Throughout history, the cause of war has been the struggle for sovereignty. The preservation of sovereignty is today a strong motive for possessing weapons of mass destruction.

One authority on the subject is Saddam Hussein, who, of course, retains his power in Iraq. A document newly available from the US Dept. of Defense, a mid-1990 report from a special Interagency Intelligence Community working group on Iraqi CBW capability, stated that Iraq had weaponized anthrax, botulinum toxin, and Clostridium perfringens (the causative agent of gas gangrene). The agents were being produced in four facilities, and a state-of-the-art back-up plant, disguised as an infant-formula factory, was also ready to begin production. Biological weapons were stored across the country, in 35 refrigerated bunkers.

``Iraq would consider using BW as a weapon to save the regime from falling,'' the report stated (CWCB #30, Dec 1995).

Rolf Ekéus, UNSCOM Executive Chairman, after receiving Iraq's ``full, final and complete disclosure'' of its BW program, told reporters that the report was incomplete. There was still no accounting for some 20% of the bacterial growth media imported by Iraq, and no convincing evidence that the BW agents said to have been produced were indeed destroyed. In a later (September) report, he reported previously undisclosed flight tests of Scud missiles carrying chemical warheads.

Saad Salih Jabr, the Shi'ite leader of the London-based Free Iraq Council, told Israeli television viewers that Iraq stored hundreds of CBW warheads in underground desert caches, along with at least 32 Scud missiles. ``He says that the hidden weapons represent a last resort of Saddam Hussein, who, once he knows his regime is doomed, will order their use against Israel in order to instigate a major Iraqi-Israeli confrontation'' (Israel TV Channel 1, Aug 18 in BBC-SWB Aug 21, ibid.)

It was further reported to the UN that ``authority to launch biological and chemical warheads was pre-delegated in the event that Baghdad was hit by nuclear weapons during the Gulf War.''

Former President George Bush probably had better reasons than most Americans know for leaving Hussein in power.

The UN program to discover and destroy Iraq's CBW capability has cost about $100 million so far. According to Madeleine Albright, US representative to the UN, it would take less than a year to rebuild the BW program.

Another nation recently accused of employing CBW to assert its sovereignty is Russia. Chechens claim that, in addition to standard military firepower, Russian chemical weapons have been dropped on civilians from aircraft. Col Gen Stanislav Petrov, commander of Russian RKhB Protection Troops, claimed that ``it is simply blasphemous to say that the Russian army or the Russian Internal Troops are using chemical weapons'' (CWCB #30). Petrov noted, however, that a map showing the location of Russian CW sites had been published by ``environmental groups.'' General Mikhail Kolesnikov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, casts doubts on the country's ability to destroy its stockpile of CW and speaks of increasing vulnerability to theft.

Chemical and biological weapons are also very effective for destroying the sovereignty of another nation.

As Israel's new Prime Minister Shimon Peres pushes toward a deal with Syria over the Golan Heights, an Israel-US defense pact has been suggested. The idea would be to compensate Israel for the loss of the Golan Heights by defining an attack on Israel as an attack on the United States.

``In the event of war [such a pact] will in all probability not be worth the paper it is printed on,'' is the assessment of Intelligence Digest (Stoneyhill Centre, Brimpsfield, Gloucester, GL4 8LF, UK, Dec 15-29, 1995).

``What American administration would order a highly risky military operation to restore an already-defeated Israel...if a likely consequence would be major civilian casualties throughout America?'' The idea of planting a nuclear, chemical, or biological device in American cities to deter American intervention is no longer science fiction. Lisa Gordonson-Hagerty, head of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), in an unprecedented public statement, said that she now thinks about nuclear terrorism ``more in terms of when, not if'' (ID, 1/5/96).

The existence of enormous stockpiles of CBW throughout the world has previously been referred to in this newsletter. Still another was reported last summer in China Youth Daily, which stated that China needs more than $1 billion to dispose of chemical weapons abandoned by the Imperial Japanese Army at the end of World War II. More than 1.8 million weapons have been buried in deep pits, and another 200,000 reportedly remain in storage depots.

There is ample precedent for use of such weapons, hidden from public scrutiny for nearly 50 years. Reports of a strategic biological warfare network that existed across China and Southeast Asia during World War II are now coming to light. It is believed that more than 10,000 Chinese, Dutch, Korean, Mongolian, and US prisoners were killed by Japanese unit 731. A campaign in 20 Chinese provinces is said to have killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians. Campaigns were also planned for the Philippines, Australia, Burma, Guam, Hawaii, and elsewhere, but not carried out (CWCB #30).

Weapons of mass destruction can also deny the benefits of sovereignty to an enemy through residual effects. Biological or radioactive contamination are obvious examples. But another, still cheaper item is the land mine, called by some a weapon of mass destruction because of its overall impact, even though it takes one life (or hand or foot) at a time.

There are believed to be more than 100 million mines scattered in 64 countries, including Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique, with about 6 million in Bosnia alone. Four million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran can't go home because the mines are still there, even though the Soviets who laid them are now gone. Like BW, mines are a poor man's weapon. They cost about $3 per copy to manufacture, and about $3,000 each to immobilize.

The advent of low-cost weapons of mass destruction transforms the dynamics of world affairs and makes the term ``Superpower'' obsolete.

But then our nuclear arsenal never was the ``Power that hath made and preserves us a nation.'' A successful defense of our sovereignty must be based on right, not on brute force.

In 1776, thirteen British colonies in North America joined together to assert their right to self determination (also called independence) or sovereignty. The Founding Fathers were called ``patriots'' by some and ``rebels'' guilty of treason by others. The prevailing definition was ultimately established by force of arms. But the Founders had faith that their proclamation was right, and that Americans were simply assuming ``among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.''

The Founders proclaimed that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that governments were legitimate only as long as they secured the ``unalienable'' Rights conferred by the Creator: and among these rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Founders understood well that the right to own (which implies the right to use and dispose of) private property was absolutely essential to maintaining these Rights.

Acts that defined the King as a tyrant included these:

``He has ... sent hither Swarms of officers to harrass our people, and eat out their Substance;...

``He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, ... giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: for quartering large bodies of Armed Troops among us; ... for cutting off our Trade ... ; for imposing Taxes on us without our consent;...'' etc.

Global governance, as described in Our Global Neighborhood, ``does not imply world government or world federalism.'' The difference between ``rape'' and ``date rape'' is comparable. In either case, no consent is required.

Instead of unalienable rights, governance gives lip service to ``core values of respect for life, liberty, justice and equity, mutual respect, caring and integrity.'' Note that ``respect for life'' does not imply that each individual human being has the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law, but that all life forms are entitled to equal respect. Property rights are specifically demeaned and denied: ``The impulse to possess turf is a powerful one for all species; yet it is one that people must overcome.''

The justification for world governance is the ``now-global awareness of impending environmental catastrophe.'' To save the Planet, the definition of ``sovereignty'' will have to be changed: ``Although states are sovereign, they are not free individually to do whatever they want.'' Resistance is expected: ``It [world governance] is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.'' Thus, the ``democracy at all levels'' will need an underpinning of enforceable law. Military force is not to be a legitimate political instrument except in self defense or under UN auspices.

And what thinking will dominate the group? Pravda recently described Fidel Castro's visit to Beijing as evidence that ``proletarian-international solidarity is alive today.'' It also stated that Communist China is ``a member of those right-thinking, healthy global forces.'' And ``proletarian internationalism'' is a plank in the newly adopted platform of the Communist Party, which just won 35% of the seats in the Duma, three times as many as opinion polls had predicted (Washington Inquirer 1/1/96).

[Global Environmentalism: Agenda 21's Impact on America will be the subject of a March 21-23 conference in Kansas City, MO. For details, call ECO, (901)986-0099.]

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded moments after lift-off, killing all aboard. Richard Feynmann demonstrated the probable cause on television: environmentally ``safe'' but functionally inadequate O-rings, which replaced, due to EPA diktat, previous O-rings made with asbestos.

In the name of societal health and cost effectiveness, would-be ``health-care reformers'' want to deny people the benefits of medical technology such as heart surgery. At the same time, there is a clamor for ``preventive'' measures such as limits on ``toxins,'' present at levels of risk too small to be actually observed even if real. Estimated costs per year of life saved, from a 1994 study of 500 interventions conducted at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis: Neonatal intensive care, $12,000; coronary artery bypass, $26,000; hysterectomy to prevent uterine cancer, $51,000; heart transplantation, $54,000; radiation controls, $27,000,000; banning asbestos in diaphragms, $1,400,000,000; chloroform private well emission standard at 48 pulp mills, $99,000,000,000.

While the woman's life is not in danger, ``she's being used purely as a container for the fetus, for something she never agreed to,'' stated George Annas, director of the health law department at the Boston University School of Public Health.

She never agreed to an abortion, either, but ``she can't make that decision, so someone close to her has to make it.''