Defending Weapons Inspections from the Effects of Disinformation

The intentional spread of disinformation is not a new challenge for the scientific world. We have seen it perpetuate the idea of a flat earth, convince communities that vaccines are more dangerous than helpful, and even suggest a connection between the “5G” communication infrastructure and COVID-19. Nor is disinformation a new phenomenon in the weapons inspection arena. Weapons inspectors themselves are often forced to sift through alternative narratives of events and inconsistent reporting, and they regularly see their credibility and conclusions questioned in the face of government politics or public biases. But certain recent disinformation campaigns have become so overwhelmingly comprehensive and effective that they constitute a new kind of threat. By preventing accountability for clear violations of international law, these campaigns have created a challenge to the survival of arms control treaties themselves. If weapons inspectors cannot regain the trust of the international community in the face of this challenge, it will be increasingly difficult to ensure compliance with arms control and disarmament treaties going forward. In this essay, I will briefly discuss one of the most comprehensive disinformation efforts of the past decade: the disinformation campaign used to prevent accountability for Syria's repeated use of chemical weapons. After this discussion, I will propose one possible approach to help protect the credibility of disarmament experts and weapons inspectors in the face of pervasive disinformation. This approach will require a concerted effort to connect and support compliance experts and to understand and explain their expertise across cultural, political, national, economic, and religious divides.