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Illusory Game of Arms Control

BY SVEN KRAEMER
Washington Times
May 11, 1997

`They cry `peace,' but there is no peace.' Jeremiah's lament about the false prophets of peace applies tragically to the false prophets of arms control who won Senate ratification of the proposed Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) recently. They cry `arms control,' but there is no arms control.

CWC supporters saw the CWC as an `arms control' talisman to ward off evil powers and `to ban forever the scourge of chemical weapons from the face of the globe.' They proclaimed it a global ban although the CWC is far from global in its list of banned chemical precursors and in the number of states likely to sign or to ratify it. They proclaimed it as `arms control' while admitting it cannot be effectively verified or enforced and it cannot stop, and even risks abetting, proliferation.

Such false prophets and fatal flaws are tragically common to other `arms control' items on President Clinton's radical agenda headed for Senate review. These include proposed `bans' on nuclear testing, biological weapons, fissile materials and land mines, a START III `framework' that vitiates START II, and a Helsinki summit agreement setting new limits on missile defenses. They don't build foundations or bridges for arms control in the 21st century, but are more like bungee jumps. Counting on miracles, spectacle and concessions rather than effective measures to control and protect against arms, they miss both the opportunities and the obligations of serious arms control and responsible leadership.

CWC supporters claimed years of political legitimacy for the CWC and declared that a `no' vote would destroy U.S. leadership, wrecking a long effort to establish high international arms control norms and placing the United States on the side of pariah states. But it is a `yes' vote that puts the United States on the side of pariahs. A `no' vote would have embarrassed a few officials, but would have marked a principled U.S. stand, supported by American public opinion, against a fatally flawed arms control approach that rewards pariahs and rogues, lowers already low arms control standards and seriously endangers our own security.

NEXT STEPS

The required leadership won't come from the White House and its misguided Senate supporters. The task of critique, reinvention and leadership will come from the unprecedented coalition of courageous senators, former Cabinet-level officials, key businessmen, and leaders of some 40 citizens groups who joined in opposition to the CWC and who want serious arms control, serious defense, and serious protection of our citizens' rights. CWC funding and implementation legislation provide early opportunities for such leadership in correcting the treaty's fatal flaws. The extraordinary Kyl-Lott-Helms, et al. `Chemical and Biological Weapons Threat Reduction Act' passed by the Senate the week before the CWC vote, will be an excellent foundation for that effort.

For the future, CWC opponents will be more dubious than ever about the administration's blizzards of misinformation and the next items on Mr. Clinton's radical agenda. Their concerns are backed by Luntz polls that show the American people to be overwhelmingly opposed to treaties like the CWC which cannot be effectively verified or enforced, which create costly and intrusive new U.N.-style international bureaucracies, and which endanger U.S. rights and weaken U.S. security. The administration and its Senate supporters have been put on notice.

To silence such critics and undermine potential long-term opposition, Clinton CWC supporters have sought political cover by invoking George Bush and even Ronald Reagan for their efforts.

A George Bush signature was presented as necessarily guaranteeing effective `arms control,' and the CWC was even declared a `Reagan treaty.' In the wake of the Senate vote, such claims require new review and rebuttal.

The Bush signature guarantees nothing. Grave flaws were evident in the CWC when it was rushed to signature in the closing days of the Bush presidency in January 1993. In the four years since then, changed global conditions have turned these flaws into deadly gambles. Left standing, the CWC flaws, high-risk Clinton arms control and defense policies, and dangerous international developments (notably including severe proliferation problems fostered by Russian and Chinese violations which the Clinton administration rewards instead of engages) will be heading the United States into the bull's eye of disaster.

THREE REAGAN LESSONS AND LEGACIES FOR THE FUTURE

The invocation of Ronald Reagan on behalf of the CWC and similar spurious arms control efforts is particularly ironic. Mr. Reagan's understanding of history and his approach to arms control are repudiated by the CWC's underlying assumptions, provisions and impact. Mr. Reagan often spoke of the historic reality that arms control agreements were routinely violated by dictators and rogues
unfettered by the democratic hopes, principles and processes of the American people and their allies. He often spoke of the high cost paid in lives and treasure for trust in such agreements, including those from the 1970's, which were being systematically violated by the Soviet Union. His strategy of `peace through strength' won the Cold War in part because he redefined arms control in terms of its contribution to America's security, not as a matter of trust in a `process' or as an end in itself.

DEALING WITH DICTATORS AND ROGUES

Enforcing compliance, ending proliferation: From the beginning of his presidency, Ronald Reagan's arms control approach rejected the prevalent lowest common denominator approach of his predecessors in negotiations with dictators and rogues, and focused instead on mastering the task of working with democratic allies effectively to constrain, deter and defend against such evil powers. This task is more important than ever in today's world as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and their chief suppliers in Moscow and Beijing routinely violate a wide range of anti-proliferation and other arms control agreements and as the Clinton administration fails to enforce these treaties or even to implement U.S. laws providing sanctions for such behavior.

To start with, Mr. Reagan insisted that violations of existing treaties had to be exposed and corrected before new ones could be signed. And for chemical, biological and toxin weapons, the first two years of the Reagan presidency focused on assessing and reporting such violations and seeking correction, especially concerning Soviet Production and use. The Reagan compliance reports were unprecedented in accurately presenting the threat and in pressing the case for establishing higher norms for international arms control compliance. Thus, when he had Vice President George Bush table a preliminary draft CW Convention in April 1984, half of the press and diplomatic kit made available by the White House and the vice president provided detailed information on troublesome Soviet activities that had to be corrected before CW arms control could begin to be taken seriously.

Mr. Reagan's CWC draft did not contain the `poisons for peace' language of the current CWC's Article XI which requires `the fullest possible exchange of chemicals, equipment and information' and which forbids `the maintenance of restrictions.' Nor did his CWC draft contain the other pro-proliferation clause, Article X, which declares that `nothing in this Convention shall be interpreted as impeding the rights of States Parties to request and provide assistance bilaterally.'

EFFECTIVE VERIFICATION, ENFORCEMENT AND INSURANCE CAPABILITIES

Mr. Reagan insisted that serious arms control treaties had to impose real, verifiable and enforceable restrictions, not the `nuclear freeze'-type illusions demanded by the Soviet Union and favored by the self-styled U.S. `arms control' lobby. Thus, he proposed the `zero option' for Intermediate-Nuclear Forces in 1981 and a `deep cuts' Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1982. And when a draft CW Convention was tabled in Geneva in 1984, Mr. Reagan insisted on an interagency and international work program focused on a long-term effort to try to develop such effective restrictions in the future. Reflecting this Reagan imperative, George Bush told the Geneva press: `Let's try to use this as a beginning, a place to get a start on the negotiations.'

Mr. Reagan insisted that effective arms control required U.S. security capabilities in place to provide the insurance of high-confidence U.S. verification, enforcement and defense, and he required that such capabilities be certified for each arms control proposal by the U.S. intelligence community and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For chemical weapons, he required enhanced intelligence, robust anti-chemical defenses, and a small residual stock of modern chemical weapons to provide enforcement and negotiation leverage until a period near the end of the final weapons destruction date.

In addition to such U.S. insurance capabilities for specific arms control treaties, Mr. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, introduced in March 1983 (a year before the draft CWC was tabled), provided for deterrence and defense based on protection rather than on his predecessors' dubious Cold War policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The American people, and people around the world, were to share the benefits of the accelerated development and deployment of advanced U.S. theater and strategic defenses to be available against missiles --the delivery system of choice most threatening in the use of chemicals, toxins and other weapons of mass destruction. As late as 1992, George Bush and Boris Yeltsin agreed that at least a limited global anti-missile defense system (GPALS) would be important to security and stability.

In contrast to the Reagan defense insurance policies, the United States is not only unilaterally eliminating its chemical stockpiles, a move other nations are not following, but the Clinton administration is cutting back several hundred million dollars in U.S. chemical defense investment, reducing its intelligence, dumbing down theater missile defenses, and further postponing the national missile defense deployments required to protect the American people against growing threats from rogues and from accidental launches.

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PROTECTING U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND U.S. SOVEREIGNTY

Mr. Reagan's arms control policies insisted on assuring U.S. constitutional rights and protecting U.S. sovereignty. His CWC interagency work program reflected the requirement to study and to try to resolve the serious Fourth and Fifth Amendment dilemmas raised by extensive CWC reporting, regulatory and inspection requirements, which in the current CWC potentially affect the rights and budgetary and proprietary interests of up to 8,000 U.S. companies. Unlike the current CWC, Mr. Reagan's draft CWC of 1984 had the United States and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council as five guaranteed members of the CWC Executive Council, and required a Preparatory Conference and other forums to operate by consensus, providing a U.S. voice and veto when CWC provisions and processes required amendment.

As the Senate now reviews CW implementing legislation, funding requirements and other elements of the radical Clinton agenda, it should send its own veto on behalf of U.S. security and serious arms control. In the face of the globe's gathering storms, it is not too late `to provide for the common defense' and to prevent the historic tragedy now unfolding because of U.S. reliance on `arms control' illusions.

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