Government-Industry Collaboration in Nonproliferation:
The Chemical Manufacturers Association and
the Chemical Weapons Convention

Partnership between government and industry is becoming an increasingly important part of our nonproliferation efforts. The role of the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) in supporting the Chemical Weapons Convention is one example of an effective public-private collaboration to strengthen arms control and nonproliferation.

Efforts to eliminate the threat of chemical weapons date from the mid-19th century. Until recently, however, the major achievement was the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which banned the use of chemical weapons in warfare but still allowed nations to build up chemical weapons stockpiles for defensive purposes. Today, a more comprehensive chemical weapons arms control regime is needed to prevent the spread of chemical weapons. The only way to ensure that chemical weapons are not used in the future is to eliminate them, prohibit their reintroduction, and provide the means to verify both.

The CMA has provided technical assistance and input to the U.S. Government delegation negotiating the Chemical Weapons Convention for more than 15 years. Although the U.S. chemical industry does not produce chemical weapons, the CMA agreed that commercial chemical facilities must be covered by the CWC verification program in order to prevent the illegal diversion of legitimate commercial chemicals into weapons. Throughout this partnership with the government, CMA has been an unequivocal supporter of a ban on the manufacture, use, and storage of chemical weapons.

CMA helped to coordinate U.S. industry support for the Convention. The Association worked with representatives of other U.S. industry sectors, such as the pharmaceutical manufacturers and the synthetic organic chemical manufacturers. A number of CMA member companies volunteered their facilities in order to test the on-site inspection procedures being considered under both the CWC and a bilateral agreement with Russia.

The Administration has been working closely with the chemical industry in crafting the U.S. CWC implementing legislation. That legislation, once enacted, will ensure that the CWC provides a strong deterrent against illegal uses of chemicals, establishes an effective verification program, minimizes the administrative burden of commercial compliance with the CWC, protects company interests in proprietary information, and minimizes the intrusiveness of the verification process. There is little question that

the efforts of the CMA have helped to produce a highly valuable arms control agreement.

In all these efforts, our ability as a nation to draw on a wide range of scientific and technical resources, and to coordinate those resources will be crucial. The reminder of this chapter outlines the contribution of S&T in each of these critical areas.

S&T's Role in Building Effective ArmsRestraints

Controlling arms begins with understanding the technology that should be controlled. The close and active participation of the technical community-both inside and outside government-is essential to the formulation of effective policy across the broad spectrum of efforts to build effective arms control and nonproliferation measures, including the following:

Treaties and Agreements

Negotiated measures-bilateral, multilateral, and regional agreements which limit arms, build confidence, and constrain proliferation-are among the most important tools in our comprehensive arms control and nonproliferation program.

Strategic nuclear arms have been the focus of intensive arms control efforts for decades, seeking a more stable nuclear balance at lower force levels. Under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which entered into force in December 1994, the United States and Russia are carrying out substantial reductions in their strategic nuclear forces. START I established a verification regime of unprecedented stringency, incorporating some twelve types of on-site inspections. With U.S. assistance under the Nunn-Lugar program, hundreds of strategic launchers in the former Soviet Union have already been eliminated to comply with START I's provisions. Under the Lisbon Protocol to START I, and the January 1994 Trilateral Agreement between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, all the nuclear weapons on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakstan are being shipped back to Russia-a major victory for U.S. arms control and nonproliferation policy.

START II, signed in January 1993 but still awaiting ratification, calls for still deeper reductions, to some 3,500 deployed strategic warheads in the United States and Russia, along with the complete elimination of destabilizing multiple-warhead land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). At their September 1994 summit, President Clinton and President Yeltsin agreed to consider still deeper cuts and additional limitations as soon as START II is ratified. START II ratification is a top priority, as the treaty will greatly benefit both U.S. and Russian security. As these reductions in long-range strategic arms continue, the United States and the former Soviet Union have already eliminated their land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which established the precedent for incorporating extensive on-site inspections in such arms agreements.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, in which both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to build nationwide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles, provides the confidence in each side's deterrent effectiveness that has allowed these large-scale arms reductions. The ABM Treaty is a key element of our arms control and nuclear deterrence policy and is crucial to strategic stability, START I implementation, and START II ratification. At the same time, the growing threat posed by the proliferation of theater ballistic missiles demands that we develop highly effective theater ballistic missile defenses. Hence, we are engaging in discussions with Russia and the other former Soviet successor states to clarify the boundaries between permitted theater defenses and strictly limited strategic defenses-while maintaining the viability of the ABM Treaty as a guarantor of strategic stability.

These past arms control agreements focused on the strategic missiles, bombers, and launchers that would have launched a deliberate nuclear attack. Today, when the principal risk is less a deliberate attack than the possibility of loss of control, it is critical also to build confidence in the reduction and secure management of nuclear weapons themselves, and the plutonium and HEU needed to make them.

At their January 1994 summit, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin took a major step in this direction, agreeing to establish a joint working group to explore measures to ensure the "transparency and irreversibility of the process of reduction of nuclear weapons" and to expand cooperation in ensuring effective security and accounting for nuclear materials. In June of 1994, Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed an agreement cutting off production of plutonium for weapons. At the September 1994 Clinton-Yeltsin summit, the two Presidents agreed that, for the first time ever, the United States and Russia would tell each other how many nuclear weapons, and how much plutonium and HEU each has. And at their meeting in May 1995, the two Presidents agreed on an agenda for confidence-building data exchanges and reciprocal inspections and on a commitment that neither side would ever again use excess plutonium or HEU from dismantled weapons, from civilian programs, or from new production for new weapons.

Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has also been the focus of intensive international negotiations for decades. The centerpiece of global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is the NPT, which requires all its non-nuclear-weapon-state parties to forswear nuclear weapons and place their nuclear activities under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In return, all parties are to have access to peaceful nuclear technologies and to negotiate in good faith toward arms reduction and disarmament. In June 1995, the NPT was extended indefinitely-and in the aftermath of post-Desert Storm discoveries about Iraq's nuclear weapons, the IAEA safeguards system is being substantially strengthened, with a renewed focus on detecting undeclared nuclear activities.

Existing global treaties covering chemical weapons and biological weapons go even further, banning these abhorrent weapons entirely. The recently completed Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) bans the development, production, possession, and use of chemical weapons and establishes the most comprehensive monitoring and inspection regime yet formulated in an international treaty. Prompt Senate ratification of this treaty is a high priority. The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which entered into force in 1975, bans development, production, and stockpiling of biological agents or toxins except for peaceful or defensive purposes. The United States supports international efforts to develop a legally binding protocol to strengthen the BWC.

To strengthen the global nonproliferation regime and meet our commitment to ending the nuclear arms race, the United States is actively pursuing a true "zero yield" Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with the goal of completing a treaty as soon as possible and no later than September 1996. The CTBT, a goal of both Democratic and Republican Presidents reaching back to Dwight Eisenhower, is supported by nearly all the world's nations. At the same time, we are working to bolster the nonproliferation regime with a global treaty ending forever the production of fissile material for weapons.

These global regimes are complemented by regional arrangements, such as nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America and the South Pacific, and nuclear agreements between Argentina and Brazil, North and South Korea, and Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. Such regional arrangements can be tailored to the needs of particular regions. The framework accord reached with North Korea in 1994, for example, represents a major Clinton Administration accomplishment, requiring North Korea to roll back its dangerous nuclear weapons program and renew its dialogue with the South. The Trilateral Agreement between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, to take another example, commits Ukraine to send all the nuclear weapons on its soil back to Russia for dismantlement, in return for commitments to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Russia's provision of reactor fuel as compensation for the value of the uranium in the warheads sent back to Russia. Such regional security agreements can build security and confidence between potential adversaries and reduce the demand for weapons of mass destruction.

Conventional arms control and confidence-building measures are another major focus of international negotiations and agreements. The 30-nation Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), which entered into force in 1992, mandates steep reductions in five key categories of conventional arms in Europe. Several agreements under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe limit military exercises and require states to give notifications, permit observation of exercises, and exchange information about defense doctrines and budgets. The Open Skies Treaty, signed in 1992 but still awaiting entry into force, allows its parties-states in Europe and North America-to fly unarmed aerial observation missions over one another's territory to help build confidence and enhance transparency. We are working to promote similar arms reduction and confidence-building measures in other regions.

We are also committed to increasing participation in a global confidence-building effort, the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, under which member nations voluntarily provide data on exports and imports of conventional arms. We are taking the lead to expand the Register to include military holdings and procurement through national production, thereby providing a more complete picture of change in a nation's military capabilities each year.

Detailed participation from the technical community has been and continues to be critical in the design and implementation of all of these agreements. From devising safeguard technologies to ensure, at minimum cost, that nuclear material is not diverted, to devising conventional arms limits that will effectively constrain offensive strike capabilities while allowing for robust defenses, to exploring restraints that can allow effective theater defenses while maintaining the strength of the ABM Treaty's limits on strategic missile defenses, the technical community's role in these efforts has been indispensable.