Key set of paragraphs from my preceding post and reply to John Mace:
{{{{{Disarmament is also about preventing the outbreak of war. Because particular weapons technologies are considered to be destabilizing to international relations, people view their elimination as a contribution to peace and security. Even if war breaks out, disarmament prevents their use in combat or escalation of hostilities.
Translated to the U.S.-Russian framework agreement and the OPCW and UN Security Council decisions, forcing Syria to give up its chemical weapons arsenal will prevent a future Ghouta from occurring during the civil war. By bringing about Syria’s accession to the CWC and by identifying a central role for the OPCW, Russia and the United States have made chemical disarmament in Syria a longer-term responsibility of the global community rather than a temporary, ad hoc reaction to a pressing problem by a few.
If successful, those disarmament decisions may inject a fresh dynamic into the so-called Helsinki process on eliminating nonconventional weapons from the Middle East. The final document of the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference still requires the convening of a meeting on that subject. Nevertheless, some of the core assumptions about regional security, in particular, with regard to the strategic relationships among Egypt, Israel, and Syria, will have to be revisited in terms of the doctrinal relationships between their respective weapons holdings. Thus, for example, Syria’s chemical weapons served a doctrinal function similar to Israel’s nuclear weapons as an instrument of last resort in case of an existential threat to the state. As the former will soon be eliminated, this could have an impact on current regional security postures or on the prospects of other countries joining the CWC or the Biological Weapons Convention. If Israel were to join the CWC after the completion of Syria’s disarmament, Egypt would become wholly isolated, globally and within the Arab League, as a CWC nonparty.[23] If Egypt were to join the CWC under international pressure, how would this affect its bargaining position within the NPT context?}}}}}
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2013_11/Ridding-Syria-of-Chemical-Weapons-Next-Steps