In recent years chemical weapons have spread to parts of the world that had not
previously harbored these weapons, highlighted by Iraq's use of chemicals in
its war with Iran during the 1980s. The attention to the spread of chemical
weapons generated by that war gave rise to a general perception that "the poor
man's nuclear weapon," as chemical weapons are sometimes called, were
spreading to an alarming number of countries. Since thus far there has been no
systematic effort to examine in detail the information on the public record con-
cerning individual countries suspected of having or seeking chemical warfare
capabilities, an attempt to do so commended itself to the Federation of American
Scientists ( FAS) as a useful contribution to the public understanding of the issues
involved. Research for this book was undertaken as part of a two-year project
under FAS Fund auspices whose purpose was to increase public awareness of
the chemical weapons problem and to generate support for efforts to eliminate
the threat of chemical warfare through a global chemical weapons ban.

The authors are acutely aware of the fact that in the situation presented by
the spread of chemical weapons they can provide an analysis only of the state
of affairs at the time of writing; subsequent events or the availability of new
information could alter some of the conclusions reached in this study. The
information cutoff for this book was September 1990 except for relevant military
developments in the Persian Gulf through mid-February 1991. Moreover, un-
classified information on some aspects of the problem has been and will continue
to be difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, they believe that they have been able to
provide a solid basis for future assessments of the proliferation problem.

The term "chemical warfare" (CW) has been applied to the use of many
different types of toxic substances to inflict death or injury on an adversary. In
this study the authors have chosen to limit the discussion to the capabilities of
countries to employ or produce agents that could be used for conducting chemical
warfare by organized military units. For this reason the analyses of the CW

-xi-