CHEMICAL WARFARE AND HOW NOT TO FIGHT IT
REES, MATTHEW
CHEMICAL WARFARE AND HOW NOT TO FIGHT IT By Matthew Rees Terrorism has been quietly emerging as an issue in the race between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. Dole portrays the president as insuffi...
...Lott placated both sides by agreeing to consider the treaty by September 14, with the understanding that he and other Senate GOP leaders would work to defeat it...
...Dole never scheduled a vote, but in late June, in Trent Lott’s fi rst month as majority leader, Senate Democrats offered him a deal: We won’t fi libuster defense legislation if you schedule a vote on the chemical weapons treaty before November...
...In recent years Iraq, with much less than fi ve days’ notice, has still managed to hide its chemical agents...
...Soon, though, Clinton will have handy ammunition—when the Senate approves a chemical weapons treaty endorsed by the administration and opposed by many Republicans...
...Superfi cially uncontroversial, the treaty has drawn little attention from the media and senators...
...Opponents also point out that many of the countries suspected of possessing chemical weapons—Syria, Libya, Iraq, North Korea—show no intention of signing the measure...
...In June 1994, CIA director James Woolsey testifi ed that he did not have “high confi dence in our ability to detect noncompliance, especially on a small scale...
...businesses...
...In recent weeks, a team of 15 mid-level administration offi cials has been briefi ng Senate Republican staffers on the virtues of the treaty...
...So why must the treaty be considered at all just seven weeks before the election...
...First, a strict interpretation of the treaty would bar even such uses of chemical weapons as tear gas in evacuations of personnel...
...No Democrat is expected to vote no, and the pro-treaty group is led by Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, armed with a letter endorsing the measure from George Bush...
...Others, like John McCain, John Warner, and Strom Thurmond, didn’t want the defense bill to go down in fl ames...
...Not surprisingly, Dole has been quiet on the issue...
...And the treaty lacks protections for businesses’ proprietary information...
...And that’s a charge you don’t want to be responding to on election eve...
...They would also press the White House to provide documentation on Russia’s compliance with a 1990 chemical-weapons-destruction agreement...
...One Senate Republican aide says they’re “within striking distance” of rounding up 34 votes against the treaty, but that’s probably wishful thinking...
...Companies both small and large, including such unlikely suspects as Quaker Oats and the Safeway grocery chain, would be fi nancially burdened by the reporting requirements...
...Lott’s Republican troops were divided...
...Besides, signing doesn’t guarantee compliance—witness Iraq’s and North Korea’s violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
...The problem is, the White House hasn’t provided the documents Senate Republicans are seeking...
...All that said, it is unlikely more than 25 senators will oppose the treaty (34 are needed to defeat it...
...And there are other drawbacks to setting up an infrastructure to prevent the spread of chemical weapons...
...In the waning days of his administration, George Bush signed the treaty...
...A vote against this treaty opens any senator to the charge of being soft on terrorism...
...This hasn’t stopped Helms from mounting a public relations blitz, highlighting the states and businesses most adversely affected by the burdensome compliance provisions...
...The treaty gives international inspectors expansive powers to investigate government and private facilities without acquiring search warrants from U.S...
...Kyl, who says he’s “totally fed up with the administration’s stonewalling,” wants to delay the vote, though it’s unlikely Lott will agree to this...
...And it might not end there...
...To underline the point, he noted that the Japanese parliament ratifi ed the treaty soon after last year’s deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway...
...On or before September 14, the Senate will consider the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans production, possession, and use of chemical weapons...
...Even Kyl concedes that members will be “inclined to take the easy way out...
...A group of conservatives, including Jesse Helms, Jon Kyl, and Bob Smith, opposed the deal...
...courts...
...The problem for the opponents is bumpersticker politics: Should they defeat the treaty, they will be branded extremists, unwilling to protect the world from chemical weapons...
...This points to another problem: verifi cation...
...Once the Senate was controlled by the GOP, however, they began to press their Republican colleagues to consider the measure...
...Indeed, the Chemical Weapons Convention could not have prevented the Tokyo subway attack, since the nerve gas used there was easily manufactured from commercial chemicals...
...Clinton’s own Arms Control and Disarmament Agency says 3,000 American companies would probably have to file detailed reports with the Commerce Department on their chemical-producing agents (see chart...
...But the White House isn’t taking any chances...
...Dole portrays the president as insuffi ciently wary of the world’s rogue states...
...Once potential violations are spotted, moreover, the convention gives a country fi ve days to prepare for inspection by an international team...
...Helms believed the documents would show Russia’s failure to honor the agreement, thus bolstering the case against trusting Russia—the country with the largest chemical weapons arsenal—to comply with the pending treaty...
...It doesn’t help that the Pentagon recently admitted that troops in the Gulf war may have been exposed to chemical weapons...
...Because the parties in the Senate reached an agreement to consider it...
...And the pact would have a sweeping effect on U.S...
...And in a speech on August 5, President Clinton said the convention would make it “much more diffi cult for terrorists to acquire chemical weapons...
...The political reality is that it’s infi nitely easier to vote for multilateral arms control than against it, particularly when the president is making shameless demagogic use of tragedies like the Olympic bombing and the Tokyo subway attack...
...And even if the documents were provided, there wouldn’t be time to rally opposition to the treaty...
...That argument, while emotionally appealing, is bogus...
...This raises constitutional concerns, insists Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy...
...Neither Clinton nor the Democrats in charge of the Senate opted to push for approval in 1993 or 1994...
...Secretary of State Warren Christopher testifi ed in April that the treaty was not designed to deal with the terrorist threat...
Vol. 1 • September 1996 • No. 50
