Karen J. Winzoski, “Science, Industry & Arms Control: Preliminary Results.”
Draft Presented at ISA 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii
March 2005
Please do not cite without permission from the author
19
unwarranted influence over the military and Congress to both secure lucrative
government contracts and forestall the creation of stifling regulatory regimes, as we will
see, precisely the opposite occurred. Two incidents highlight the significant role the
chemical industry played in the elimination of chemical weapons:
The US chemical industry made a vital contribution to the abandonment of the US
binary weapons program, even though this program was supported by Ronald Reagan and
George H.W. Bush, several of their advisors, and roughly half the Senate and House in
the late 1980s.
25
However unforeseen this may have been, the US’ forced abandonment
of its chemical stockpile modernization program assisted in the completion of bilateral
chemical disarmament talks with the Soviets, which later assisted in negotiations over the
CWC.
After debating whether or not the US chemical arsenal required modernization for
roughly seven years, in 1987, the US Army was given funding to produce the binary
precursors for GB and Sarin gas. Binary chemical weapons were believed to be safer than
existing stockpiles of chemical weapons because they were broken down into two
relatively harmless precursor chemicals, which would only mix and become deadly after
the weapon was launched. In 1989, Congress, which had been divided over the binary
weapons issue since the beginning, decreed that binary chemical weapons production
would be required to meet a specific schedule to obtain a further $47 million for the
production of binary artillery shells. By January of 1990, it was evident that the Pentagon
would not be able to meet this schedule’s springtime deadline for the production of a set
25
A description of this incident may also be found in Karen Winzoski: “Military-Industrial Conflicts: the
US Chemical Industry and the end of the Binary Weapons Program,” published by the Simons Centre for
Peace and Disarmament in 2004.
Convention