Chemical Weapons

Report Outline
Buildup vs. Control
The Legacy of Ypres
Deadly New Terrors
Special Focus

Buildup vs. Control

Prospects for Control Treaty with Russia

For the first time in years, arms-control experts are holding out cautious hope that an effective international agreement can be worked out to rid the planet of chemical weapons. At their Geneva summit meeting last November, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev agreed to intensify the efforts of their two countries to establish the framework for a worldwide chemical weapons treaty, which negotiators have been discussing for nearly two decades. There is informed speculation that despite formidable technical obstacles, the two leaders may decide to push through an agreement. According to this line of thinking, a chemical warfare agreement would prevent them From coming away empty-handed at a follow-up summit, possibly later this year, in the event they cannot break the continuing deadlock over a nuclear arms control treaty.

If the United States, the Soviet Union and the other members of the 40-nation disarmament conference currently meeting in Geneva cannot reach an agreement, however, the outlook for restricting or outlawing chemical weapons is bleak. The specter raised by chemical weapons in World War I seemed to vanish when they were not used in World War II, but it is returning. Modern chemical weapons are far more lethal than the gases used in World War I; a tiny drop of some substances on the skin can produce a rapid, agonizing death. Together with agents of biological warfare, they are capable of rendering battlefields and vast surrounding areas almost unimaginably deadly for both soldiers and civilians. “American service members are more likely to be attacked with chemical weapons today than at any time since World War I,” the Pentagon's top chemical-warfare specialist said recently.

While the superpowers consider a new treaty, they continue to maintain formidable chemical arsenals. The Russians, who suffered terribly from chemical weapons in World War I, have developed a large array of munitions filled with lethal compounds, U.S. intelligence reports that the Soviet army trains intensively for fighting in a chemical environment, and apparently ently has made extensive use of chemical weapons against anti-communist guerrillas in Afghanistan.