a) The Hague Conference of 1899: Its declaration was titled “Laws and Customs of War on Land,” was signed by 24 nations, including the United States and Japan, and repeated the traditional prohibition against “the use of poison or poisoned arms.” A special convention intended to deal with the potential use of new weapons made possible by nineteenth century advances in chemistry was signed by 24 nations but excluding the US and UK. They pledged “to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” The UK subsequently agreed to adhere to the special convention.
b) Hague Conference of 1907: The 1899 prohibition was repeated in identical language in a similar convention. All the subsequent belligerent parties in WWI were signatories.
c) The Geneva Protocol: Signed on June 17, 1925, entered into force on February 8, 1928, “Prohibited the use in war of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.” The treaty was the consequence of the massive use of chemical weapons in Europe during WWI. It was not ratified by Japan until May 1970, and by the US not until April 1975. It prohibited only use; there was no prohibition on development, production, testing, stockpiling, etc. of either chemical or biological weapons.
d) Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction [known as the Biological Weapons Convention]. Signed April 10, 1972, entered into force on March 26, 1975. The United States, United Kingdom, and the USSR were the co-signers and co-repositories for the treaty. As of January 1, 2001, 144 states had ratified the BWC and were “states parties,” while eighteen others had signed but not ratified it. The US and USSR had proposed a ban on both CW and BW in 1962. Traditionally the two weapon systems had been linked in diplomatic negotiations and that practice continued in the following years in Geneva. In July 1969, the UK suggested a separation of BW and CW, and in November 1969, the United States unilaterally renounced its BW program, destroyed all BW stocks, and decommissioned and converted all BW production and R&D facilities.
Given the years in which the BWC was negotiated, it contains no on-site verification provisions: that is not a concept that the USSR was willing to entertain until 1987-88 and the negotiation of the INF Treaty. Defensive BW R&D is permissible under the BWC, and Article I stipulates that such programs may carry on work for “prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.” There is, however, no guidance or criteria indicated as to what separates offensive and defensive BW research, so long as such activities do not in some way cross over into “development” or production.
The following remarks on the utility of regimes were written by Dr. Lawrence Scheinman in the context of nuclear weapons, but they are entirely applicable to BW as well.
Views on the relevance of regimes to state behavior and their effectiveness in channeling or governing behavior vary. Hard-core realists contend that they are epiphenomena, embedded in a larger order of sovereign states whose structure, rules and procedures predominate all else – e.g. deterrence is a stronger explanation for state behavior than regime rules. Liberal institutionalists do not argue the irrelevance of the sovereign state, but do contend that contractually or consensually created regimes can and do provide frameworks within which states – big and small, strong and weak – experience benefits, and learn to refine or sometimes redefine national interests and to do so in a manner consistent with the rules and principles of the regime….
…experience shows that regimes do in fact matter:
While not alone sufficient to prevent the spread of … weapons they are a necessary element in the effort to achieve that result. Delegitimization, devaluation (which involve changes in strategic doctrine and not just reductions in numbers of weapons)….reliable positive and negative security guarantees, and an effective cooperative or collective security system in which any non-aggressor state could have confidence are all additional factors that are relevant to regime credibility.[1]
Summed up a bit more pragmatically, a multilateral treaty regime identifies, isolates and pressures those countries that do not join it. Nevertheless, as the examples of the USSR, Iraq and perhaps others indicate, some nations do join a regime intending to violate it. However, the failure of a regime in a particular case does not cause the regime to collapse. It is often said that if a challenge inspection were to be held under the CWC or under a putative BWC Verification Protocol, and it found nothing, it would undermine the credibility of the regime. However, when UNSCOM discovered a near-complete nuclear weapon program in Iraq that the IAEA had never uncovered, it not only did not lead to the collapse of the IAEA and the safeguards systems; it led to their strengthening, despite the clear failure of the system in Iraq. The result was the establishment by the IAEA of the strengthened “93 plus 2” system and the overall continuing function of that regime will have been strengthened through the recognition and acknowledgement of prior weaknesses in operation.
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