SOVIET APPROACH TO CW/BW ARMS CONTROL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87R00029R000300480002-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 6, 2009
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 23, 1982
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2009/05/06: CIA-RDP87R00029R000300480002-3
SOVIET APPROACH TO CW/BW ARMS CONTROL
Key Observations
A review of the Soviet performance in the CW/BW arms control arena
provides a particularly vivid example of the contrast between Soviet public
advocacy and private abrogation: while posing publicly as a most ardent
proponent and early adherent of the two sweeping international agreements
that have sought to abolish chemical and biological "weapons of mass
destruction," the Soviet Union privately has carefully preserved and
nurtured its capability to employ such weapons. With a view, no doubt, to
protecting this capability, the USSR steadfastly resists any effective
provisions to verify compliance with such agreements. By now, moreover,
the evidence is incontrovertible that the USSR is directly implicated in
the use of lethal chemical and toxin weapons in Southeast Asia and
Afghanistan, thus violating the spirit if not the letter of the agreements
to which it is a party.
Soviet behavior in this sphere may not be entirely cynical. It
probably rests on a Soviet mirror-imaging view that other nations also
behave deceptively, and that the USSR must be prepared to cope with
deception in this sphere as in others. Soviet literature indicates clearly
that the Soviet Union believes other countries to be in violation of the
CW/BW agreements and that it fully expects that these banned weapons will
be used against them in any major future conflict.
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0 ?
We may also conjecture that the Soviet political decision to permit
use of CW/Toxin weapons in the Southeast Asian and Afghan conflicts was not
taken idly, but on the basis of a weighing of the balance of advantage.
Those conflicts have a high security significance for the USSR; the
chemical substances and delivery tactics employed are militarily quite
effective in the special circumstances of those conflicts; and the risks of
publicly credible detection must be deemed to have been low. For the
Soviet leadership, therefore, the security benefits of its violation
probably appeared positive, while the political costs may have seemed
negligible, at least up to now.
Nor has the Soviet Union suffered any notable political detriment from
its overall posture on CW arms control--the contradiction between its
public and private behavior. Soviet propaganda exploitation of global
apprehensions and anxieties concerning these weapons has been most
skillful. By resorting to the familiar Soviet techniques of outright
fabrication, reckless charges, clever distortions, bizarre disinformations,
and carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns, the USSR has managed to
divert attention from its own violations and portray itself as the champion
of peace and decency. In the CW/BW arms control arena, these techniques
have proved remarkably effective in sustaining worldwide hopes that a
comprehensive chemical weapons treaty may still be negotiatable.
Prospects for such a treaty, however, are not bright. Since 1977,
when bilateral US-USSR negotiations on the treaty began, several areas of
agreement have been reached covering such matters as scope, definitions and
destruction. The negotiations bogged down, however, primarily over Soviet
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intransigence on the issues of verification and assurances, and these
remain as the singlemost stumbling block. In July, 1982 the Soviet Union--
in order to demonstrate "seriousness" and show some "movement" after taking
considerable heat on the CW-use issue--tabled a new set of CW treaty
proposals that are marginally more forthcoming on the verification
provisions. However, given the entire pattern of Soviet perceptions and
behavior, it is most unlikely that the USSR would bend enough on this
crucial issue to make a satisfactorily verifiable treaty regime possible.
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