-Caveat Lector-
War without tears
Should 'non-lethal' chemical and biological weapons be allowed?
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns22693
MILITARY advisers in the US want to rewrite the treaties banning
chemical and biological weapons so they can develop "non-lethal"
versions. To safeguard the lives of American troops in peacekeeping
operations, they want to use weapons that, for instance, will allow
whole rebel armies to be put to sleep--or perhaps disable their vehicles
and weapons.
But arms control experts are already condemning the idea as
"disastrous". They believe the crucial treaties could unravel if they
are renegotiated to allow new weapons to be developed.
Photo: O Peterson/Gamma
In the past few years, the US marines have become very interested in
non-lethal weapons for the complex peacekeeping operations they are
often involved in, such as that in Somalia. Such munitions could also
help minimise the "CNN effect"--the growing need to justify military
actions to politicians who watch them live on television.
Military and police forces already have dozens of weapons designed not
to kill, including rubber and plastic bullets, electric stun guns,
sticky foam and tear gas. But the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate
of the US Marine Corps also wants chemical and biological agents such as
sleeping gases, tranquillisers and oil-eating microbes which would
incapacitate without injury.
"For example, I would like a magic dust that would put everyone in a
building to sleep, combatants and non-combatants," the directorate's
head, Colonel George Fenton told New Scientist. But he says that this
type of technology would mean reviewing the agreements aimed at ending
chemical and biological warfare.
Russell Glenn, a senior analyst from the Rand Corporation, which advises
the US Department of Defense, also argues that the ban on chemical
weapons should be "updated" so researchers can develop gases that could,
for example, calm crowds rather than kill them. "Chemicals can be our
friends," he told Jane's Non-lethal Weapons conference in Edinburgh last
week.
Although the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention outlaws both lethal and
non-lethal weapons, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention is more
ambiguous. It bans the use of non-lethal weapons against enemy troops,
but permits the use of chemicals against property, provided they do not
harm people or animals.
David Fidler, a legal expert on non-lethal weapons from Indiana
University, says that renegotiating these treaties would fatally
undermine them, re-igniting some countries' desire for weapons of mass
destruction. "It would be disastrous," he says.
The intergovernmental Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons warns that the chemical convention is under attack. Rewriting it
would endanger world security, says the OPCW's head of government
relations, Ralf Trapp, "creating a spiral of increasing risk".
There are also doubts within the US Department of Defense. Joseph
Rutigliano, an attorney with the US Marine Corps in Washington DC, says
that unleashing these new weapons on less technologically advanced
nations could provoke them to reply with nerve gas or other lethal
agents.
But retired Colonel John Alexander, who researched non-lethal weapons at
the Los Alamos National Laboratory, argues that the chemical and
biological treaties are already "doomed" because they are, or will be,
broken by rogue states or groups. If the US abandoned the treaties it
could deploy weapons which could, for example, destroy plastic engine
fittings or make rubber tyres brittle, he says. "There is almost nothing
that some bug won't eat."
Rob Edwards
>From New Scientist magazine, 16 December 2000.
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