IS THE U.S. REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT PREVENTING BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL TERRORISM?

CURRENT ACTIONS SUGGEST IT IS NOT!

By Meryl Nass, MD

April 29, 2002 - The attacks of September 11 and the anthrax letters which followed, led to tremendous concern about a biological or chemical assault on the United States. An Office of Homeland Security was created, and the US rushed the creation of a chemical and biological defense infrastructure. Over $9 billion was allocated for research and training in biological defense, and the development and stockpiling of vaccines and other treatments for anticipated threat agents.

After all that, you’d think the US was really serious about preventing biological and chemical terrorism.

You’d be wrong.

The past six months have seen truly regressive posturing by the United States regarding our international obligations to the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions; the US has done its best to emasculate both international treaties, in an unprecedented manner that threatens the health of all multilateral arms control agreements.

Let me fill you in on the last 75 years of chemical and biological arms control agreements.

After World War I, in which more than 100,000 soldiers died after being gassed, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 was negotiated, banning the use of chemical and bacteriological agents in warfare. Most of our European allies and many other nations became parties to the Protocol. The Protocol banned use, but not research, production or stockpiling of such materials.

Oddly, the United States delayed 50 years, until after concluding the Vietnam War (in which we used napalm, white phosphorous and BZ, all banned by the Geneva Protocol) before sending the treaty to the Senate for ratification.

During and after World War II the United States researched and produced biological weapons. A huge storage facility was created in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for the bioweapons. First military recruits, then Seventh Day Adventists, and later, still more recruits, volunteered as human guinea pigs to test the weapons and their antidotes.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon renounced biological weapons entirely: there were to be destruction of the existing stores of US weapons, and no new weapons produced. Biological weapons research was limited to purely defensive measures. Furthermore, the United States undertook to develop an international agreement banning the entire class of biological weapons.

This effort was enormously successful. In 1974 President Gerald Ford was able to send both the US-initiated Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), as well as the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the Senate for unanimous approval.

The problem with the BWC was significant, however. Like the Geneva Protocol of 1925, it contained absolutely no provisions for enforcement, investigations or punishments for violators. These omissions were inevitable, as there were no means at the time to reliably prove that such weapons had been developed, used, or researched.

But the omissions also meant that it was easy to cheat. We now know that the Soviets, Chinese and the United States were all cheaters. The scale of Soviet cheating seems to have been the greatest by far.

By 1990 there was international desire for a complementary treaty: an enforceable Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). By then, methods had been found which could effectively discover most of the cheating. Although for a while it was touch and go whether the United States would ratify the treaty, we did do so. The CWC entered into force in 1997, with the US as a member, and an international organization was established to monitor compliance with the treaty.

This organization, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), became extraordinarily successful at signing up new member nations and performing compliance inspections. Its head, Brazilian diplomat, Jose Bustani, was unanimously reelected to a second five-year term in May 2000, before even finishing his first term.

Bustani had overseen the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and increased the number of signatory nations to 145 from 87 in just a few years. Last year, US Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote and thanked him for his "very impressive" work.

Meanwhile, the international community sought to emulate the gains of the CWC by adding a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention that would enhance compliance and detect cheating. For the last twelve years, groups of international experts have met in Geneva to develop verification measures to be added to the BWC for these purposes.

The position of the United States regarding the protocol has ping-ponged. Citing concerns of the US pharmaceutical industry, US diplomats initially sought to weaken the proposed measures. Money allocated by Congress to explore verification measures years ago didn’t get spent. During negotiations last July, US diplomats complained that the final proposal of the expert group was too weak, without acknowledging that it was US concerns that had forced the weakening.

In September and October the US was attacked, and President Bush announced that he would take a new approach to the BWC protocol. However, the US delegation walked out of the final negotiations last November, in an attempt to scuttle the entire agreement -- shocking the rest of the world.

To avoid losing all chance at verification measures, as well as twelve years of work, the chairman asked the member nations to return a year later, in November 2002, and again try for an agreement. Since then, other nations have expressed the desire to negotiate the treaty as planned, with or without the inclusion of the world’s only superpower.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, Jose Bustani was found by the United States to be taking his job too seriously. He seemed to think that arms control also applied to Iraq. Bustani tried to get Iraq to join the CWC, and furthermore to allow OPCW inspectors back in.

The world’s only superpower was not pleased. If Iraq complied, there would be less excuse to attack it.

Treating him like a junkyard dog, the US grabbed hold of Bustani in January and would not let go. The US asked Brazil to recall the diplomat, and promised that the next OPCW head could be another Brazilian. Brazil refused.

For two months the US unleashed a tirade of complaints against the (former) poster boy for arms control: Bustani had demanded too high a pay raise; he demoralized staff; and was guilty of financial mismanagement. But the US never could come up with a proven, serious problem.

Then the US forced a vote of no confidence in Bustani in March, and lost. OPCW staff said the only demoralization was due to US refusals to pay its share of the organization’s dues, which prevented OPCW from carrying out its scheduled inspections.

Finally, the US called an (unprecedented) special session, and began cajoling and threatening the other member states to ensure a win this time around. Rumors began flying of offers by the US to pay the dues of other nations in exchange for their vote.

This time, on April 22 Bustani did lose. So did the OPCW, which will no longer be able to function effectively, having lost its patina of even-handedness.

Should all this be a surprise? Given US pullouts from the ABM Treaty and other international agreements, nothing we do ought to surprise the international community any longer. Over and over, the rest of the world has seen that the lone superpower is not going to play by the existing rules, but instead will make up new ones it likes better, meanwhile ensuring that everyone else toes the line.

At the same time, most US citizens would prefer not to be sprayed with anthrax, smallpox or some arcane toxin. How should they view these goings-on?

Well, despite the $9 billion and a whole lot of new federal bioterrorism agencies and initiatives, the US is doing its damnedest to prevent meaningful inroads into the control of biological and chemical weapons.

This allows the US to create its own secret potions, if it wants to, but it lets everyone else do the same. How can this possibly be good for us?

With the right hand the US has encouraged our enemies to make all the poisons they want, and with the left hand we are throwing fortunes into very limited protective measures. Remember how unprepared we were for those anthrax envelopes? The chaos you saw then will be nothing compared to a real attack on an urban population.

Granted, the treaties and inspections can’t prevent every bit of cheating, but they are the best prevention we’ve got, and they can assure that the poisons won’t be produced on a grand, detectable scale. That could mean the difference between ten thousand and ten million casualties.

Hawk or dove, rich or poor, north or south, black or white: US policy simply makes NO logical sense.

And the precedent of the US trampling on its international agreements may well harm the cause of arms control and international cooperation for many years to come.