CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Warfare Issues ISSUE NO. 29 SEPTEMBER 1995 Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation DEFINING CHEMICAL WEAPONS THE WAY THE TREATY DOES Harmonizing the ways in which states parties implement nor such substances as the nerve gas known as Agent GP, the Chemical Weapons Convention domestically is as least means only that these chemicals have not been singled out as important as properly creating the organization in the for routine verification measures. Their omission from the Hague that will operate the treaty internationally. If states Schedules certainly does not mean that the military may use parties implement the Convention differently in certain es- them as weapons or that the domestic penal legislation re- sential respects, there will be no ‘level playing field’ for sci- quired by Article VII of the Convention should be without entific, industrial and commercial enterprise in the diverse application to their acquisition by terrorists. activities upon which the Convention impinges, nor will the The remedy, of course, is for states to write their domes- Convention achieve its potential as a powerful instrument tic implementing legislation so as to incorporate the Gen- against chemical warfare and chemical terrorism. eral Purpose Criterion, either explicitly or by reference to Of all the possible divergences in national implementa- the text of Article II of the Convention. That the draft leg- tion, the most elementary — and the one that now threatens islation now working its way through the legislative pro- to develop — is divergence regarding the very definition of cesses of some states fails to do this must in part reflect the ‘chemical weapons’ to which the provisions of the Conven- failure of the Preparatory Commission to provide guidance tion apply. On this basic matter of definition, the treaty it- in the matter. self is clear. Article II defines ‘chemical weapons’ as The guidance which the Convention itself provides including all ‘toxic chemicals and their precursors except could hardly be clearer, but for it to be acted upon by the where intended for purposes not prohibited under this Con- people who now really matter — the domestic imple- vention, as long as the types and quantities are consistent menters of the Convention — and fully reflected in the with such purposes’. Article II then provides a broad list of measures they put into effect, it evidently requires transla- purposes that are not prohibited, such as industrial, agricul- tion into the language of the implementation handbooks. tural, medical or other peaceful purposes, and even military These the Provisional Technical Secretariat is currently purposes not dependent on a chemical’s toxic properties. drafting in The Hague under the direction of the Expert This fundamental definition, based not on specific Groups. But the Secretariat, as its recently issued Model chemical identity but rather on intended use, is known as National Implementing Legislation reminds us, cannot the General Purpose Criterion. It enables the treaty to itself press for action on so delicate a matter. Nor will it be achieve its central disarmament purpose without interfering able to do so for as long as the Commission remains silent. with peaceful applications of dual-use chemicals. Thus, stocks of phosgene, the principal killer gas of World War I, With implementing legislation at last starting to enter the are not prohibited if they are intended for the production of national statute books, it may soon be too late: the plastics. The General Purpose Criterion also allows the Commission, by default, may be destroying the heart of the treaty to deal with chemicals that are still secret, such as the Convention. much-vaunted Novichoks, and with chemicals that are yet undiscovered. The danger now is that some states may adopt, as the Editorial 1 measures necessary to implement their obligations under the Convention, primary or secondary legislation which, Guest Article by Anne M. Harrington 2–5 out of misunderstanding or disregard, defines chemical Progress in The Hague: 11th Quarterly Review 6–13 weapons not in terms of the General Purpose Criterion but CWC Ratifications 8 only with reference to those chemical substances that are listed in the schedules that appear in one of the annexes to CWC Non-Signatory States 9 the treaty. This is to mistake the schedules, intended to di- Forthcoming Events 13 rect the routine verification work of the international orga- nization, for what the Convention actually covers. The fact News Chronology: May–August 1995 14–34 that the highly toxic fluorine compound called Agent Z Sense of the US Senate 34 which Canada and the UK studied as a candidate chemical warfare agent in 1940–41 is not included in the Schedules, Recent Publications 35–36 REDIRECTING BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS EXPERTISE: REALITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION Anne M. Harrington Coordinator for Nonproliferation/Science Cooperation Programs US Department of State Anthrax. Botulism. Cholera. Ebola. Plague. The sim- weaponizing biological agents. In spite of this, recent reve- ilarity between this list of potential biological warfare lations about Iraq’s BW programme establish that biologi- agents and a list of contemporary world public health con- cal agents were being developed by that country and that a cerns is striking. Also striking is the limited effort that has considerable research and development effort had been been mounted since the collapse of the Soviet Union in mounted to develop and tailor biological weapons. We 1991 to redirect the biological-weapons expertise that was have a unique window on Iraq’s biological-weapons pro- developed in that country during the Cold War period. The gramme thanks to the work of the UN Special Commission. dual use nature of biotechnology and lingering questions However, we do not have similar windows onto other ef- about the full scope of Soviet biological-weapons activity forts elsewhere to pursue biological-weapons programmes. have been major causes of concern and reserve in working The specialized nature of the expertise required to imple- with this expert community, but some efforts have begun to ment a full biological-weapons programme, the relative 1 harness this unique talent pool and redirect its work. This ease of hiding such a programme, and the potential of BW article will review some activities that have been initiated as an instrument of terrorism argue strongly in favor of tak- and suggest some future directions that might be pursued. ing steps at least as vigorous as those that have been taken in the nuclear field to ensure that the spread of BW exper- tise is limited and the expertise itself.constructively redi- Reassessing Nonproliferation Priorities rected. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention When proliferation experts initially assessed the poten- (BWC) is the primary tool for controlling the proliferation tial for “brain drain” of weapons expertise from the former of biological weapons. The BWC deals, however, with the Soviet Union in the 1991–92 period, the focus was princi- political aspects of proliferation, not the human aspects.3 pally on nuclear weapons. After all, we were reasonably fa- miliar — and impressed — with the Soviet nuclear Experts estimate that the potential lethality of a well capability and knew that there, as in the United States, the planned and executed BW attack could be nearly as great as end of the Cold War would require a substantial shift of per- that of a nuclear attack. This is not a theory anyone ever sonnel from military to nonmilitary activity. The lack of a wants to see tested. Although the moral and ethical impera- robust economy in Russia and other newly-independent tive to prevent the use of nuclear and chemical weapons is states (NIS) that could support that shift, however, caused very strong, the horror associated with what biological legitimate concern that unemployed or under employed nu- clear scientists and engineers might be tempted to sell their agents do to the human body, the almost limitless variations highly specialized expertise to potentially proliferant coun- of potential agents and the limited ability to detect and de- tries. No one — including the governments of the nuclear fend against BW attack inspire those who are committed to inheritor states of the former Soviet Union — wanted this eliminating this weapon from the world’s arsenals to seek expertise to contribute to future arms races or to exacerbate as many ways as possible to ensure that the threat of BW is regional instability. The world has witnessed the destruc- never realized. tive force of the atom, and is determined to avoid its use again as a weapon. In the 50 years since World War II, that Emergent infectious diseases underscore the world’s force has not been used again.2 vulnerability to biological threats. US travelers are being advised to receive Hepatitis-A shots for travel to anywhere The same restraint, unfortunately, has not been shown outside Canada, Western Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, Aus- with other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Chemical tralia and New Zealand. We have also seen a serious in- agents have been used both in wartime (Iran/Iraq) as well as crease in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and new viruses in terrorist attacks (Tokyo subway). Chemical weapons, continue to emerge. The world’s ability to control and/or however, require a relatively low level of technology to pro- eliminate serious public health threats is impressive, but by duce and disperse, posing a real challenge to limiting the no means comprehensive. We can, for example, identify spread of their technologies. the Ebola virus, but do not know what its natural host is and are, thereby, limited in our ability to control the virus. An Biological weapons present more complex technical area of great public health need is the former Soviet Union challenges in terms of developing, producing and where news reports indicate that diphtheria and certain other infectious diseases are on the rise.