Libya And WMDs

With the turmoil in Libya rising, the U.S. government has begun to worry about the remaining stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the North African country. As The Wall Street Journal reports this morning:

The government of Col. Moammar Gadhafi hasn't destroyed significant stockpiles of mustard gas and other chemical-weapons agents, raising fears in Washington about what could happen to them -- and whether they may be used -- as Libya slides further into chaos.

Tripoli also maintains control of aging Scud B missiles, U.S. officials said, as well as 1,000 metric tons of uranium yellowcake and vast amounts of conventional weapons that Col. Gadhafi has channeled in the past to militants operating in countries like Sudan and Chad.

Current and former U.S. officials said in interviews that Washington's counterproliferation operations against Libya over the past decade have scored gains, in particular the dismantling of Tripoli's nascent nuclear-weapons program and its Scud C missile stockpiles. But the level of instability in Libya, and Col. Gadhafi's history of brutality, continues to make the U.S. focus on the arms and chemical agents that remain, they said.

"When you have a guy who's as irrational as Gadhafi with some serious weapons at his disposal, it's always a concern," said a U.S. official. "But we haven't yet seen him move to use any kind of mustard gas or chemical weapon" during the unrest.

The Nuclear Threat Institute has this estimate of Libya's current missile capabilities:

Libya's current missile arsenal is still characterized by its acquisitions from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The Libyan Army deploys four SSM brigades with Scud-B missiles and around 40 FROG 7 rockets. Due to poor management and lack of advanced military infrastructure many of the estimated 80 Scud-Bs are believed to be kept in storage or simply inoperable. The Libyan armed forces also lack appropriate training and organization to effectively deploy its SRBMs, and its radar capabilities remain outdated. Libya's Army has around 3,000 anti-tank missiles, including Milans, AT-3 Saggers, AT-4 Spigots, and AT-5 Spandrels.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said in a speech last May that Libya's decision in 2003 to forego its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized relations with the West had an additional motive:

Did Libya end its program because we opted not to go ahead with [the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program] or [the Reliable Replacement Warhead program]? No, Libya saw 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq enforcing UN Security Council Resolutions on nuclear proliferation and feared it would be next.

These same interests, security and commercial, also dictate nations' actions with regard to the nuclear terrorism and proliferation issues. For example, Russia says that an Iran with nuclear weapons is a threat. And it will go along with some sanctions, e.g., sanctions that raise the global price of energy, of which Russia is the world's leading exporter -- but it won't go along with sanctions cutting off Iran's flow of weapons, which Russia sells in great quantity.