The Army and Chemical Weapons Destruction: Implementation in a Changing Context
In 1985, Congress directed the Army to destroy the nation's stockpile of chemical weapons. The estimate was that this task could be accomplished by 1994 at a cost of $1.7 billion. By 1998, only a portion of the stockpile has been destroyed, the deadline extended to 2007 and the estimated cost had risen to approximately $16 billion. This paper discusses the factors underlying cost escalation and missed deadlines. It examines the diffusion of control over the implementation process surrounding the chemical weapons demilitarization (Chem Demil) program in the United States. Focusing on the role of the Army and its difficulties in adjusting strategies in the face of political change from the Cold War to the post-Cold War setting, it analyzes the course of implementation through three converging “streams of political activity.” What differentiates the federal, intergovernmental, and international stream are the nature an number of actors, and the type of pressures with which the Army must deal.
The destruction of weapons under the chemical weapons convention
As the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) enters into force, countries with stocks of chemical weapons will begin the task of destroying them. In the U.S. whose stockpile consists of approximately 30,000 tons of nerve and blister agents at eight separate sites in the continental United States and at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, the Army has designed a highly‐automated “baseline” system to dismantle and incinerate the weapons. Although researchers have identified potential alternatives to incineration, involving chemical neutralization and biodegradation, it appears that these techniques are likely to substitute for incineration at most, at two sites: Newport, Indiana, and Aberdeen, Maryland. The Russian destruction program is less advanced than that of the U.S. and probably cannot be carried out effectively without significant and technical assistance from abroad, an urgent requirement given that the Duma Defense Committee has described Russian Chemical weapons storage sites as insecure and unsafe.
Alternative Technologies for the Destruction of Chemical Agents and Munitions
The U.S. Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program was established with the goal of destroying the nation's stockpile of lethal unitary chemical weapons. Since 1990 the U.S. Army has been testing a baseline incineration technology on Johnston Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. Under the planned disposal program, this baseline technology will be imported in the mid to late 1990s to continental United States disposal facilities; construction will include eight stockpile storage sites. In early 1992 the Committee on Alternative Chemical Demilitarization Technologies was formed by the National Research Council to investigate potential alternatives to the baseline technology. This book, the result of its investigation, addresses the use of alternative destruction technologies to replace, partly or wholly, or to be used in addition to the baseline technology. The book considers principal technologies that might be applied to the disposal program, strategies that might be used to manage the stockpile, and combinations of technologies that might be employed.