The 1925 Geneva Protocol is deadlocked in the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, which has requested that the Administration reconsider its
position on the question of riot control agents and chemical herbicides.
(See Senator Fulbright’s attached
letter to the President.)
Before forwarding this matter to the President for reply, I believe we
should have a careful review of the situation, alternative responses
including their full advantages and disadvantages and agency positions
for his consideration. This review should be submitted by August 1,
1971.
Attachment
Letter From Senator Fulbright to President
Nixon
Washington, March 5, 1971
[Page 2]
Dear Mr. President:
The Committee on Foreign Relations has recently completed hearings on
the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which you submitted to the Senate on
August 19, 1970. At its last business meeting the Committee
discussed the testimony which had been heard and reviewed the
possible courses of action open to it. The Members decided that
before the Committee gave further consideration to the Protocol I
should privately communicate to you certain views which many of us
now hold concerning United States adherence to the Protocol.
At the outset let me express the Committee’s strong approval of the
initiatives which you have already taken in revising U.S. policy
with regard to chemical and biological weapons. Your decisions to
renounce altogether biological and toxin warfare, as well as the
first use of lethal and incapacitating chemical weapons, were a
major contribution toward a more secure future for mankind. All of
us appreciate the difficulties which confronted you in taking these
steps and in deciding to resubmit the Geneva Protocol to the
Senate.
There is no question of the Committee’s strong support for the
objectives of the Geneva Protocol. Indeed it is because we attach
such great importance to the Protocol that many of us are reluctant
to proceed further toward its ratification on the basis of the
understandings and interpretations which have been attached to it by
the Secretary of State.
[Page 3]
I believe it accurate to say that when our hearings began few of the
Members had firm views on the question of tear gas and herbicides.
Having heard a number of expert witnesses on all aspects of the
Protocol many Members now consider that it would be in the interest
of the United States to ratify the Protocol without restrictive
understandings, or, if that is not possible at this time, to
postpone further action on the Protocol until it is.
The Secretary of State’s position on tear gas and herbicides appears
to rest primarily on the grounds that the Protocol was not intended
to prohibit their use. Having heard the legal testimony on both
sides of this issue, many Committee Members conclude that an
adequate legal argument can be made either for or against that
interpretation. Given the Protocol’s acknowledged ambiguity, we tend
to agree with the view expressed in testimony by Mr.
George Bunn, former General Counsel of the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, who said that “any future
interpretation of the Protocol should depend less on the negotiating
history than on a realistic appraisal of the pros and cons—military,
diplomatic and arms control—of the use of these agents in the
future.”
In this connection, we note that the use of herbicides in Vietnam is
now being discontinued. It would appear that their actual utility in
Vietnam has been marginal and that the crop destruction program may
well have been counterproductive. Furthermore, the more we learn
about the impact of the herbicide warfare on the ecology of Vietnam,
the more disturbing are its implications for the future. As Dr.
Arthur W. Galston, an eminent biologist
from Yale, reminded the Committee, “If man makes conditions
unsuitable for vegetation on this earth, he thereby makes conditions
unsuitable for his own existence.”
Testimony on the question of tear gas also raised considerable doubt
in the minds of many Members as to the desirability of its future
use in war by the United States.
[Page 4]
Dr. Matthew Meselson of
Harvard, who testified before the Committee and who has made a
careful study of the military use of tear gas, presented the
following conclusions:
- 1.
- The military value of riot gas is very low.
- 2.
- Our overriding security interest in the area of chemical and
biological weapons is to prevent the proliferation and use of
biological and lethal chemical weapons.
- 3.
- Our use of riot gas in war runs directly counter to this
fundamental interest.
Dr. Meselson’s view coincides closely with that
expressed by another highly qualified witness, Dr.
Donald.G. Brennan of the Hudson Institute,
a military strategist who last testified before the Committee in
support of the Safeguard Anti-Ballistic Missile System. After a
skeptical critique of many of the familiar arguments against tear
gas and herbicides, Dr. Bennan concluded that
the military cost of giving up tear gas and herbicides appeared
relatively low and that the United States position could therefore
properly “be dominated by ‘decent respect for the opinions of
mankind’ and accept the interpretation that the Protocol embraces
harrassing agents and herbicides.”
The latter point leads to another consideration which troubles many
Members of the Committee. This is the fact that the overwhelming
majority of the nations of the world already agree, as evidenced by
an 80–3 vote in the U.N. General Assembly, that tear gas and
herbicides should be prohibited under the Geneva Protocol. If, at
this late date the United States adheres to the Protocol but in so
doing places its weight behind a restrictive interpretation, this
cannot help but weaken the effect of the Protocol. The Committee
finds it difficult to believe there would be any positive moral
force to our becoming a party to the protocol only on condition that
we reserve the right to keep on doing
[Page 5]
as we wish despite the fact that most other
nations believe it undesirable. Furthermore, I sense a reluctance on
the part of Committee members to give advice and consent to an
international agreement in the face of a virtual certainty that our
interpretation will be challenged or rejected. It will not suffice,
as the Secretary of State suggested, to ratify now, and work out the
problems later.
We believe that these arguments are, of themselves, sufficiently
compelling to warrant the Committee’s request that you give further
consideration to the tear gas and herbicide question. In addition,
as you know, there are now several studies in progress on the use of
tear gas and herbicides in Vietnam, including one requested by you
as a basis for examining the implications and consequences for U.S.
policy of their future use in war. It seems to us that all of these
studies, but in particular the latter, should be available before
any final action is taken with regard to ratification of the
Protocol.
Although we would agree that the Protocol should long ago have been
ratified by the United States, it is perhaps unfortunate that it
comes before the Senate at a time when the United States is at war
and actively employing chemical weapons which most nations consider
to be prohibited by the Protocol. Possibly by the time the results
of these additional studies are available the war in Indochina will
be ended, or at least the level of conflict there will have been
reduced to a point where our further use of either tear gas or
herbicides will be unnecessary. This alone would make it easier for
all concerned to make a dispassionate assessment of the issues
involved.
As a practical matter I have considerable doubt that the Protocol
could low receive the advice and consent of the Senate on the terms
laid down by the Secretary of State, i.e., that you might not ratify
the Protocol if the proposed understandings are modified by action
of the Senate. At present the prospects for the Protocol are clouded
by strongly
[Page 6]
held views
on both sides and I personally would not wish to see it risked a
second time under such circumstances. The Committee asks therefore
that the question of the interpretation of the Protocol be
reexamined considering whether the need to hold open the option to
use tear gas and herbicides is indeed so great that it outweighs the
long-term advantages to the United States of strengthening existing
barriers against chemical warfare by means of ratification of the
Protocol with out restrictive interpretations. If the Administration
were to take the longer and broader view of our own interests, I
cannot imagine any serious opposition to that decision, either here
at home or abroad. On the contrary, I personally believe that were
you to take this initiative your action would be regarded as truly
courageous and possessed of real moral force.
Sincerely yours,
