Preventing a Biochemical Arms Race by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Arms Control, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780804782753
Google: AIr2ugAACAAJ
Amazon: 080478275X
Goodreads: 13789908
Publisher: Stanford Security Studies
Published: 2012-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

7

Evolution of the BW Prohibition Regime

Assessing Achievements and Weaknesses

Introduction

As we have highlighted in the introductory chapter, both the CW and the BW prohibition regimes have their origins in the strong moral or normative conviction that the use of such weapons would be abhorrent and—in the words of the preamble of the BWC—“would be repugnant to the conscience of mankind and that no effort should be spared to minimize this risk” (United Nations 1972). It is from such a moral perspective that Joshua Lederberg, the pioneer of modern micro/molecular biology, characterized biological warfare as “the absolute perversion of medical science” (Lederberg 1999, 5). He went on to conclude that what distinguishes biological warfare “is the understanding that its habitual practice would be ruinous to personal security and civil order, perhaps more grievously than any other weapon likely to get into the hands of disgruntled individuals or rogue states” (ibid.).

The BWC, which was agreed on in 1972 (United Nations 1972) and brought into force in 1975, was touted as “the first international agreement since World War II to provide for the actual elimination of an entire class of weapons from the arsenals of nations” (USA 1972, 553–554). Yet, at the 1996 Fourth Review Conference of the BWC, the director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency noted that “twice as many countries now have or are actively pursuing offensive biological weapons programs as when the Convention went into force” in 1975 (Holum 1996, 2). The proliferators included the startling example of the Soviet Union, which carried out a massive offensive program despite being one of the three Depositary States for the Convention.

The question of how the BWC is to be strengthened in order to further restrict such proliferation is of crucial concern. It is clear from the historical record that since the causes of infectious diseases began to be elucidated in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the knowledge gained has also been applied in a series of offensive biological weapons programs. These were undertaken by major states such as Germany, France, Japan (which also carried out large-scale, antipersonnel use of biological agents in China), the United Kingdom, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and South Africa (Geissler and van Courtland Moon 1999; Wheelis, Rozsa, and Dando 2006).

Efforts to prevent the use of biological weapons did not, of course, begin with the 1972 BWC. In discussions about international controls toward the end of the nineteenth century, biological weapons were considered together with chemical weapons. Following the large-scale use of chemical weapons in World War I, the use of both types was banned by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. This has now become accepted as customary international law, binding on all states. Following World War II, biological weapons were classified along with chemical and nuclear weapons in a special category of “weapons of mass destruction,” but little was done to tighten international control until the negotiation of the BWC.

For quite some time following the Geneva Protocol it was extremely

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