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Disarmament and Proliferation |
| Ancient
Times to the 19th Century | 19th
Century and World WarI | The Inter-War
Years | World War II |
Post World War II | The
Terrorists
|
| The early 1970's
produced the BTWC and the first bilateral agreement between the US and the
Soviet Union on the control of nuclear weapons proliferation (The Strategic
Arms Limitation Treaty - SALT) and there was considerable hope that there
would soon be effective control of these weapons of mass destruction. |
| At the same time,
however, concerns were growing over proliferation of chemical and biological
weapons among the non-superpowers. The fifties and sixties had seen only
limited uses of chemical agents. The superpowers refrained from directly
using anything beyond riot control agents and herbicides. The overwhelming
power of the major protagonists in the bipolar world of the Cold War helped
to keep even their most unruly client states at the heel. However, the Soviets
had supplied chemical weapons to some of their clients, and they had been
used, most notably by the Egyptians in their conflict in Yemen in the mid-sixties.
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Pinochet's Chile had also toyed with chemical weapons.
In that case, the effort appears to be have one person working in his
basement who managed to make a small quantity of a nerve agent.
In the 1990's, the phrase "Poor Man's Atom Bomb"
has been attributed to former Iranian President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani
after he used it in a speech. However, the phrase is not new and may be
found in writings dating from the 1960's.
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| The advantages
that accrued to those states which had access to chemical weapons gave an
impetus to the desire to possess them (and their biological cousins) as
the "Poor Man's Atom Bomb" - destruction for the masses, as it
were. From the perspective of the non-superpowers, they offered many of
the advantages of nuclear weapons in terms of prestige and deterrence, with
the added advantages of being much easier (and cheaper) to develop and of
being usable is smaller conflicts. Programs to develop a non-nuclear weapon
of mass destruction capability also did not attract as much interest (or
create as much opposition) among the superpowers as efforts to develop nuclear
weapons did. Having your own program was seen as a way to reduce dependence
on these same superpowers. As a result, programs intended to study the possibility
began in a host of nations. |
| At the same time,
it appeared that at least one of the superpowers did not want to give up
the perceived advantages of the non-nuclear WMD. In 1979 an outbreak of
anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk (now returned to its original name of
Ekaterinova or Ekaterinburg) occurred which had features strongly suggesting
that it resulted from an accident in a biological warfare research facility.
At the time, the Soviets denied this, but the fact that research appeared
to be continuing only added to the mystique of these weapons. President
Yeltsin later acknowledged that the leak had been from a BW research facility. |
| More suspicion
was to fall on the Soviets after reports of a mysterious yellow rain appeared
from Cambodia and from Afghanistan. From Afghanistan also came reports of
an incapacitating agent known as "Blue X" and a defector from
the Russian covert chemical weapons program began talking about a new "super-lethal"
nerve agent called A-232 that used precursors not covered by counterproliferation
agreements. |
| In the early 1980's,
Libya was getting ready to put plans for developing a significant chemical
weapons capability into action. Construction was begun on a massive
"pharmaceutical plant" at Rabta. Almost from the start, there
were suspicions that this plant was actually intended to manufacture chemical
weapons. In addition to its unusually large size (for a pharmaceutical plant),
there were a number of features seen in overhead imagery and in the blueprints
- oversized air filtration equipment, fences and revetments for security
far in excess of those that would be needed at a pharmaceutical plant, and
anti-aircraft missile launchers -that suggested the Libyan government was
being less than forthright about the plant's purpose. In August, 1988, something
occurred that suggested the suspicions were well-founded - a spill of chemicals
from a test run killed a number of wild dogs, whose bodies were seen in
overhead imagery. This confirmed that the chemicals being produced by the
plant were rather more toxic than the average pharmaceutical. At the same
time, communications between the Libyans and the West German designers of
the plant were intercepted that left little doubt as to what the products
were intended to be (sarin (GB) and other nerve agents). |
Intense diplomatic
activity eventually forced the Libyans to abandon this plant, after failing
to convince the world that it had been put out of action by a badly faked
fire. They were not to be thwarted entirely. The developed a highly protected
subterranean complex of tunnels at Tarhunah in the Sahara. The claim that
the tunnels were part of Libya's "Great Man Made River" irrigation
project made neither hydrological or geological sense. Tarhunah is separated
from the main axis of the project by 11 kilometers and two mountains.
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| In 1979, Iraq
initiated the bloodbath of the first Gulf War when it hoped to achieve a
rapid victory against a larger,but weaker and essentially decapitated Iranian
military. Despite having many advantages, the Iraqis were unprepared for
the fervor and self-sacrifice of the Iranian response. At one point in 1982,in
a desperate attempt to save a deteriorating situation, Iraqi forces drove
off Iranians with CS riot control gas. This really had been the last shot
in their locker. Iraq had shown some interest in chemical weapons in the
1960's and 1970's and it was this experience that convinced the Ba'athist
leadership to take chemical weapons seriously and they embarked upon a
massive program of technology acquisition that served only to demonstrate
the real meaning of "dual-use technology." |
Iraq does not appear to
have thought a great deal about chemical weapons before this. This is perhaps
shown by their first use of mustard gas at Haj Umran in an operation called
Val Fajr II. Mustard shells were used to bombard an Iranian position on
a mountain top and unprotected soldiers were sent up after the bombardment.
Mustard vapor is denser than air and as the troops charged up the hill,
they were met by a cloud of mustard gas rolling down. |
| One of the reasons that
Iraq started with mustard gas is that it was probably fairly easy to make
entirely from raw materials found within Iraq using an ancient and almost
forgotten piece of industrial chemistry known as the Levinstein process.
Later, they began to smuggle in the precursor thiodiglycol
from Asia and the United States. |
Despite these
early missteps, Iraqi use of chemical weapons matured rapidly. Their first
weapon was mustard gas that appears to have been made on a laboratory scale
(judging from the high purity). As they moved to large scale manufacture,
the material became highly variable in quality and as different colored
clouds were seen, rumors spread that Iraq had a complex chemical arsenal.
The different colors were actually due to contaminants in the preparations
as they developed their manufacturing practices. Mustard gas was used in
1983 and 1984 and from 1984, nerve agents began to appear in battle. |
| Although it appeared
to have trouble with the large scale-synthesis of Tabun, the Iraqi chemical
industry had fewer problems making Sarin and it was integrated into their
armory. By the end of the war, they had rediscovered the German artillery
tactics of World War I using persistent agents to protect the flanks of
a line of attack opened up by the use of a volatile agent, such as sarin. |
The government of Iraq
showed no compunction in using these agents against their own people. In
one of the most heinous acts since World War II Saddam Hussein set out to
quell rebellious Kurds of Northern Iraq. In March 1988, the city of Halabja
was attacked with mustard and nerve gases. Although some Kurdish rebels
may have been killed, most of the victims were women, child ren and the
elderly. |
| One of the lessons learned
from the investigations of Iraq's CW programs was that they had taken counterproliferation
efforts, such as the Australia Group lists of equipments and chemicals and
used them to reverse engineer the industrial manufacture of chemical weapons.
|
The efforts of
Libya and Iraq were frightening. It was now learned by people who had tried
to ignore the problem that chemical agents were not difficult to make on
a small scale and that obtaining the expertise, equipment, and plant to
manufacture tactically and strategically useful quantities was not that
difficult. All that was needed was money and a little wit. Although a few
countries were known to be developing CBW against the currents of modern
opinion, the practice was seen to be spreading from Libya, Iraq, and North
Korea to the likes of Myanmar (Burma). |
| It was the Second
Gulf War (Desert Storm) that finally brought brought home the realities
of chemical warfare. Some members of the alliance were well trained and
equipped to operate on a chemical battlefield, but others were not. The
US in particular found itself stretched to the limit and had to accelerate
the acquisition of detection vehicles (the FOX NBC reconnaissance vehicle)
and protective gear (the advanced technology Saratoga suit) from Germany.
Introductory and refresher courses were conducted at a feverish pace and
training materials, such as practice antidote injectors, had to be improvised.
At least one US instructor had to take to her bed after accidentally injecting
herself with atropine (an antidote for sarin and related nerve agents) because
of a lack of training materials and a training structure. |
| More effective
was the threat of use chemical weapons against civilian populations, specifically
against Israel. Although Israelis have subsequently become blasé
about threats from Iraq (failing even to replace expired antidote kits and
masks when made available at times of tension), the threats at the time
of Desert Storm had a major effect on the conduct of the war. The final
outcome of combat was inevitable, but it forced changes in the conduct of
the operation that cost time, money, and blood. |
| As Iraq was demonstrating
the force multiplying effects of chemical weapons, as well as developing
biological ones, the Soviet Union was falling apart with its enormous corps
of 20,000 or more chemical and biological weaponeers left abandoned, disillusioned,
and short of money. Some defected to NATO countries to disclose the true
scale of the Soviet effort, but others have been approached by rogue nations
looking to develop chemical and biological weapons of their own. The United
States began to fund a program that helped those scientists stay in their
jobs and have a reasonable standard of living. Rumors about approaches from
"mysterious Arabs" appear continuously. |
| Chemical
and biological weapons were not the only concern arising from the disintegration
of the Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and other radioactive
materials have a significant attraction for terrorists and there have been
repeated attempts to smuggle small quantities of radioactive materials out
of the countries of the former Soviet Union. |
| Russia and Iraq
were also able to teach the rest of the world a great deal about the problems
of monitoring CBW development and manufacture. The Soviet Union had an incredibly
large program that was barely visible to intelligence agencies. Iraq has
managed to retain a chemical weapons capability despite many years of intrusive
inspection by the United Nations. The skilful and effective camouflaging
of these programs has been a blow to preventing proliferation. |
| The end of the
Cold War led to extensive disclosures of questionable activities by former
Warsaw Pact countries as they sought to improve relations with the more
prosperous western nations. They were not the only ones. Post-apartheid
South Africa also began to come clean and an extensive chemical and biological
weapons program, including attempts to find agents that would act only on
the black population, was revealed. |
| Ancient
Times to the 19th Century | 19th
Century and World WarI | The Inter-War
Years | World War II |
Post World War II | The
Terrorists
|