Hitting a Nerve

Once again Congress must decide whether to allow the Pentagon to produce nerve-gas weapons. It’s a tough call, but the answer should be no--or at least not yet.

The Reagan Administration is seeking a $1.4-billion chemical-warfare budget. That would include funds for producing the chemicals and other components for nerve-gas bombs, as well as for the development of sensors, protective clothing and equipment that would enable American fighting personnel to continue to function after a chemical attack. For three years Congress has approved money for defensive gear but has turned down requests to produce nerve-gas binary weapons.

The United States has not manufactured lethal chemical arms since 1969, when President Richard M. Nixon unilaterally ordered the destruction of all American biological weapons and the halting of chemical-weapons production. He left the existing stockpiles of chemical weapons intact, pending efforts to negotiate an international agreement that would ban such weapons.

Unfortunately, off-and-on negotiations have not produced the hoped-for global ban. Meanwhile, according to a team of U.N. specialists, Iraq used mustard gas and nerve agents against Iran. The Pentagon says that “well over 15 countries” have the capacity to make and use nerve gas; the stuff is very easy to manufacture.

What concerns America and its allies most, however, is the East-West imbalance in chemical-warfare capabilities. The Soviet Union has 300,000 tons of lethal chemical weapons, far more than the U.S. stockpile, and 80,000 to 100,000 specialist troops whose units are built into Soviet army units.

Western strategists fear that, in event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, nerve gas--which can kill in minutes--would be used against allied airfields, marshaling points and command headquarters. America might be forced to retaliate with nuclear weapons because U.S. nerve-gas weapons are essentially unusable. The weapons are so old that some have sprung leaks, posing grave danger to workers and nearby populations.

The Army wants to replace the aging nerve-gas stocks with binary weapons whose ingredients would not be lethal until combined automatically in a shell or bomb just before reaching a target. Such weapons would be safer than those now in storage. We think that getting rid of the leakiest and most unstable of the existing weapons has first priority, along with the faster development of chemical-warfare survival gear for U.S. troops.

But Congress should delay funding the production of nerve-gas weapons at least until President Reagan’s bipartisan Chemical Warfare Review Commission finishes its study this year.

As a practical matter, producing nerve-gas weapons would be futile unless they could be deployed in Western Europe, where they would have deterrent value. But European governments are loath to bring on another politically divisive debate by accepting the weapons on their territory. The United States shouldn’t be perceived as ramming such weapons down European throats.

If the Europeans can get their political house in order and the Soviets meanwhile still cannot be persuaded to accept an enforceable ban on all lethal chemicals, the argument for rebuilding the U.S. chemical stockpile with safer binary weapons will be much, much stronger.