THE CBW CONVENTIONS BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Weapons Issues

THE CBW CONVENTIONS BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Weapons Issues ISSUE NO. 61 SEPTEMBER 2003 Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation NON-LETHAL WEAPONS, THE CWC AND THE BWC It is hard to think of any issue having as much potential for including short-term memory impairment, breathing jeopardizing the long-term future of the Chemical and difficulty and flaccid paralysis! One of these chemicals is Biological Weapons Conventions as does the interest in fentanyl, which was the basis for the knockout gas used by creating special exemptions for so-called non-lethal Russian special forces to rescue several hundred hostages chemical weapons! The First CWC Review Conference in the Moscow theatre siege of October 2002! The US Army earlier this year was opportunity to address the issue Chemical Corps was studying fentanyl and related chemicals constructively! But, save in the national statements of New as candidate disabling weapons as early as May 1963! Zealand, Norway and Switzerland, the OPCW chose not to There are innumerable other kinds of receptors in the do so! In the programme of Review-Conference follow-up brain, most of which we know almost nothing about! Of the work that is now getting under way, there is no mention of few that have been investigated, we do know that some can disabling chemicals, not even tear gas, still less the so-called mediate temporary blindness, for example, or can cause calmatives and other such incapacitating agents in which submissiveness, or extreme fear! Others affect memory or interest is now rapidly reawakening! motivation! As time goes on, we will learn how to do many The one emerging area of technology that today is kinds of things to people with chemicals that bind to brain most in need of strong and lasting arms control receptors or interact specifically with other life processes! biotechnology is exactly where new disabling chemicals Many applications will be beneficial! It should be possible are coming from, furnishing potential weapons that are to conduct surgical operations with greater ease and safety tempting some government agencies to depart from or to with the newer anaesthetics that may be made possible by seek revision of the prohibitions of the CWC! Notions of this kind of research! But, as with all major new technologies incapacitating chemical weapons are not new; but, as in the past, this, as well as other branches of biotechnology, investment mounts in emergent non lethal weapons (NLW) will also have potential hostile applications! The challenge, technologies, it becomes increasingly urgent that the threat then, is to promote the peaceful applications of the new they pose to the CWC and BWC regime be recognised! technology while preventing its exploitation for hostile In the broadest perspective, as different kinds of purposes! Fortunately, the Chemical and Biological Weapons technology have arisen, they have also been reflected in the Conventions provide a timely opportunity for protecting the means of war and violence! As new inventions or discoveries peaceful uses while maintaining and strengthening the come along, they find all kinds of applications, including barriers to hostile ones! applications for hostile purposes! The rise of biotechnology, How do the CWC and BWC keep abreast of however, poses a special problem, as it will inevitably technological innovation? They do so in the same way as develop means for manipulating all of the life processes, they cope with the problem of dual use, through the general including cognition, development, reproduction and heredity! purpose criterion set out in Article II!1(a) and Article VI!2 Therein lie unprecedented and, in time, widely accessible of the CWC and Article I of the BWC! Instead of prohibiting possibilities for violence, coercion, repression or subjugation! a particular chemical, or family of chemicals, the CWC For example, not so long ago we did not know, but prohibits all toxic chemicals except for the listed purposes know now, that there are several thousand different kinds of that it does not prohibit! These listed purposes include what are called receptors in the human brain! A receptor is industrial, agricultural, research, medical, pharmaceutical a protein molecule within or on the surface membrane of a or other peaceful purposes; purposes directly related to cell which, when a certain kind of smaller molecule called a ligand binds to it, causes something to happen! Receptors and their ligands are part of the bodys immensely complex Editorial 1-2 chemical communication system! One group of receptors in Progress in The Hague 3-7 our brains are the opioid receptors! The body manufactures Forthcoming Events 7 ligands enkephalins and endorphins that bind with these Report from Geneva 8-14 receptors, variously alleviating pain, inducing sleep, or reducing News Chronology May - July 2003 14-40 anxiety! It turns out that these ligands can be imitated by some plant products, one of which is heroin! Also, certain synthetic Obituary: David Kelly 36 chemical analogues of heroin bind to particular opioid HSP News 41 receptors, causing diverse effects depending on the chemical, Recent Publications 41-44 Page 1 protection against toxic chemicals ; military purposes not whose vital interests were not at stake in Viet Nam, came to connected with the use of chemical weapons and not use vast quantities of non-lethal chemical weapons under dependent upon the toxic properties of chemicals as a method the pressures of a wartime situation in a manner totally at of warfare; law enforcement including domestic riot control variance with its initially announced policy! purposes! Toxic is defined in the CWC as anything that is In World War II, the United States, the Soviet Union harmful, whether employed under conditions in which it is and the major European belligerents had around 20,000 metric temporarily incapacitating or lethal! Some toxic substances tons of irritant agents (CA, CN, DA, DC and DM) in their that have been considered for use as disabling chemical stockpiles but used none in combat! The line against all weapons are even more toxic than the chemicals developed chemical weapons was understood, and the line held! During for lethal purposes, in the sense that extremely small amounts the Korean War, the United States had huge stockpiles of are sufficient to cause an effect! Lofentanil, for example, tear-gas munitions! They were never used except in non- which is a derivative of fentanyl, is far more toxic than nerve combat situations, most notably on rioting detainees in agent! It will cause anaesthesia at a dose of 0!025 micrograms prisoner-of-war camps! Again the line held! The United per kilogram body weight, which is hundreds of times smaller States did not progress to using lethal chemical weapons than the estimated lethal dose of VX! during the Vietnam War, despite its use of tactical CS The BWC invokes a similar general purpose criterion, weapons! However, in World War I, lethal chemical warfare prohibiting in Article I microbial or other biological agents, began with the use of tear gas! In Manchuria, in Ethiopia or toxins whatever their origin or method of production of and in the Yemen, lethal chemical warfare began with the types and in quantities that have no justification for use of tear gas! In the Iraq-Iran war, it began with tear gas, prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes! The and half of all the chemical munitions later declared to inclusion not only of microbial agents but also of toxins, UNSCOM by Saddam Husseins Iraq were CS munitions, captures such natural substances as those ligands and other mainly mortar rounds and aircraft bombs! Every confirmed naturally occurring bio-active molecules and their chemical resort to lethal chemical warfare has started with tear gas! analogues that can exert harmful effects on life processes! One major concern regarding any NLW exemption, then, is The two Conventions therefore are mutually reinforcing in battlefield escalation both escalation to other agents and their prohibition of toxicity as a weapon of war! escalation to unrestricted employment! Provided the general purpose criterion is There is another kind of escalation, which is the implemented properly, it protects the Conventions against fostering of the growth and influence of institutions that are obsolescence due to technological advance in biochemistry dependent upon the development and weaponization of and biotechnology! When new toxic chemicals are chemical agents! Such institutions and their associated discovered, they automatically come under its purview! bureaucracies and dependent communities inevitably become Uniquely, the United States has declared a policy that, a source of pressure for doing more in this area, and for in effect, excludes certain chemicals from the general promoting the assimilation of chemical weapons into the purpose criterion, and there is now interest in broadening structures and doctrine of state forces! the exclusion still further! During negotiation of the CWC, A further danger is that hostile resort to disabling some members of the US delegation asserted that riot control chemicals may lead to a loss of confidence in the CWC agents were not toxic chemicals in the sense of the CWC! regime! Imagine the effect on citizens of the world, and their This is the position espoused by influential US military governments, when they observe war on television and see lawyers today! And,

Load more