882 



benefit of their peoples. But in some societies, it often 

 seems that the people are the last to get these benefits. The 

 Soviet Union has for decades sought to gam access, 

 through one means or another, to the technological mira- 

 cles taking place throughout the free world. And one of 

 their goals has been to use these new technologies to 

 advance their political aims — to build better weapons, not 

 better health care; better means of surveillance, not better 

 telephone systems. 



This, of course, poses another dilemma. We seek an 

 open world, where technological advances and know- 

 how can cross borders freely. We welcome cooperation 

 with the Soviet Union in science and technology. 



And yet in the world as it exists today, the West has no 

 choice but to take precautions with technologies that have 

 military applications. Cooperation with our allies is 

 essential. Countries that receive sensitive technologies 

 from the United States must maintain the proper controls 

 to prevent them from falling into the hands of our adver- 

 saries. 



Scientists can help us think through this difficult prob- 

 lem. What technologies can be safely transferred? How do 

 we safeguard against the transfer of technologies that have 

 dual uses? Where do we stnke the baUince? 



THE PROLIFERATION OF 



NUCLEAR AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS 



Scientists can also be helpful in other areas where the free 

 flow of technical knowledge poses dangers. One priority 

 goal of our foreign policy, for instance, is to strengthen 

 international controls over two of the gnmmer products of 

 modem technology: weapons of mass destruction, both 

 nuclear and chemical. 



The world community's success or failure in prevent- 

 ing the spread of nuclear weapons will have a direct 

 impact on the prospects for arms control and disarma- 

 ment, on the development of nuclear energy for peaceful 

 purposes, and indeed on the prospects for peace on this 

 planet. The United States pursues the goal of nonprolif- 

 eration through many avenues: 



• We have long been the leader of an international 

 effort to establish a regime of institutional arrangements, 

 legal commitments, and technological safeguards against 

 the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities. We take an 

 active part in such multilateral agencies as the Internation- 

 al Atomic Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, 

 and the International Energy Agency. 



• Although we have major differences with the Soviet 

 Union on many arms control issues, we have a broad 

 common interest in nuclear nonproliferation. In the fall of 

 1982, Foreign Minister Gromyko and I agreed to initiate 

 bilateral consultations on this problem; since then, several 



rounds of useful discussions have taken place, with both 

 sides finding more areas of agreement than of disagree- 

 ment. 



• This year, the United States will sit down with the 

 126 other parties to the Nonproliferaton Treaty for the 

 third time in a major review conference. We will stress the 

 overarching significance of the Treaty, its contribution to 

 world peace and security, and the reasons why it is in 

 every nation's fundamental interest to work for universal 

 adherence to it. 



The progress in nuclear nonproliferation has unfortun- 

 ately not been matched in the area of chemical weapons. 

 The sad fact is that a half century of widely accepted 

 international restraint on the use or development of chemi- 

 cal weapons is in danger of breaking down. In 1963, we 

 estimated that only five countries possessed these weap- 

 ons. Now, we estimate that at least thirteen countries have 

 them, and more are trying to get them. As we have seen, 

 the problem has become particularly acute in the war in 

 the Persian Gulf. 



We have had some marked success in limiting the 

 spread of nuclear weapons, in part because the worid 

 community has worked together to raise awareness and to 

 devise concrete measures for dealing with the problem. 

 We must do the same in the field of chemical weapons. It 

 will not be an easy task. Chemical industnes and dual-use 

 chemicals are more numerous than their counterparts in 

 the nuclear field, and chemical weapons involve lower 

 levels of technology and cost less than nuclear weapons. 

 But the effort must be made: 



• First, we need to raise international awareness that 

 there is a growing problem and that developed nations, in 

 particular, have a special obligation to help control the 

 spread of chemical weapons. 



• Second, we need to expand and improve our in- 

 telligence capabilities and provide for greater coordina- 

 tion between intelligence services and policymakers in all 

 countries. 



• And third, we must take bilateral and multilateral 

 actions to deal with problem countries and to curb exports 

 of materials that can be used in the manufacture of chemi- 

 cal weapons. 



The scientific community can help in a vanety of ways. 

 Chemical engineers can help us identify those items that 

 are essential to the manufacture of chemical weapons and 

 then determine which countries possess them, so that we 

 can promote more effective international cooperation. 

 Scientists can help us find better ways to check the tlow of 

 the most critical items without overly inhibiting the trans- 

 fer of infonnation and products that serve so many benefi- 

 cial purposes around the world. 



These are difficult problems, but if we work together 

 we can begin to find better answers. 



SPRING 1985 15 



