The Chemical-Weapons Treaty
On April 29, an
international treaty banning chemical weapons will take effect. So far, the
United States isn't committed to taking part. Thanks mainly to the efforts of
Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the
Senate has delayed ratification of the treaty and may ultimately vote it down.
Helms claims that despite the ban's best intentions, it will actually encourage
chemical-weapons attacks. Proponents of the treaty, including the Clinton
administration, worry that Helms' delaying tactics will shut the United States
out of critical decisions about chemical arms control. What's really at
stake?
Images from the Gulf War
of U.S. troops and TV correspondents donning gas masks spurred the Bush
administration to complete negotiations of the Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC) in 1991. The treaty requires the member states to destroy all
stockpiles of chemical weapons within 10 years. It also bans production,
possession, and use of all nerve and mustard gases. Production of other
chemicals, such as chlorine and certain pesticides, which have commercial as
well as military applications, will continue, but a U.N. agency will monitor
production to prevent their military use.
This distinction between military and commercial production
is itself controversial. Several chemicals exempted from the ban have only
esoteric civilian applications, but obvious military uses. For instance,
phosgene and hydrogen cyanide, gases ubiquitously used in World War I, will
continue to be readily accessible to terrorists and armies.
In large part, the CWC
simply reiterates previous international agreements . After World War I,
145 countries signed the Geneva Protocol , prohibiting the use of
chemical weapons in battle. And under a 1990 bilateral agreement, the Soviet
Union and the United States (Russia and the United States are estimated to
control two-thirds of the world's chemical weapons between them) committed
themselves to the destruction of most of their arsenals by the year 2004. This
will occur regardless of the CWC's fate. The United States spent $78 million
last year to help the Russians get rid of their 40,000-ton stockpile, and plans
to spend $27 billion over the next 10 years destroying its own 30,000 tons.
However, neither of these agreements goes as far as the CWC, which bans all
future production of weapons.
Despite the enormous number of chemical
weapons, most do not pose an imminent threat. The majority in the American and
Russian stockpiles date back to the 1950s and are contained in rusty shells, no
longer useable in battle. Nor has Russia or the United States ever shown much
interest in modernizing them. But curbing Russian/American arms is not the
CWC's principal aim. Instead, the United States hopes the treaty will
ultimately force potential ground-war opponents to abandon their chemical
weapons, and prevent the recurrence of chemical attacks against civilian
populations, like the Iraqi assaults against the Kurds in the late 1980s.
However, many of the
countries that the United States would like to check have yet to sign up. One
hundred and sixty countries have agreed to the CWC, but this includes only 15
of the 20 believed to possess chemical weapons. The list of
nonparticipants is ominous, including most of the United States' current
adversaries: North Korea, Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Of the 68 that have actually
ratified the treaty so far, only India and Ethiopia are suspected of owning
chemical weapons. (Iran has signed but not ratified the treaty.) Both China
(the third-largest stockpiler) and Russia (the largest) appear to be waiting
for the Senate to ratify the treaty before doing so themselves. Even then, some
critics doubt that Russia, which is currently reluctant to participate in
further arms-control efforts, will move to ratification.
Critics of the CWC say that chemical weapons are an
essential deterrent against such attacks by these nonparticipating
nations. Countries like Iraq and Iran have been reluctant to use their chemical
weapons, the critics argue, because they have feared the United States would
retaliate with its own chemical attack. Proponents of this argument point to
the chemical arms race during the 1920s and 1930s, which they say prevented a
repeat of World War I-style gas attacks in World War II.
The treaty's proponents
respond that the U.S. military would be unlikely to retaliate with chemical
weapons in any case and is already moving to destroy its stockpiles. The
Pentagon considers these weapons too unreliable for use in battle--the wind
could blow the chemicals back on your own troops. And with the exception of
napalm and Agent Orange used in Vietnam, the United States is not known to have
used chemical weapons in battle since World War I. To allay concerns about any
loss in deterrence, the Clinton administration has said that the United States
will respond to any use of chemical weapons with an "overwhelming and
devastating" attack. According to the Washington Post , administration
sources say this is a coded way of threatening a nuclear response .
Because a ban can be easily circumvented
(chemical weapons can be produced from everyday products without elaborate
facilities), the treaty installs a sweeping verification program ,
originally proposed during the Reagan administration by Vice President George
Bush. Conservatives say it's a further intrusion on American sovereignty. The
CWC allows any member country to inspect any site--public or private--it
suspects of producing illicit chemicals in another member country. This means
agents of foreign governments could legally search American businesses.
Snooping foreign agents, critics fear, will exploit their visits for industrial
espionage, stealing company secrets for firms in their homelands.
Some legal scholars,
such as Robert Bork, claim these search powers are unconstitutionally broad.
Random CWC inspections, Bork says, violate the Fourth Amendment, which requires
a warrant to search private facilities. However, the treaty requires all
inspections to accord with the constitution of the country where the inspection
takes place. Thus, if a U.S. court rules a search is unconstitutional, the
inspectors will be forced to obtain warrants. Also, the routine random
inspections used by U.S. government agencies such as the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are almost
exactly like those planned under the CWC, and these have been found
constitutional.
Domestic manufacturers of chemicals are pushing hard
for the treaty. Though the CWC limits the chemicals they can legally produce,
it also imposes stiff penalties against countries that fail to ratify the ban,
to encourage nonparticipants to sign up. Signatory countries will be prohibited
from buying chemicals--those with only residual military use that are not
banned--from nonsignatory countries. According to the Chemical Manufacturers
Association, failure to ratify the ban will cost U.S. producers $600 million
each year in lost sales to such countries as Germany, Japan, and India.
Proponents say the treaty
will suffer a fatal loss of credibility if the United States opts not to join.
Aside from the large U.S. budgetary commitment to the treaty's
enforcement--some $25 million a year--U.S. officials have played a key role in
concocting the treaty and stewarding it to its conclusion. Failure to ratify
the treaty by April 29 squanders U.S. influence . Only representatives
from the member states can sit on the committee that finalizes the treaty's
logistics, and the United Nations won't hire verification inspectors from
nonmember countries.
These
proponents concede that in the short run, the agreement will do little to
reduce the threat of a chemical attack. But the analogy, they say, is the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that took 20 years to obtain 178 members--and
only after the United States used sanctions to force the hand of reluctant
governments.
