Proliferating Thoughts

A number of CW related issues are floating around me at the moment. These include; the appropriateness of continued Western financial support for the Russian CW destruction program; The question of how, exactly, the CWC is supposed to provide a meaningful contribution to preventing terrorist use of chemical weapons; how to address the fundamental problem in dealing with CW destruction issues in the US where communities want to see the weapons destroyed immediately but are unwilling to support increased taxes, and continue to introduce new roadblocks in the form of environmental considerations that have the effect of slowing the process; the ongoing delay in Iraqi CW accession; and finally the never-ending shrill cries from alarmists / cassandras about the impending doom that terrorists with WMD will bring down on our collective heads any day now.

Then there are of course the other issues of interest and concern as well. One is the possibly hopeless efforts of NASA to put in place a set of launchers that are capable of meeting the requirements of their chosen mission architecture for a return to the moon. And the level of concern associated with this program rises to a high level without even considering the possibility that the chosen architecture is itself deeply flawed. Allowing domestic politics to intrude, ever so briefly, I am troubled by the manner in which the US political system has functioned up to now this election season to throw up two major party presidential candidates, neither of which seem ideally suited to the challenges that they will be facing once in office. Somewhat turgidly phrased but any other way of saying my point seemed a little impolite.

Back to international politics I am appalled by the path that is being taken in Zimbabwe. At this point it seems clear that there is no longer a possibility of peaceful regime change in that country. President Mugabe and his supporters have deliberately closed all doors and paths for peaceful opposition to the government. Although the opposition MDC appears to be continuing with its efforts at achieving peaceful change the withdrawal from the Presidential run-off is a disaster for that country. ZANU-PF probably feels that it has achieved a great victory and no doubt this will encourage the President to take whatever actions he deems appropriate to ensure that the MDC’s hard-won parliamentary majority has no impact. In the wake of the Presidential elections, which Mugabe cannot help but win now, we should expect efforts to suborn, or simply remove, a sufficient number of MDC MPs to restore a ZANU-PF majority.

At some point the leadership of the MDC, or a portion of the grass-roots organization, is going to turn to violence. Given, from the standpoint of the MDC and its supporters, the absolute necessity of Mugabe’s removal from office, and the impossibility of achieving this through peaceful means, and the ongoing, and probably in the post-election environment, escalating campaign of violence directed against MDC members it is just a matter of time before armed insurrection is adopted as the new approach. Naturally this will be a new disaster for what is already a deeply troubled country, the more so given that such a campaign of violence will be unlikely to meet with swift success, especially without support from neighboring countries. And of course any such developments in Zimbabwe can only have a negative impact on its neighbors, as is increasingly being recognized.

The desperate call for UN intervention by Morgan Tsvangiri is unlikely to produce any useful result and may even be a personal disaster for him. His call includes a statement to the effect that “[w]e do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force.” Although the reference to armed conflict is intended to refer to the likely implications of attempts to introduce a UN peacekeeping force, which Mugabe would almost certainly resist it can also be seen as the beginning of the road to violence. Earlier in his statement Tsvangiri asked “What do you do when you don’t have guns and the people are being brutalized out there?” At presnt his answer is call on the UN for help, a weak reed to rely on at any time. But clearly another answer to his question is ‘get your own guns.’ As far as his personal well-being is concerned it seems reasonable to conclude that Mugabe will not take kindly to Tsvangiri’s appeal to the UN. The MDC’s deputy leader is already being charged with treason for much lesser activities than calling for the introduction of foreign military forces. Politically the appeal may also be damaging as it allows Mugabe to offer “evidence” to support his claims that the MDC seeks to enable the recolonization of Zimbabwe.

All in all the situation in Zimbabwe is depressing. It does not affect me in the least but that does not mean that I can’t have sympathy as I watch a once prosperous society circle the drain.

So it appears that the AFP has gotten enough information together to justify putting out a couple of reports on the results of the 2nd CWC Review Conference. The first addresses the thorny problem of CW demilitarization. Although the report is welcome it raises many more questions than it answers.

The CW demilitarization process has been running very seriously behind schedule. The extent of the problem can be described in several ways some of which make it look worse than others. For instance, with the exception of Albania, which had a trivial CW stockpile, no State Party (SP) has met its CWC deadline (29 April 2007) for completing the process of destroying all CW stockpiles and associated facilities. All of the SPs required extensions to allow them to legitimately extend their destruction efforts beyond 2007.

However, this bald observation overlooks very important details. For instance, although India obtained an extension of its deadline the new date was only 28 April 2009 and in early 2008 India indicated that it had already destroyed 93% of its Cat. 1 CW. By contrast, both Russia and the United States have requested and secured the maximum possible extension of five years allowing them to extend their efforts out to April 2012, not that anyone is particularly confident that they will successfully complete destruction by that date either. Then we have Libya which joined the CWC to great acclaim in early 2004. To date it has not even begun destruction of its admittedly small stockpile. Although there was great optimism at first and the United States was pledged to assist with the destruction process those arrangements broke down in 2007 leading to some uncertainty about exactly how or when Libya will begin to fulfill its obligations.

So anyway, it is with some “curiosity” that I read the AFP report that the CWC SPs have “agreed on Saturday a new global deadline of 2012″ for CW destruction. It goes on to note that the United States, Russia, India and Libya “previously had individual deadlines, some of them earlier than 2012, but have signed up to the revised founding treaty.” In addition to the problem that this report makes no mention of South Korea (sorry, my bad), An Unnamed State Party, it is painfully uninformative about the impact of this decision. For instance,does this mean that India is no longer obliged to destroy its Cat. 1 CW stockpile by April 2009? How will this “global deadline” be implemented Unless the RevCon took additional decisions all that has been adopted is a political declaration which cannot of itself adjust individual SP deadlines. Does this mean that the SPs in question, specifically India, Libya and the ROK will all be coming to the next Executive council session with draft decisions extending their destruction deadlines? If this is the case the decision can only be seen as counter-productive, especially in the Libyan case where the goal should be to accelerate destruction efforts rather than postpone them.

The one positive outcome of this aspect of the final declaration, which is being presented by AFP as modifying the CWC, itself a problematic contention given that the RevCon is not an amendment conference, is that it may make life a little easier for any CW possessor states that join the convention prior to 2012. At present if Syria, to pick an example, were to join the CWC next week it would already be in technical non-compliance for not destroying its CW stockpile by the treaty deadline of April 2007, an awkward position to be in at the start of one’s membership in an organization. Of course any new members would still face a very constrained timeline for destruction and it will be interesting to see how the OPCW proposes to deal with any new CW possessor members that join after 2012, or alternatively that join so close to the April 2012 deadline that they cannot possibly meet it. Still for the moment at least this is a largely hypothetical question. Furthermore the situation of these states may potentially be addressed by the effort to deal with the Russian and US cases in the run-up to 2012. Current US destruction plans have the potential to extend out as far as 2023 and Russia is not expected to meet the 2012 deadline. At some point the question of how to square this timeline with the requirements of the CWC will have to be comprehensively addressed.

So anyway, just an initial thought or two based on what may be an incomplete report. Hopefully things will become much clearer once the final declaration is actually publicly released.

After a fashion at any rate. On March 26th, Arms Control Wonk (ACW) featured my February WMD Insights article on the essentially unnoticed changes that have taken place in the US intelligence community’s assessments since 2003. I really like the ACW blog and I am regularly impressed by the quality of the material posted there. So naturally I was quite pleased to see something that I have written get a positive mention on the site. In the period between the article being finished and ACW drawing attention to it there were a number of developments that had the potential to affect the results of my analysis.

Firstly, on February 27th, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) head, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States. He had testified before the Senate Intelligence subcommittee earlier in the month but all that got released in time for my article was a transcript of his three page oral statement that said nothing about Iran’s suspected WMD programs. However, following the February 27th hearing DIA released the 37 page written version of General Maples statement and that did include language addressing DIA’s assessment of Iranian WMD programs. As things currently stand this is the most up-to-date official statement on the current US assessment of Iran’s CW and BW activities.

The good thing, for me at least, was that this new statement did not undermine my article.

The second thing that happened, which also had the potential to affect my conclusions, was that at the beginning of March, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) publicly released the long overdue Sec. 721 reports for 2005 and 2006. The 2005 report did not represent a problem in that it continued the low-key assessments that I had noted developing over a period up to and including 2004’s report. The 2006 report however was a little more problematic as it included a passage stating that “We [DNI] judge that Iran maintains a small, covert CW stockpile.” As is the case with these reports there is no way to know why DNI has decided to reintroduce the concept of an Iranian CW stockpile. At the same time there is no way to determine what it is about Iranian activities that leaves DNI convinced that there is a stockpile while DIA appears to feel otherwise. Presumably the issue is a difference over the assessment of available information.

ACW drew particular attention to the conclusion of the 2006 Sec. 721 report “that Iran maintains a small, covert CW stockpile” and wondered exactly how small a CW arsenal has to be to be considered small given that “large” has covered everything from the Russian stockpile of over 40,000 tons to the pre-Gulf War 2 suspected Iraqi stockpile of approximately 100 tons.

This question piqued my interest and I decided to dig a little into the material I had to hand to try and square up the DNI position that Iran maintained “a small, covert CW stockpile” with the DIA position that “Tehran maintains dual-use facilities intended to produce chemical warfare agents in times of need and conducts research that may have offensive applications.” This effort resulted in the following comment that I posted to ACW.

In trying to square this stuff up I noticed that Iran had an OPCW Schedule 1 inspection in 2001 and 2003 and has reported a National Protective Program since 2003. Unfortunately OPCW stopped specifying the breakdown of its inspections by country in 2004. However in October 2007 the OPCW reported (S/657/2007) that Iran was one of 18 countries that had met the deadline for submission of annual declarations regarding projected activities and anticipated production in 2008 at schedule 1 facilities.

On the basis of the admittedly limited information I wonder if perhaps the DNI’s “small, covert CW stockpile” is in any way associated with an Iranian Single Small Scale Facility. At a minimum it seems highly probable that DIA’s “research that may have offensive applications” is associated with the ongoing activities of Iran’s Schedule 1 facility. Based on the available public information DIA’s analysis seems reasonably well-grounded. On the other hand the sudden re-emergence of DNI’s Iranian CW stockpile after several years in which it was absent from public statements and reports is more difficult to account for.

If DNI’s stockpile is tied to Iran’s declared Schedule 1 facility, then assuming that Iran is making a point of not violating CWC thresholds, which may or may not be reasonable, its CW stockpile may be in the range of 10 to 1,000 kilograms of agent. Which barely could be considered small.

Since posting this comment I have a given a little more thought to the question and it has led me back to an issue which I have never gotten around to providing an article type treatment for. Specifically, how US intelligence assesses the work of facilities conducting defensive CW research which are allowed to operate under the terms of the CWC.