War Without Tears Source: New Scientist December 16, 2000
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.
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."
by Rob Edwards
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns22693