Chemical reaction: if the Chemical Weapons Convention is unenforceable, what's the use of having it - CWC - Column

National Review, July 15, 1996 by Douglas J. Feith

ONE of the less-noticed legacies of Saddam Hussein is now being considered by the Senate: the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a 1993 treaty that would prohibit possession of chemical weapons. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee supported ratification, with half of the Republican members voting in favor.

Chemical weapons pose a serious threat. They can be manufactured easily and stored without detection. Their production is not a high-technology enterprise: a factory or laboratory that makes fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, or plastics can readily be adapted for the purpose. As a result of widespread recent advances in bio-technology, toxic agents can be produced by means that provide little or no intelligence "signature" at all.

Chemical weapons appeal to potential aggressors because small quantities -- quantities that could be stored in a single warehouse of moderate size -- could hamstring an enemy in its efforts to mobilize, receive reinforcements, maintain air-sortie rates, and the like. For forces deployed defensively, using limited active-duty units and relying on rapid mobilization in the event of war -- forces such as those in NATO (especially during the Cold War) and in South Korea and Israel -- time is of the essence, and mobilization delays can have strategic consequences.

If chemical weapons were difficult to manufacture or hide or if they were militarily significant only in large quantities, it might make sense to attempt to ban their possession. But when the opposite is the case, the ban cannot be expected to work against countries whose governments have a history of acting in bad faith.

It is bad practice for the United States to enter into arms-control agreements that cannot be verified. Signing on implies either that we trust the other parties, or that, if we do not trust them all, we can satisfactorily monitor those of concern to us.

When addressing the CWC's unverifiability, the treaty's supporters often remark that there is no such thing as "perfect" verification. But the problem with the CWC is not that our intelligence agencies would be able to detect only 90 per cent or 80 per cent or even 50 per cent of significant violations. The issue is not how much confidence is enough. The problem is flat and stark. The countries now of greatest concern to us -- the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Iran -- could become parties to the agreement knowing that they could produce and stockpile chemical weapons without detection. EVENTS in recent years should have resolved once and for all the question of whether a ban on chemical-weapons possession can be verified effectively. The mandate of UNSCOM -- the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq -- was to see to the dismantling of Iraq's offensive-warfare programs: chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons, and long-range missiles. It has had more than a thousand inspectors combing Iraq on the ground ever since Iraq's defeat in Desert Storm in 1991. The Iraqi regime, under military threat and the pressure of severe economic sanctions, has permitted this intrusion and allowed UNSCOM inspectors access to its facilities and personnel to a remarkable degree.

The UNSCOM inspectors have had more extensive and thorough access in Iraq over a longer period of time than inspectors would have in any country under even an extreme reading of the CWC. Nevertheless, after three, four, and five years of persistent (and courageous) on-the-ground investigation, UNSCOM inspectors continually make significant new discoveries about Iraq's chemical- and biological-weapons activities. In other words, years of intense scrutiny of a single country that was compelled to cooperate have not sufficed to uncover all the major elements, let alone the finer points, of the Iraqi programs. Under the circumstances, one can hardly maintain that inspections under the CWC, burdensome though they will be, can ensure effective monitoring. Ambassador Rolf Ekeus of Sweden, who heads UNSCOM and who helped negotiate the CWC, remains a supporter of the new treaty, but he has stated candidly and categorically that it would not be effective against countries like Iraq that act clandestinely and in bad faith.

If the CWC will not be effective against countries like Iraq, it is reasonable to ask, what is the need for it? If we want to ensure that countries like the United States, Canada, and Britain do not have chemical weapons, we can achieve this without a burdensome new international bureaucracy. It can be done by the friendly democratic countries themselves, acting jointly or in parallel. The CWC's purpose is precisely to constrain dangerous, secretive, non-democratic countries like Iraq, and if it clearly will not do so, then the treaty has no reason for being.

Another Iraq-related piece of recent history deserves careful consideration. During the Iran - Iraq war of the 1980s, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran. This included the first military use ever of nerve gas. Iran invited a United Nations inspection team onto its territory to examine the victims, witness the damage, and study the unexploded chemical munitions fired from Iraq. Through gruesome videotapes, laboratory analyses, and other means, the inspectors proved that Iraq had used chemical weapons in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, to which it is a party. That venerable treaty banned the initiation of chemical warfare. In other words, it banned use -- as opposed to possession, which the CWC would ban. Iraq's widely publicized flouting of the Geneva Protocol led, a few months later -- in January 1989 -- to the convening in Paris of a large international conference to do something to uphold the old treaty. But the conference could not agree upon any sanctions against Iraq. It did not resolve so much as to censure Iraq. Indeed, it could not pass a resolution even mentioning Iraq by name.