Insane Middle East Arms Race : Will Proliferation Deter Employment? Or Encourage Use?

Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein rattles his enormous stockpile of mustard and nerve gases and promises to obliterate half of Israel if that country makes any military move against his own. Saddam Hussein is much given to bravado. This time, though, his words are more than an empty threat.

Iraq is known to have missiles able to carry chemical warheads to Israel’s population centers or, for that matter, to cities in Iran and Syria, its other regional enemies. Would it try to do so? In the case of Israel, only if Iraq’s leader took full leave of his senses. For the nation Saddam Hussein so murderously threatens has its own long-range missiles, and almost certainly nuclear warheads with which to arm them. Whatever damage Iraq might be able to inflict on Israel, Israel is capable of doing many times over to Iraq.

Welcome to the latest of the world’s escalating arms races. This time the competitors aren’t rushing to amass still more tanks, planes or artillery pieces. This time, they are hell-bent on acquiring chemical weapons, maybe biological ones, and in at least a number of cases, nuclear bombs. Ominously, the main players already have the means to deliver these weapons of mass slaughter over much of the Middle East.

Israel, in the near-unanimous view of international experts on proliferation, has a significant if unacknowledged nuclear capability. The common estimate is that it has produced the components for at least 100 nuclear weapons. Israel regards this arsenal as its equalizer and the ultimate deterrent against the combined and vastly larger ground and air forces--and now the chemical weapons--of its hostile neighbors. Iraq, in the view of these same experts, is pursuing a crash program to develop nuclear weapons. Last week’s foiled attempt to smuggle in U.S.-made triggering mechanisms for nuclear warheads was only the latest bit of evidence as to its intentions.

A nuclear weapons program, though, is costly and demands an advanced technological base. It’s far easier and cheaper to get hold of chemical and/or nerve agents, sometimes called the poor country’s atomic bombs. Though long outlawed, chemical weapons were used with devastating results in the latter stages of the Persian Gulf war, particularly by Iraq. Their deadly and demoralizing effects are credited with finally persuading Iran’s fanatical leaders, who had sworn never to compromise, to accept an armistice.

The most significant international consequence of Iraq’s use of dreaded and outlawed chemical and nerve gases was that it got away with it. The world community tut-tutted, but that concern didn’t carry over into sanctions, even after Iraq used these horrible weapons to kill hundreds of its own Kurdish citizens. Iraq continues to get help from many nations, including economic credits from the United States. The implicit message was that chemical weapons no longer bear the taboo they carried since World War I. That conclusion hasn’t been lost on Libya, Syria, Iran or other nations believed to be working feverishly to develop the means to wage chemical warfare.

U.S. officials confirm that Libya, pursuing chemical weapons development, now has a system to refuel its Soviet-supplied Su-24 fighter bombers that will bring Israel within their range. Egypt is thought to be working on chemical weapons; it’s known to be cooperating with Iraq on a missile, the Badr 2000, which has a range of up to 700 miles. Syria is trying to make chemical weapons; it already has Soviet-supplied missiles, including the SS-21, which can reach Israel only two minutes after launching. Iran has a confirmed chemical warfare arsenal.

Most formidable--and most troubling--is Iraq, which possesses a variety of missiles, the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the Third World, and a vainglorious leader who covets acceptance as leader of the Arab world. U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that Iraq’s annual poison-gas production capacity exceeds 13,000 tons.

What’s to be done in the face of this swelling regional threat? Efforts must be made to control further transfers of the means to produce chemical or nuclear weapons, but cold reality requires recognizing that much damage has already been done. Terrible weapons are now in the hands of ambitious, bullying and perhaps even demented national leaders. The bleak and overriding question is whether the proliferation of these weapons and methods for delivering them will work to deter their further employment or, perhaps just as plausibly, encourage their mad and suicidal use.