Toward A Nerve-Gas Arms Race

By Glenn Garelik/Washington

Even in a world swollen with weapons, chemical arms remain among the most horrible agents of war. Contact with one droplet of nerve gas can send a person into sweats and uncontrollable vomiting, followed by paralysis and death by asphyxiation. The chlorine and "mustard" gases used by Germany during World War I were considered so monstrous that in 1925 the world's major nations drew up an international protocol to ban their use. In 1969 Richard Nixon unilaterally halted U.S. production of chemical weapons, calling their use "repugnant to the conscience of mankind."

Last month, for the first time since Nixon issued his pointed decree, workers at the Army's Pine Bluff, Ark., arsenal resumed nerve-gas production by filling, sealing and storing artillery-shell components with an ingredient of GB, a nerve poison related to the pesticide malathion. When combined with simple rubbing alcohol, which the Army plans to load into artillery shells at Shreveport, La., the chemical turns lethal.

The return to chemical-weapons production results from more than a decade of Defense Department efforts to persuade Congress to fund so-called binary weapons -- devices in which the two comparatively harmless components of a deadly compound are stored and transported separately. Only when the components combine -- when the shells are fired, for example -- do they become toxic.

The Pentagon claims chemical weapons are needed to deter a nerve-gas attack in Europe by the Soviet Union. The Soviets, says the military, have a larger and more modern stockpile than the U.S., as well as a 100,000-man force trained to fight in chemically contaminated situations. Much of the U.S. stockpile is outmoded or has begun to deteriorate, says the Pentagon, and therefore is not a "credible deterrent." Officially NATO defense ministers concur, but some of them acknowledge that proposals to deploy new chemical weapons in Europe would provoke strong reactions among the public. The Soviets, in an effort to avert resumption of the U.S. program, finally admitted last spring to having chemical weapons but claimed to have stopped making them. In October they went so far as to allow Western inspection of their chemical-weapons facility at Shikhany.

U.S. opponents of the buildup object that chemical weapons are not necessarily superior to other kinds of arms and that their main tactical use is to hamper the effectiveness of enemy troops by forcing them to don unwieldy protective suits. By producing an updated generation of the toxins, critics contend, the Pentagon will only escalate a chemical-arms race, and the U.S. alone, according to the American Chemical Association, already possesses more than 5,000 times enough nerve gas to kill everyone on earth.

Partly because of the relative ease of developing -- and disguising -- such armaments, at least 16 countries may already have the "poor man's atom bomb." Among them: Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Says Kenneth Adelman, former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: "If there are a lot of crazy countries in the world that have chemical weapons and have not agreed to ban them, it makes no sense for the U.S. to give up a deterrent chemical- weapons force."

Moreover, the Pentagon says, nearly three-quarters of this year's $970 million chemical-warfare budget will be spent not on arms but on detection and avoidance measures. The military is putting less emphasis on bulky protective gear for soldiers than on sensors for locating chemical-weapons launchers and improved decontamination methods. The Army is also setting up training programs using live nerve agents at its chemical-warfare school in Fort McClellan, Ala.

The Administration is pursuing negotiations with the Soviets aimed at eliminating both stockpiles and production. Earlier talks led Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in August to announce that his country had accepted in principle a 1984 American proposal for short-notice inspections. The best way to assure continued Soviet cooperation, concludes a defense official, is by "expressing our resolve to modernize. Only then do the Soviets become willing to talk." Perhaps. But in the name of deterrence, the U.S. may find itself drawn into a particularly odious and dangerous kind of arms race.