Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

About the author: Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Department of Defense under President Ronald Reagan. He is currently the Director of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He was aided in the preparation of this document by Douglas J. Feith, a member of the Center's board of advisers, and Tryfan Evans, an associate at the Center.

Ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1997 after years of debate, the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty (CWC) is a hollow piece of international legislation that contains no effective measures for banning chemical weapons. Because the manufacture of chemical weapons is fairly easy to conceal, locating such factories would be difficult with or without a treaty. Even if inspectors working under treaty authority did find compelling evidence that a nation...