suggest that what is now called
the “post-Cold War” period by politicians, academics
and pundits may soon be known as the “interwar years.”
And if a new cataclysmic war does erupt in the years ahead,
America’s adversaries are likely to be more formidable, thanks to
the shortsighted attitude the Clinton administration and allied
governments are taking to advance short-term business interests
without regard for the ultimate cost to Western security
interests.

Consider three worrisome cases in point:

Last week, Russia issued its first
international bonds since 1917. This $500 million Eurodollar
offering was oversubscribed by 100 percent to $1 billion – and
reportedly received some $2 billion in offers – despite the fact
that the interest offered was a modest 3.45 percent over the
five-year U.S. Treasury rate. Such an extraordinary showing is,
in part, attributable to the undeservedly strong credit rating
Moscow received from the cognizant European and U.S. rating
organizations – higher than that of Brazil, Turkey, Argentina or
Venezuela and on a par with Mexico and India. In light of the
success of this offering, the Kremlin and other Russian borrowers
are expected to issue a plethora of such bonds on the world
market next year.

In this manner, Russia is achieving a two-fer:

The Kremlin is poised to secure a “financial
breakout” – a source of potentially vast, undisciplined,
unconditioned and largely non-transparent revenues. It seems
reasonable to expect that at least some of these funds will wind
up being used for purposes inimical to U.S. and Western security
interests. These may well include the underwriting of: Russian
nuclear reactors being built in Iran and Cuba, strategic force
modernization, intelligence operations against the West and
Moscow’s campaign to control the oil resources of the Caspian
Sea.

The large number of likely holders of Russian paper and
the secondary markets for these instruments make it virtually
impossible to reschedule bonds and notes. This, in turn, can be
expected to give rise to a potentially large number of
constituencies – including American securities firms, mutual and
pension funds, insurance companies, corporations, and individual
investors – that will almost certainly demand U.S. government or
multilateral bailouts in the event of liquidity crises that
impede Moscow’s ability to redeem its bonds on the respective
maturity dates. (Remember the circumstances that led to the
misuse of the Exchange Stabilization Fund of the U.S. Treasury to
redeem Mexico’s tesobonos!)

Worse yet, these constituencies can be predicted to produce
powerful political advocacy groups that could come to rival the
China Lobby. These New China Hands-in-the-till have successfully
emasculated many U.S. foreign, economic and security policies
toward Beijing, lest American financial and commercial interests
be adversely affected. Ever since the days of the notorious
“Trust,” the Kremlin has eagerly sought to cultivate
such influential friends.

Rarely has the power of the China Lobby
been more evident than in last weekend’s Asian-Pacific Economic
Council (APEC) meetings.

In APEC’s wake, legitimate U.S. concerns about China’s
strategic buildup, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
hostile intelligence activities, aggressive behavior toward
Taiwan and Hong Kong and repressive domestic policies have been
effectively jettisoned. To be sure, the Clinton administration
continues to pay lip service to such issues, but its actions
speak far louder than its words. And its actions are going to
ensure that there is no diminution in Beijing’s access to Western
technical and capital resources and therefore no slowing in its
ambition to establish itself as a regional superpower, if not the
United States’ pre-eminent global rival.

Finally, the spectacle of the Italian
government, the press and the anti-communist papacy behaving like
starstruck groupies for Fidel Castro during his visit to Rome
last week is evidence of the mounting international campaign to
eviscerate the Helms-Burton bill. This legislation, which
President Clinton chose to sign in the runup to the 1996
election, codifies and tightens the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

Even though Mr. Clinton acted to postpone implementation of
key Helms-Burton provisions, Canadian, European and other
businesses and governments who have found it profitable to help
prop up Mr. Castro’s totalitarian regime are indignant that the
United States is attempting to jeopardize their gravy train.

The trouble with the theory that the post-Cold War world
would be transformed into one secure for Western interests by the
global growth of free markets – whether accompanied by democracy
or not – is that all too many capitalists in the United States
and elsewhere are quite content doing business with authoritarian
regimes. The latter typically promise stability, low wage rates
and relaxed attitudes toward the exploitation of workers and the
local environment.

Of still greater concern from a strategic point of view,
however, is the indifference of such capitalists to the
contribution their investments are making to perpetuating and
strengthening the authoritarians with whom they are
collaborating. It is telling that Alexander Lebed – the former
general whose promises of restored discipline in Russia have a
totalitarian ring – emphasized in Washington last week that his
interest in not “scaring” the West has a lot to do with
his desire, and that of his backers, to continue to secure
Western investment. In considering this line and that of Jiang
Zemin and Fidel Castro, Americans should bear in mind the fabled,
contemptuous Lenin assertion that the West’s capitalists would
sell the rope with which they will be hung.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the director of the Center for
Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.