Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
amine all of Canada's CBW commitments, and in his personal belief that
the time was propitious for pursuing aggressive CBW arms control dis-
cussions at both the United Nations and the Geneva-based Eighteen Na-
tion Committee on Disarmament (ENDC). After all, he reasoned, the US
and the Soviet Union had already embarked upon the important Non-
Proliferation Treaty, which in turn facilitated the SALT process.
57
The linkages between these various arms control agreements were
greatly enhanced by the active involvement of UN Secretary General U
Thant, who in July 1969 submitted a special scientific report on CBW to
the UN General Assembly. In turn, the earlier British proposal for a sepa-
rate Convention for the Prohibition of Biological Methods of Warfare, as
the first stage in a more comprehensive CBW arms control regime, be-
came the consensus document for the Western members of the UN Con-
ference of the Committee on Disarmament (formerly the ENDC). While
Canadian diplomats supported these initiatives, they realized that Wash-
ington's endorsement was crucial to the success of any CBW arms control
measure. As a result, they carefully cultivated their counterparts in the
US State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
(ACDA) even while trying, with limited success, to ensure that CBW dis-
cussions at the ENDC and General Assembly did not turn into anti-US
polemics. Bu their greatest concern was the direction US policies would
assume after the November 1968 US presidential elections. Would the
Pentagon, for instance, adopt a hostile position toward any significant
CBW disarmament proposal, and therefore thwart any important initia-
tives? Would Congress heed the advice of scientists such as Matt Mesel-
son that BW were “useless and foolish” and should be removed from the
US arsenal? And was it possible that as president Richard Nixon, the Cold
War warrior, would actually commit the US to a unilateral renunciation
of BW?
58
During the summer of 1969, with ENDC discussions reaching a critical
stage, DEA officials speculated whether they should become involved
with the internal US debate, since Canada's “close and widely known co-
operation with the United States in CBW research implicates us politi-
cally in USA CBW policy. We therefore have a legitimate and direct na-
tional interest in seeing that USA policy is as internally consistent and
solidly based as is possible.” It is not clear, however, to what extent DEA
officials were aware of the interagency investigation that had been estab-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search