Bushs Chemical Weapons Policy

Testifying on 8 June 1989, Roger Harrison, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs, did not demur when Senator J. James Exon described this costly unilateral action as merely a public relations 

In the wake of this abortive challenge, the Bush administration resumed bilateral discussions with the Soviets in Geneva. These had occurred periodically since 1977, and had been held in conjunction with the CD from 1986 to 1988, following the expression of mutual anxiety about the proliferation of chemical weapons at the Geneva summit of November 1985. Harrison indicated that the United States intended to raise questions about verification and security in connection with a chemical weapons treaty at the talks due to be held in Geneva in June 1989, and to press for more information about the Soviet stockpile declarations. Like Robert Joseph, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, he expressed deep reservations about the declared stockpile of 50,000 tons indeed, Joseph flatly stated that the Soviets have not been honest in terms of an accounting of their chemical weapons activities, including production and current stockpile . Meanwhile, they both hoped that the US withdrawal of chemical weapons from Europe would not remain unilateral and would elicit a Soviet response. 

Far from starting a destruction programme, the Soviets simply abandoned the Chapayevsk facility and reduced their stockpile declaration to a mere 40,000 tons. Quite reasonably, the Bush administration pressed for more information about a stockpile that appeared to be rapidly diminishing without any physical means of destruction. At a Ministerial Meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (22-23 September 1989), Secretary Baker and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze discussed a wide array of arms 

We know that monitoring a total ban on chemical weapons will be a 

The world has lived too long in the shadow of chemical warfare. Let us act together, beginning today, to rid the earth of this scourge.  

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Within days of the inauguration of President George Bush, official spokesmen were also asserting that the policy had had a serious impact upon the Libyan production programme. Charles Redman of the State Department maintained that Rabta was not capable of production , and that US policy was intended to prevent Libya from producing any operational or full-scale quantities of chemical weapons. Although other... 

Dunn, Chemical Weapons Arms Control. Hard Choices for the Bush Administration, pp.215-16 Ember, Prospects Brighter for Chemical Weapons Treaty in 1992, p.l8 C. Lord, Re-thinking On-site Inspection in US Arms Control Policy, Strategic Review, vol.xiii, no.2 (Spring 1985), pp.45-51. 

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