A Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Ban Might Have Averted the Gulf Crisis

• Published in: The Washington report on Middle East affairs 1990-12, Vol.IX (7), p.23
• Main Author: Gaffney, Mark
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• ISSN: 8755-4917; 2163-2782

It was a significant, perhaps unprecedented, proposal. Yet, one week later, it was rejected out of hand. Here's the exact wording of US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher's April 13 response: "We have made clear that we oppose linking the elimination of chemical weapons systems to other issues or weapons systems." This is because the United States has laws on the books that mandate a cut-off in aid to states engaged in clandestine nuclear proliferation. Such laws include the 1976-77 Symington/Glenn amendments of the Foreign Assistance Act, and Jimmy Carter's 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. Hence the State Department's logic in rejecting the latest Arab peace offer without so much as a passing mention of the single word most integral to it: "nuclear." The deadly game of denial which our leaders are playing will become more transparent as time goes by. We can therefore expect their future circumlocutions about Israel's nuclear arsenal to become increasingly tragicomic. Comic because of the absurd double-bind the White House is in; and tragic because of the incredible stakes. Sooner or later, either the US government and media policy of "say no evil about Israel" must be abandoned or, as in Yeats' classic poem, the center will no longer hold.