The key strategic task facing the United States is to minimize the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of adversary states or terrorists. In an anarchic world, chemical weapons threaten people in even the strongest nations. It is what to do in the face of this threat, far more than the possibility that rights of privacy may be transgressed by foreign bogeymen, that is the real point of controversy. Some treaty opponents argue that the treaty will lull our political leaders into relaxing our chemical weapons defenses. Instead, they say, the United States should retain chemical weapons and announce that if anyone dares to trifle with the United States, it does so at its peril.
Deterrence is all.
That makes little sense. The United States has conventional weapons that are far more capable than chemical weapons of an effective retaliatory response. But the treaty would add law enforcement to the U.S. arsenal. Military leaders and politicians in both parties have repeatedly affirmed that the CWC would reduce the risk that adversaries of the United States would acquire chemical weapons, and it would make it more likely that clandestine efforts would be detected. If the treaty is not ratified by the Senate, an extraordinary bipartisan accomplishment will have been wasted, and international initiatives to address biological weapons, missile proliferation, and nuclear smuggling will be threatened.