Where Do All the Weapons Go?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il collects porn and nukes. “Gone but not forgotten” Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi collected pictures of Condoleezza Rice and stores of mustard gas (some also say a few nasty biological weapons as well). Syria’s brutal despot, Bashar Assad, has resisted calls to step down, choosing instead to attack pockets of local insurrection with powerful military responses, but his caches of weapons of mass destruction are the stuff of legend. Iran, with a repressive theocracy very much in power, is also having fun spreading weapons around the region, and Pakistan’s instability – which could easily turn into an Islamist state – makes Western and Israeli leaders shiver at what might happen should Pakistan begin sending its existing and significant nuclear arsenal to be shared with other anti-Western forces, ones less restrained at deploying such weapons anywhere on earth.

The signs are everywhere. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey (the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), in testimony last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted that Iran was stepping up arming local Iraqi Shiites in order to stage at least one massive strike against remaining American forces there: “Iran's activities in southern Iraq are intended to produce some kind of Beirut-like moment and, in so doing, to send a message that they have expelled us from Iraq.” CBS News, July 26^th.

You know that NATO has to be struggling to contain Libya’s military assets, and while the world wants Syria’s Assad to leave voluntarily, if his government were to fall from armed insurrection, his massive weapons stores would be up for grabs. Aside from his clandestine efforts with a nascent nuclear program, Assad has some painful weapons in reserve: “Syria is one of a handful of states that the U.S. government believes possess large stocks of chemical agents in militarized form -- that is, ready for use in artillery shells and bombs. The arsenal is thought to be massive, involving thousands of munitions and many tons of chemical agents, which range, according to CIA annual reports to Congress, from the blister gases of World War I -- such as mustard gas -- to advanced nerve agents such as sarin and possibly persistent nerve agents, such as VX gas.

“In the hands of Assad -- and his father Hafez before him -- these weapons have been an ace-in-the-hole deterrent against Israel's nuclear capability. The Assad regime, however, has never openly brandished this capability: It did not employ chemical weapons in the 1982 Lebanon War against Israel, even after Israeli warplanes decimated the Syrian Air Force. Nor have they been deployed, or their use threatened, in attempting to bring Assad’s current domestic antagonists to heel. And although Syria is accused of providing powerful missiles to Hezbollah, including some of a type that carried chemical warfare agents in the Soviet arsenal, Assad has not reportedly transferred lethal chemical capabilities to the Lebanon-based Shiite organization.” Foreign Policy Magazine, August 23^rd.

It is strange that Assad has been the voice of restraint in this one narrow arena of weaponry, but it also a sticky diplomatic issue for those nations, like the United States, that wish him to leave. His presence is actually containing the spread of such weapons of mass destruction, but his forced departure could result in a transfer of these deadly stores to Islamists hell-bent on destroying Israel and wreaking havoc in the United States and the West. This could occur directly by a takeover by willing Islamists or by the complicity of departing officials trying to build their future net worth by selling such weapons to unscrupulous arms dealers, looking for the highest bidders. An arms race is bad enough, but an arms race among those willing to use weapons of mass destruction without restraint is vastly worse.

I’m Peter Dekom hoping that the Arab Spring doesn’t turn into a desolate Arab Winter anytime soon.