The Double-Edged Sword of Politics in the 2018 Chemical Weapons Convention Review Conference

The states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) have begun their fourth review conference last week, to discuss the implementation of the convention in the past five years and to set its goals to the near future. This review conference is facing some major challenges, derived from the weakening of the CWC non-use norm and the deepening of political polarization between key players. The CWC set ambitious goals and gained wide support from the international community since its entry into force in April 1997. Nevertheless, chemical activities related developments in the international arena dissolved the unified position that was expressed in the convention’s previous review conference of 2013. Today’s main challenges relate to Syria, Iran and Russia activities in the chemical sphere, as well to the structural limitations of the review process and the convention’s implementing body – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The previous 2013 review conference concluded with a final document and with the states parties political declaration. The declaration expressed an unequivocal commitment for chemical weapons ban and the expected goals of the OPCW.  Despite this commitment, chemical weapons have been in use repeatedly since 2013,and some of the states’ declarations to the OPCW on their related chemical activities, a component of the CWC’s advanced verification mechanism, were not fully disclosed, and, hence less reliable. The U.S closing remarks in the 2013 CWC review conference, expressed disappointment from the political declaration’s vague text. The declaration did not address directly to the chemical weapons use in Syria and to the promotion of the United Nations Secretary-General’s investigation in this regard. The U.S remarks came to realize as a self-fulfilling prophecy when chemical weapons have been in use repeatedly, and particularly in Syria and Iraq. The Assad Regime in Syria, according to the U.S and European media, kept using chemical weapons even after declaring its stockpiles destruction in August 2014. Furthermore, recent mutual accusations between Iran and the U.S on violations of the CWC were making headlines just days before the beginning of the current review conference. These events join the two recent incidents of alleged Russian use of nerve agent (determined to be “Novichok”) in Amesbury and Salisbury, England, that have also raised the profile of breaking the non-use taboo of chemical weapons.

Addressing these developments in the current review conference requires to balance between dealing with noncompliance issues, as well as other core issues of dispute, and with the need for strengthening the CWC states parties’ cohesion, that involves the alleged violators. The first challenge of the current review conference, as seen in the U.S-Iran relations, for example, is when countries exploit the review conference platform as a mean to advance their broader agendas. In this case, the exploitation comes following the U.S sanctions renewal against Iran and the attempts to promote its political isolation. This challenge relates to a broader context when political tensions that do not necessarily relate to the context of the CWC leak to its review conferences. Bridging this gap, between promoting the goals of the convention and isolating the broader political context is a weak point of review conferences in general. This was also the case in the failure of the 2015 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons review conference when the concluding statements of Egypt and the U.S were mutual accusations of exploiting the review process for advancing other political goals. Such events could create an opposition that prevents the ability to promote the convention’s future goals and risk its implementation. The exploitation challenge, highlights the structural limitations of the review conference, since phrasing the final document to the conference does not have the same legal binding standing as the convention itself. Not fulfilling the commitments under final documents usually do not include penalties or consider a violation of the convention, but could certainly erode the chemical weapons-ban regime over time.

The political gaps between the western bloc of the US and other western powers, to the Russian oppositional approach that gains the support of China, Iran, and Syria are also more prominent in this review cycle. One indication for it is the issue of the OPCW’s attribution mechanism, known as the Watchdog’s Initiative. Last week (21.11) the state parties rejected the Russia-China proposal to establish a group of experts to review the OPCW’s mandate of creating an organizational team that would be able to attribute blame to a chemical weapon use to a violator. So far, the OPWC could only determine if there was the use of chemical weapons without indicating specifically on the attacker. This development also reflects the balancing dilemma of the need for political compromises, while not achieving them can harm the effectiveness of the CWC implementation. States that oppose core issues, such as the Watchdog initiative, can undermine cohesion and the ability to reach a unified and unequivocal commitment to the convention. This situation damages the stability of the CWC since even when a final document and a political declaration are gaining consensus, they are phrased in a way that relates to the lowest common denominator, as was in the Syrian case in the 2013 conference, which lowers their value.

Despite the above-mentioned examples of the political challenges in the CWC review conferences framework, the foundations of the convention lay on the states parties’ ability to cooperate. More than one hundred episodes of chemical weapons use recorded in the past three years shows how actual the threat of chemical weapons is, and how global cooperation to deal with it is important. There are important goals for the CWC that would be achieved despite the parties’ political contradicting interests. Among these goals, are issues such as inspection and verification measures in countries that are characterized by political instability, updating the lists of restricted chemicals, physical protection on chemical facilities, scientific and technological developments that challenge the convention, and the threat of states and non-states actors using chemical weapons. These issues show not only the importance of the CWC in regulating chemical weapons abolishment, but they also highlight the risks that undermine the convention’s purpose.