The end of the Cold War has not rid us of the perception that the world is a dangerous place, armed with enough deadly weapons to kill every animal and vegetable several times over.
Most of the disarmament focus is naturally on nuclear weapons, either dismantling those the world has or banning tests to help nations build new ones.
Thus it was that when Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin met in Helsinki last week, what made the headlines were their agreements to begin a START III process on eliminating more nuclear warheads and on an anti-ballistic missile regime which would allow both sides to continue with their current research on theatre missile defence.
Barely noticed amongst the coverage was that the summit communique also included language committing both Russia and the United States to ratify as soon as possible the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
While few would disagree that the declaration came with honourable motives, the history behind it is a faltering one tainted by domestic politics and the tail-end of Cold War paranoia.
The CWC, a treaty which would require the destruction of all chemical weapons and place strict restrictions on the manufacture and trade of chemicals which have a military use, has been hovering around for quite some time. It was drawn up in the early 1990s and since 1993 a copy of it has been gathering dust on the desks of the US Senate and the Russian Duma. Yet as the Helsinki meeting made clear, the leaders of the two major powers are still trying to prod their respective legislatures into ratifying it.
It does not take the memory of German mustard gas on the fields of France, suspected Iraqi chemical agents in the deserts of Saudi Arabia or the numerous deaths and injuries from a sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway to remind us that chemical weapons are horrific. It only takes a few hundred kilograms of the most up-to-date poison gases to wipe out a city, and between them, the US and Russia have over 70,000 tonnes of the stuff.
