The Scientific Community and Chemical Disarmament
Jiri Matousek 
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction, often referred to as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) [1] was adopted in 1992 after complex negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament (and previous multilateral negotiating forums in Geneva). The negotiations took nearly a quarter of a century. This was due in part to the East-West confrontation during the Cold War but mainly because of the spread of the chemical industry world-wide and the relative ease with which clandestine chemical warfare agents could be synthesised in militarily relevant quantities. This is reflected in the very complex and effective verification systems developed and also in the careful definitions and criteria defining purposes not prohibited by the CWC. The CWC is the best detailed disarmament document in that it totally outlaws one very dangerous type of weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and commits the States Parties to the elimination of their chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities. Ten years after it was available for signatures and six years after its entry into force, the First Conference of the States Parties to the CWC convened at The Hague to review its operations last spring. They found that it was generally well accepted by the international community and that there were positive signs of its implementation and went on to outline the course for the future. [2]
Any arms control agreement has many facets other than just the legal one, i.e. political, military, military technological, military political, scientific and technological, economic, ethical, and the like. This is even more the case for a functioning disarmament agreement – even if it is the first line document in international law. These agreements can only be adopted and implemented as a result of a wide consensus of the international community, while also requiring the participation of experts in all of the areas mentioned above. The coherent formulation and concise regime of the CWC reflects the valuable contributions of well informed and concerned engineers and scientists and their national and international professional organisations (and relevant NGOs). This paper outlines the efforts of the scientific and technological community to achieve a total verifiable ban of chemical weapons, from the commencement of negotiations on the CWC to the current activities in its implementation, through to the future tasks resulting from the impact of scientific and technological developments.
The Route to the CWC and the Contribution of Engineers and Scientists
The first modern valid arms-control document (i.e. the Protocol banning the use of asphyxiating and other toxic gases and bacteriological methods of warfare) was signed in Geneva, June 17, 1925, and entered into force in 1928. However, although it prohibited the use of these types of weapons it did not prohibit the preparation of materials for chemical warfare – thus allowing the possibility of retaliationin-kind. It has therefore not been seen as an effective instrument in prohibiting a total ban on the use of chemical weapons. The Protocol has also been violated several times by some of its States Parties, starting with the use of chemical weapons by Italy (the first country to ratify it) in Abyssinia in 1935. It was also generally considered to prohibit only the first use of chemical weapons by the signatories – about one third of whom ratified it with the reservation that it would not be binding in the case of the first use of chemical weapons by an adversary (or its allies).
In 1946, in the post-World War II era, the UN General Assembly began discussions on the total and comprehensive ban of chemical and biological weapons. Negotiations began in Geneva with the Eighteen Nations Disarmament Committee and continued into the later Conference on Disarmament (CD). The first efforts addressed both chemical and biological weapons, but in the late 1960s, these were separated as the problem of biological weapons was considered to be easier to solve (this was at a time when the military value of biological warfare was underestimated.) This separation enabled a relatively quick adoption of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) in 1972 with all its gaps and weaknesses (mainly the absence of any verification mechanism).
Discussions and further negotiations on the main points of a future CWC actually started in the 1970s, while deeper negotiations on its structure and content commenced in the early 1980s. The CD was precisely mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1984 to produce a text for the CWC and complex negotiations continued until 1992 (reflecting not only the inherent difficulties of this issue but also the impact of the final years of the Cold War).
The input of the scientific and technological communities to the negotiations was undoubtedly crucial. Besides the personal engagement of military, scientific, technological, and legal experts working within the national delegations and taking an active part in the negotiations, concerned scientists and engineers from several prestigious international professional NGOs (including the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and the World Federation of Scientific Workers) continuously contributed to the negotiations from the beginning.
The Role of Engineers and Scientists in Implementing the CWC
The CWC is now in the initial stages of its verified implementation. At present, there are altogether 157 States Parties to the Convention. The membership of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the vast majority of states with declarable chemical weapons facilities is important. Four States Parties (Russia, USA, India, and South Korea) have declared their possession of chemical weapons. Among the States Parties, there are eleven possessors of post-1946 chemical weapons production facilities, i.e. Russia, USA, India, South Korea, France, UK, China, Iran, Japan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Serbia &Montenegro. Of the 61 former chemical weapons production facilities, 41 have already been certified as destroyed or converted for peaceful purposes. Of the declared 69,800 t chemical weapons agent, 7,700 t have been destroyed; and of the declared 8.63 million munitions items, 1.93 million have been destroyed. The CWC implementation and verification regime now covers 90% of the world's population and – what is more important – 98% of the world's chemical industry.
The complicated and extensive text of the CWC body and annexes, much of which is connected with implementation and verification, needs precise study, explanation and acceptance by all sectors of society, obliged to act in pursuance of its provisions. The experience of implementing the CWC into national legislation has shown how difficult it is for initially less informed people to understand its provisions, however committed they may be. For example, the first response of industrial partners was often: "What have we to do with the prohibition of any weapons – that is military business." A great deal of education and outreach was, and still is, necessary on a national and international level, starting with the officials of national authorities and the legal and technical preparation of national implementation measures.
Implementation of the CWC, especially in countries that possess chemical weapons or traces of old chemical weapons, involves difficult and dangerous destruction and disposal operations. The CWC leaves full responsibility on the choice of effective technology to the States Parties but does not allow environmentally barbaric methods of destruction and disposal, such as sea dumping, earth burial, open-pit burning, or blasting, as routinely used to the 1970s. The development of cost-effective and safe operational technologies for the whole process of destruction (from storage to disposal of metal scrap and non-toxic waste end products) under domestic workplace safety and environmental protection standards are among the tasks of the international scientific and technological communities. The development of verification technologies utilising the most sophisticated analytical techniques to enable the detection, identification, and determination of trace amounts or concentrations of toxic chemicals, their metabolites, breakdown products, and impurities in biological samples, amongst an excess of other industrial chemicals or under difficult environmental conditions, is another task to be undertaken in order to verify implementation of all provisions of the CWC.
Assistance and Protection are also major pillars of the CWC. These terms imply the provision of both equipment and know-how in the detection and monitoring, decontamination, protection of personnel, and medical treatment by the States Parties. This area is becoming increasingly important, not only because of the possible military use of chemical weapons by non-States Parties, but also because of the increasing peacetime threats posed by modern industrialised society, including the possibility of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear terrorism.
The Impact of the Scientific and Technological Development
The First Review Conference and the report prepared by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Scientific Advisory Board identified positive and negative facets of the impact of scientific and technological development on the CWC and its implementation. [3]
Consistent with these views it is possible to formulate the role of engineers and scientists and their organisations in the future implementation of the CWC. They have important parts to play in the safe destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles, the destruction or conversion of the chemical weapons production facilities, and in assuring non-proliferation of chemical weapons.
The potential threats of scientific and technological development arise from the accelerated pace of the occurrence of new toxic chemicals, new synthetic methods, and the changing face of chemical industry.
One such threat lies in the inconsistency of the CWC with regard to riot-control agents. Even if law enforcement and domestic riot control are explicitly mentioned among those uses not prohibited by the CWC, the particular wording (Article I, para 5) which prohibits the use of riot-control agents as a method of warfare is generally understood ipso facto as exempting these agents from the definition of toxic chemicals (for the purposes of the CWC.)This is a significant loophole in the CWC, allowing its possible circumvention, because research & development and the production of these chemicals are excluded from the routine verification regime. A search for new effective and safe irritants and incapacitants for police purposes would be quite legitimate but it could also be tempting to develop and produce them for use on the battlefield. This is a current problem for so-called "non-lethal" agents. Every toxicologist knows that the toxic effect or response of an organism to a particular chemical is dose- (and exposure-) dependent. This means that non-lethal agents do not exist at all. The safety index of irritants (and other harassing agents) depends upon the difference between the (statistically determined) dose (the concentration and exposure) that results in intolerable effects and that which causes death. This index of safety should be as large as possible, but it cannot be unlimited. So the idea of "non-lethality" is a myth.
Future threats include changes in the synthesis and manufacturing methods existing and new toxic compounds. These are in the fast lane of development in the biomolecular sciences (e.g. genomics and proteomics) and synthesis techniques (combinatorial chemistry) and enable an extensive series of 'tailored' structures (i.e. with theoretically predictable effects according to their molecular engineering or architecture) to be synthesised very quickly. What took months or years to be achieved in the classical era of organic synthesis in the second half of the 20th century can now be accomplished within days or weeks.
Another problem we face is the changing character of the chemical industry, many parts of which incorporate multipurpose batch facilities, which can be readily switched from one product to another. The potential of manufacturing toxic chemicals is also considerably enhanced by the use of micro-reactors that produce large volumes in small plants. The globalisation of this industry needs reviewing under the verification regime of "other chemical production facilities" producing discrete organic chemicals. The number of these facilities that are currently operating with little or no international supervision illustrates the importance of this issue.
The ever-growing range of toxic chemicals and the development of new processes of small-scale syntheses also increase the threat of chemical terrorism.
The main benefits of scientific and technological development can be expected mostly in the development of progressive analytical methods and their respective high-tech instrumentation. Many modern separation techniques, such as Gas Chromatography and High Performance Liquid Chromatography, coupled with identification techniques, such as Mass Spectroscopy and other spectrophotometric methods, such as Fourier Transform Infra-Red, along-side on-line computerised data-libraries have been introduced into OPCW-designated laboratories, and some are routinely used in portable or mobile equipment for on-site inspections. The problem is to follow the rapid development of potential toxic chemicals (mainly those unscheduled), the technical upgrading of equipment, the analysis of toxins and biological samples, the conservation and transportation of samples for off-site analysis, and the like. It is also desirable to introduce the use of automated analytical techniques including remote (off-site) methods with automatic data transmission in real time to decrease the burden of a continuous on-site presence of inspectors verifying the destruction of chemical weapons. This would allow a shift of verification efforts to the much higher future threat of the production of discrete organic chemicals not directly aimed for use as chemical weapons. The multifaceted technical issue of verification is beyond the scope of this article.
However, it can be concluded that, if fully utilised, the power of modern analytical science could achieve all of the analytical requirements of the CWC.
Another very significant contribution of science and technology in the future could be made in the implementation of Article X, i.e. Assistance and Protection, which encompasses the following:
- detection, identification, and monitoring (point and stand-off detection, i.e. simple means, automatic alarms, reconnaissance vehicles, stand-off sensors, data transmission, field portable and mobile laboratories and sets),
- decontamination (means and methods for decontamination of personnel, equipment, materiel, and stationary objects; and decontamination and treatment of water),
- protection of personnel (protective masks, suits, accessories and other means for armies, civil protection, and population, shelters, filtration, ventilation and special equipment, protected mobile means),
- treatment of intoxication (first aid methods and means, such as antidotes, syringes, auto injectors and other equipment, medical treatment methods and means, therapeutic procedures, equipment, evacuation and rescue systems, mobile means).
Other challenges of scientific and technological development are connected with the functioning of the OPCW, its Technical Secretariat, and with education and outreach. These should also be a matter of interest for concerned engineers and scientists and their organisations.
Conclusions
The international community of engineers and scientists, represented by individual experts directly engaged in negotiations as well as professional organisations, institutions, and NGOs, has played a positive part in the formulation and implementation of the CWC right from the early stages of initial negotiations through to the first six years of its operation.
The operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which most probably would not have existed without the valuable input of expertise from the scientific and technological communities, seems to be proceeding satisfactorily. It has been ratified by 157 States Parties and verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. The First Review Conference stressed the importance of achieving world-wide universality in order to totally eliminate the dark heredity of past chemical arsenals, to prevent further threats and to utilise the benefits of scientific and technological development in the implementation of the CWC for the foreseeable future.
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