Technology in context: lessons from the elimination of weapons of mass destruction

ABSTRACT

Technology plays a central role in efforts to eliminate weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Past efforts to destroy WMD and related materials have commonly featured novel combinations of technologies designed to meet unique circumstances. In order to present the technical aspects of elimination in a context that can inform future elimination missions, this article begins by noting technology's important role. It then highlights challenges that will shape technical decisions for future missions, focusing on uncertainties, the evolution of WMD threats, the need to balance technical investments, and fighting complacency. It then offers lessons from past WMD elimination missions, including the importance of remaining innovative and agile, using a range of scenarios for planning technical options, consulting early with the full range of stakeholders who could support or challenge technical decisions, developing strong communications plans, and ensuring that plans account for critical enabling technologies. Finally, it recommends that the United States maintain elimination “on-ramps” for a range of potential future elimination missions, create a standing body to help maintain technical elimination capacity, and internationalize planning and implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Disarmament
• weapons of mass destruction
• elimination
• chemical weapons
• biological weapons
• Syria
• Libya

Notes

1. The author would like to thank all of the technical experts across the US Department of Defense who work closely with political leaders, lawyers, diplomats, and others to reduce WMD threats. Their unique skills and experiences are invaluable to creating a safer world, and I owe them a great debt of gratitude for my ability to learn the lessons captured in this chapter through our collaboration.

2. Eric Schmitt, “Libya's Cache of Toxic Arms All Destroyed,” New York Times, February 2, 2014, p. A1.

3. Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, “Syria and the OPCW,” August 2015, <www.opcw.org/special-sections/syria/.>

4. Arms Control Association, “Chronology of Libya's Disarmament and Relations with the United States,” February 2014, <www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/LibyaChronology>. See also, in this volume, Patrick Terrell, Katharine Hagen, and Ted A. Ryba, Jr., “Eliminating Libya's WMD Programs: Creating a Cooperative Situation,” Nonproliferation Review 23 (March), pp. 185–196.

5. See Andy Weber and Christine L. Parthemore, “Innovation in Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Arms Control Today (July/August 2015), <www.armscontrol.org/ACT/2015_0708/Features/Innovation-in-Countering-Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction>; and Walter Pincus, “Syria groundwork began months ago,” Washington Post, September 18, 2013, <www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syria-groundwork-began-months-ago/2013/09/18/b3cc30fa-1fd2-11e3-94a2-6c66b668ea55_story.html>. In 2013, this author and then-Assistant Secretary Andy Weber briefed the leadership and Technical Secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on US-developed removal and destruction options. Defense officials then worked for several weeks in The Hague with OPCW experts to fully explain various technical destruction options. A small group of technical and policy experts later briefed defense officials in several states as part of an extensive outreach effort to launch the OPCW-led mission to remove chemical weapons materials from Syria. These are just a few of many examples of technical discussions forming the basis for diplomatic outreach in 2012 and 2013.

6. James E. Doyle, “Argentina and Brazil,” in James E. Doyle, ed., Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation: Achieving Security with Technology and Policy (Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008), pp. 307-30.

7. Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction, April 29, 1997, Preamble.

8. John Hart, “Looking Back: The Continuing Legacy of Old and Abandoned Chemical Weapons,” Arms Control Today, March 1, 2008, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_03/Lookingback>; National Academy of Sciences, “Review of International Technologies for Destruction of Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel,” Committee on Review and Evaluation of International Technologies for the Destruction of Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel, National Research Council, 2006, <www.nap.edu/catalog/11777/review-of-international-technologies-for-destruction-of-recovered-chemical-warfare-materiel>.

9. Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, “The Chemical Weapons Ban Facts and Figures,” October 31, 2015, <www.opcw.org/news-publications/publications/facts-and-figures>.

10. Rachel Oswald, “Pentagon: Chemical Weapons in Panama Won't Be Sent to U.S. for Disposal,” Global Security Newswire, December 3, 2013, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/pentagon-chemical-weapons-panama-wont-be-sent-us-disposal/>.

11. For examples of estimates of North Korea's chemical weapons program, see: Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Military and Security Developments Involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” Annual Report to Congress, 2012, <www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Report_to_Congress_on_Military_and_Security_Developments_Involving_the_DPRK.pdf>; Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., “North Korea's Chemical Warfare Capabilities,” 38North.org, October 10, 2013, <http://38north.org/2013/10/jbermudez101013/>; Republic of Korea Ministry of National Defense, “Defense White Paper 2010,” Defense Policy Division, Policy Planning Bureau, March 31, 2011, <www.nti.org/media/pdfs/2010WhitePaperAll_eng.pdf>; Kyle Mizokami, “Locked and Loaded: North Korea's Scary Chemical-Weapons Arsenal,” National Interest, March 26, 2015, <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/locked-loaded-north-koreas-scary-chemical-weapons-arsenal-12487>; and Arms Control Association, “Arms Control and Proliferation Profile: North Korea,” February 2014, <www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/northkoreaprofile#2>.

12. Nuclear Threat Initiative, “North Korea: Chemical,” Country Profiles, December 2014, <www.nti.org/country-profiles/north-korea/chemical/>.

13. Bruce W. Bennett, testimony presented before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, “The Challenge of North Korean Biological Weapons,” 113th Cong., 1st Sess., October 11, 2013, <www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/CT400/CT401/RAND_CT401.pdf>.

14. Even for large-scale state biological weapons programs, ensuring knowledgeable individuals employed in these programs do not use their skills for nefarious uses—for example, the thousands of personnel involved in the Soviet and Iraqi programs—has been perhaps more central to elimination efforts than any specific destruction technology. See, for example, the “Comprehensive Report by the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction,” October 2004, <www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004>.

15. Secretary of State John Kerry, “OPCW Report and Ongoing Concerns With Chemical Weapons Use in Syria,” Press Statement, September 21, 2014, <www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/09/231908.htm>.

16. Barbara Starr, Jim Sciutto, and Elise Labott, “U.S. investigating 'credible' reports ISIS used chemical weapons,” CNN, August 14, 2015; Bill Roggio, “Iraq breaks up al Qaeda chemical weapons cell,” Long War Journal, June 1, 2013; Anthony Deutsch, “Exclusive: Samples confirm Islamic State used mustard gas in Iraq—diplomat,” Reuters, February 23, 2016, <www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-chemicalweapons-idUSKCN0VO1IC>; Peter Bergen, “Al Qaeda's track record with chemical weapons,” CNN, May 7, 2-13, <https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/LL62BWsZMokpc6?domain=cnn.com; www.cnn.com/2013/05/06/opinion/bergen-chemical-weapons-syria/>.

17. Richard Danzig, et al., “Aum Shinrikyo Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons,” Center for a New American Security, July 2011, <http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_AumShinrikyo_SecondEdition_English.pdf>.

18. The Fiscal Year 2016 defense authorization included $720,721,000 in funding for destruction of US chemical weapons and related activities between 2016 and 2018. US Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Estimates, Chemical Agents and Munitions Destruction, Defense,” February 2015, <http://asafm.army.mil/Documents/OfficeDocuments/Budget/budgetmaterials/fy16/camdd.pdf>.

19. “Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot,” Bechtel, n.d., <www.bechtel.com/projects/pueblo-chemical-weapons-elimination/>; Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives,“Explosive Destruction Technology (EDT) at PCAPP,” Department of Defense, February 11, 2016, <www.peoacwa.army.mil/pcapp/explosive-destruction-technology-edt-at-pcapp/>.

20. Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, “Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant Explosive Destruction System Overview.”

21. Scott Cohn, “Destroying Chemical Weapons, Easier Said than Done,” CNBC, September 23, 2013, <www.cnbc.com/2013/09/23/destroying-chemical-weapons-easier-said-than-done.html>.

22. Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Estimates: Cooperative Threat Reduction Program,” February 2015, <http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2016/budget_justification/pdfs/01_Operation_and_Maintenance/O_M_VOL_1_PART_2/CTR_OP-5.pdf>

23. See, in this volume, Philipp C. Bleek and Nicholas J. Kramer, “Eliminating Syria's Chemical Weapons: Implications for Addressing Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats,” pp. 197–230.

24. Joint Project Manager for Elimination, “Field Deployable Hydrolysis System,” Fact Sheet, 2014, <www.defense.gov/home/features/2014/0114_caperay/pdfs/JPME_fs_FDHS_111213.pdf>.

25. Parthemore and Weber, “Innovation in Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

26. Anthony Deutsch and Benet Koleka, “Albanian 'No' deals blow to Syria chemical weapons plan,” Reuters, November 15, 2013, <www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-chemical-idUSBRE9AE15820131116>.

27. Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, “Explosive Destruction Technology (EDT) at PCAPP;” and Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, BGCAPP Destruction Technology,” <www.peoacwa.army.mil/bgcapp/bgcapp-destruction-technology/>.

28. This elaborate equipment list was called the “universal matrix,” as mentioned in Office of the Spkesperson, “Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” Department of State, September 14, 2013, <www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/09/214247.htm>. See also Pincus, “Syria groundwork began months ago.”

29. For examples of various types of critical supporting equipment, see Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, “Full-Spectrum Chemical Biological Defense Capabilities,” 2010, <www.jpeocbd.osd.mil/packs/DocHandler.ashx?DocID=15605>; and Kyle Burke and Ngai Wong, “NBC Contamination Avoidance, Advanced Planning Briefing to Industry,” Defense Technical Information Center, Department of Defense, May 07, 2009, <www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011CBDAPBI/Day1McCormick.pdf>.