We Do Have to
Worry
About Biological Weapons
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON-- By the hour the outline of
the Russian-brokered deal is becoming clearer. Saddam
Hussein has won what he has long sought-- light at the end
of the sanctions tunnel. But in return he has to renew his
long-standing, but very on and off, commitment to the UN--to
let its arms inspectors and dismantlers do their work
unimpeded, until they are totally satisfied they have done
their job.
It is a good deal. America is giving
away what it should have done a long time ago--the right for
Iraq to live sanctions-free once the disarmament of weapons
of mass destruction is complete. In return Iraq will give
the world peace of mind. Over the last six years the UN
inspectors have successfully dismantled Iraq's nuclear
weapons programme. Now they will continue the work of
keeping his biological and chemical weapons programmes
contained.
The world has belatedly begun to wake
up to the dangers of biological weapons, weapons that kill
by spreading deadly diseases. Ironically, it was the arch
proponent of realpolitik who sent us to sleep on the issue.
President Richard Nixon pushed for and won the Biological
Weapons Convention outlawing such weapons, convinced that
they were no longer in America's interest, since they were
unstable and unuseable. Today, because of scientific
advances that were not even guessed at 25 years ago,
biological weapons have become both more useable and more
effective. Recombinant DNA technology has revolutionized
their potential. Now they pose a serious threat on the
battlefield and, in the not too distant future, could be
delivered by missiles thousands of miles to an opponent's
city.
In its latest "Strategic Survey" the
International Institute for Strategic Studies observes,
"preventing determined proliferators acquiring biological
and toxin agents appears to be virtually impossible. The
complexities associated with weaponizing and delivering
biological and toxin agents might prevent large-scale
attacks, at least in the near term. Nevertheless, these
barriers are crumbling and the revolutionary advances in
biotechnology will probably remove them altogether in the
first decade of the 21st. century." The only mystery about
the present crisis with Iraq is why it has taken this long
to come to the boil. In my column of March 26th I wrote that
"despite the most vigilant arms control inspection ever
mounted, including U-2 high altitude reconnaissance flights,
helicopter monitoring with ground-penetrating radar, Saddam
Hussein is still engaged in secret operations to build
weapons of mass destruction."
This was after the UN, over the years,
had uncovered and supervised the dismantling of Iraq's $10
billion nuclear weapons programme and missiles with
biological and chemical weapons at the ready to be fitted to
them. (The latter although rudimentary--about 8 litres of
liquid anthrax and botulinum in a single warhead--would have
been sufficient to contaminate a few square kilometres. Iraq
had also fitted 155m artillery rounds and R-400 free-fall
bombs with biological agents.) And after UN inspectors kept
reporting that there was still much more to be discovered.
So why then did the White House wait until the UN inspectors
were thrown out? Late last year Saddam thwarted attempts by
the inspectors to gain access to Iraqi Republican Guard
facilities and the White House and the Security Council sat
on their hands. Since the last bombing for non-compliance in
1993 there has been a dangerous lassitude which allowed
Saddam to dare to go the brink.
It sounds simplistic, but it seems to
be part of a pattern--that the Clinton Administration has an
ambiguous, verging on the insouciant, attitude to arms
control. It has put reciprocal nuclear disarmament with
Russia into some far back pigeon hole. It badly weakened the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by refusing to listen to a
sensible Indian proposal for the treaty to be linked to a
big power timetable on nuclear disarmament. It has kept the
Pentagon budget at its astronomical, and economically and
socially distorting, high Cold War level. And, inexplicably,
it has made the expansion of NATO its top foreign policy
objective.
But we can't only blame America.
Western Europe has also gone to sleep on arms control and in
Russia the Yeltsin Administration needs to take a more
responsible attitude to the ratification of SALT 2, the
partial nuclear disarmament treaty agreed with America,
despite the hostility of the Duma.
Otherwise the moral leverage on Saddam
Hussein is reduced by the year. After all the Biological
Weapons Treaty is nothing more than a moral norm. There is
no world-wide enforcement mechanism, not even a monitoring
system. It can only work if the political climate is right.
Bringing Saddam Hussein into line is one, overdue, thing.
Keeping up the momentum on banning all weapons of mass
destruction all over the world is another. But the two are
intimately related.
November 19,
1997, LONDON
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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