The Global Movement and Tracking of Chemical Manufacturing Equipment: A Workshop Summary by Kathryn Hughes

Author:Kathryn Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2014-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

A POLICY PERSPECTIVE ON DUAL-USE CHEMICAL EQUIPMENT NON-PROLIFERATION

The reason that the United States opposes chemicals weapons, said Matthew Moakler, is that they are weapons of mass destruction that can only be used indiscriminately and that have a disproportionate impact on civilians. Since the 1980s, the key to U.S. strategy regarding non-proliferation in this area has been to impede the flow of the items needed to make chemical weapons. He noted that the chemical weapons programs of rogue states such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria were based almost entirely on items purchased from abroad. He also said that the real threat today is not from nation states as much as from so-called lone actors, such as the five Iraqis arrested in 2013 who were creating Sarin using small-scale production equipment or the American who pled guilty to producing ricin in his home and sending ricin-laced letters to various public officials, including President Obama and Senator John Wicker.

Addressing the impact of controlling the export of dual-use equipment, Moakler said that export controls help prevent proliferators from acquiring the items that they need to make chemical weapons. “Sound export licensing decisions by supplier and transshipment countries, time and again, have had a tangible impact on proliferators by denying them access to the world’s best sources of technology and equipment,” said Moakler. He noted that since the 1980s, particularly after the chemical weapons attacks during the Iran/Iraq war, individual countries cannot employ effective national export controls individually but have to do so in concert with one another. “The more states that adopt and effectively administer similar controls, the more effectively this objective can be achieved,” said Moakler.

To that end, the United States coordinates its national export controls with the Australia Group, which includes 41 countries and represents roughly 80 percent of the global trade in chemicals and chemical equipment. Over the past 30 years, the Australia Group has focused on harmonizing and updating export controls of dual-use chemical and biological manufacturing items to ensure they do not contribute to weapons programs. The Australia Group has also shared information and lessons learned pertaining to the threat of chemical and biological weapons and regarding technology, enforcement, and interdiction in order to harmonize export controls across nations. It also reaches out to nonmembers to foster a better understanding of what this group is trying to accomplish and to encourage adoption of comparable export controls. That effort, said Moakler, has led many key exporters outside of the Australia Group, including China, India, Russia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, to implement export controls.

The reason for controlling the materials that are exported, Moakler explained, is that manufacturing chemical warfare agents is not unlike manufacturing other chemicals. It involves assembling a plant out of component parts that perform the basic unit operations of chemical engineering—transportation, combination, separation, and reaction. These component parts are similar to those in any chemical plant around the world, with a few caveats. First, most chemical warfare agents are acids and many of their precursors are highly corrosive.

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