Yellow Rain: The Cost of Chemical Arms Control

YELLOW RAIN: THE COST OF_ CHEMICAL ARMS CONTROL Peter Pringle he use of mustard gas, and possibly even a nerve agent, in the Persian Gulf War, is a sharp reminder of the neglected threat of the proliferation of chemical weapons. Only three nations—the United States, the Soviet Union, and France—are commonly known to have a militarily significant chemical-warfare capability, but recent U.S. intelligence estimates suggest the chemical club is actually much larger and probably expanding. According to these estimates, Iraq may be only one of several countries in the Middle East—including Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Israel—that already possess a chemical weapons capability, or are in the process of obtaining one.1 There has never been a more urgent need for the two superpowers to move swiftly toward concluding a bilateral treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of these weapons. Yet the policy of the Reagan administration of publicly accusing the Soviets of chemical and biological treaty violations while proposing that the United States resume production of a new generation of "binary" nerve-gas weapons seems bent on delaying instead of hastening the process of working toward a new international agreement. In particular, the administration's incomplete evidence in sup1 . Jack Anderson, "The Growing Chemical Club," Washington Post, 26 August 1984, C-7. The estimates originated in a CIA Special Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 17 November 1983, entitled "Implication of Soviet Use of Chemical and Toxin Weapons for U.S. Security Interests." The SNIE was also the primary source for three other articles, two columns byJack Anderson, Washington Post, 27 August 1984, C-14, and 30 November 1984, E-7, and a third, "The CIA and Europeans," The Economist Foreign Report (London), 17 October 1984. Peter Pringle is a Washington correspondent of the Observer (London) and is writing a book on the history of arms control implications of yellow rain. 151 152 SAIS REVIEW port of charges that the Soviet Union has introduced a new chemical weapon known as "yellow rain" to battlefields in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan has resulted in the lack ofa cohesive response from the western allies to reports of the use of chemical weapons by Soviet-backed forces. Properly verifiable agreements between the two superpowers may now be even harder to achieve either because of a poisoning of the negotiating atmosphere or because the U.S. Senate, most of whose members appear to believe the "yellow rain" charges, will not ratify a new agreement. In 1981 the Reagan administration launched its new chemical weapons policy on two fronts. First, the president suspended the fouryear -old bilateral discussions on a new chemical weapons treaty with the Soviets in Geneva. President Reagan and Pentagon officials have implied that these talks were broken off because of Soviet intransigence over problems of on-site verification, and because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The impression that nothing was to be gained by continuing the discussions is challenged by Charles Flowerree, the U.S. negotiator at Geneva from 1980 to 1981. The talks originated in a 1974 agreement between Nixon and Brezhnev to try and develop a "joint initiative" draft treaty. There were at least twelve bilateral sessions, the last two in February (a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ) and in July 1980. President Carter decided to continue the talks, despite the invasion, because of the high level of interest in the fortynation Committee on Disarmament. Ambassador Flowerree, who also led the U.S. delegation in the Committee, concedes that he and his Soviet counterpart, Viktor L. Israelyan, did not achieve agreement on the problem ofverification, but stresses that their final report of August 1980 did provide an important basis for discussion in the Committee. Ambassador Flowerree points out: It is a fact of life, although not always enthusiastically embraced by the nonaligned nations, that the sine qua non for progress on multilateral treaties in the field of arms control and disarmament is prior agreement by the United States and the Soviet Union on its major provisions. While the fact [remains] that the Committee on Disarmament has entered full- scale negotiations on a [new] treaty . . . the prospects for success of these negotiations are...