So what can we do to minimize the chances? The Bush administration is placing a lot of its money on missile defense. Let’s set aside the passionate debate for a moment and stipulate, for the sake of argument, that Bush is right about this–that a rogue nation may eventually seek to blackmail us with its nuclear missiles, and we should start preparing for it now.
How else can we counter the threat of WMD? Thanks to energetic behind-the-scenes efforts by the Clinton administration and to something called the Nunn-Lugar regime, which funds the destruction of existing nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union, we’ve made real progress on “cooperative-threat reduction.” In the early 1990s, you could literally walk right out of a Soviet-era weapons facility with enriched uranium. Not any more. The situation there is still dangerous (Congress doesn’t want to help out impoverished Russian scientists who may be tempted to earn money by selling dangerous materials), but much more under control.
That brings us a to a more likely threat: chemical and biological warfare. The chances of a sarin gas attack like the one in the Japanese subway are much greater than a North Korean ICBM landing on San Diego. It’s a bit strange, then, that Bush doesn’t seem to feel any sense of urgency on this front. Last week in Geneva, the administration rejected a draft agreement designed to strengthen the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. As in the Kyoto accord on global warming, the ABM treaty and the comprehensive test-ban treaty, the United States is bucking the rest of the world, at least for now.
A little history: For nearly 30 years, the treaty on biological weapons has been toothless. The Soviet Union and Iraq violated it without remorse. So 55 nations have been working for six and half years to put some enforcement muscle into it, and the result is the 210-page draft that the Unites States (virtually alone) is now rejecting. The key to enforcement is inspection, and the draft of the accord allows scientists and government officials to have access to biological facilities in other countries.
This is exactly what annoys Washington. U.S. negotiator Donald Mahley said the draft protocol “would put national security and confidential business information at risk.” American businesses don’t want foreign bureaucrats trooping through their plants, snooping around.
The only problem with this reasoning is that if we want to inspect other countries, we have to allow them to inspect us. “The golden rule of multilateral arms control is that the rights and obligations of a treaty must apply equally to all of the participating states,” writes Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “Thus if the United States wants to inspect bioindustrial sites in countries of proliferation concern, such as Russia and Iran, it must be willing to accept the same types of monitoring activities at plants on U.S. soil.”
Otherwise, there can be no deal. So the question becomes whether the treaty is worth the hassle that some businesses may have to endure. European, Canadian and Japanese delegates believe that it is. They say the draft has flaws but that overall it could help provide greater advance warning of bioweapon threats, especially from dual-use facilities (where legitimate products can be misdirected into weapons production).
Our allies are willing to work to make the protocol better instead of scrapping it altogether. These issues are hugely complicated, and the fine print can be troublesome. But unless and until the Bush negotiators return to Geneva with a serious alternative proposal–a proposal the rest of the world can accept–we’ll have to assume the whole issue of biological threats does nothing to disturb their sleep and that, once again, the United States will stand alone, propped up by some fuzzy reasoning.
Treaties are imperfect. To some of the macho men of the administration, they may even seem a bit wimpy. But the fact is, international accords are the best legal tool we have to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
If we’re going to eat a low-fat diet, fasten our seat belts and build a ballistic missile defense, why not try treaties, too? There’s a phrase to describe the thinking that rejects them, courtesy of “41” and his friend Dana Carvey: Wouldn’t be prudent.
