(1)
Washington, USA
Abstract
According to unclassified U.S. government sources, states of biological weapons (BW) proliferation concern include China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria. Assessing the BW threat is challenging, however, because illicit development and production can be concealed at dual-use industrial sites such as vaccine plants, and only tens of kilograms of an agent like dried anthrax spores can be militarily significant. The lack of unambiguous technical signatures of BW-related activity means that most estimates of foreign capabilities draw heavily on human intelligence sources, yet spies and defectors are notoriously unreliable. A key factor driving BW proliferation is the perceived military utility of biological weapons, which may include strategic deterrence, asymmetric warfare, or covert operations. Globalization of the biotechnology industry has expanded trade in dual-use materials and production equipment, increasing the risks of diversion and misuse for BW purposes. With the advent of flexible biological manufacturing systems, it has also become possible for countries to acquire a “latent” capacity for BW production during a crisis or war. Since the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, sub-state actors have become a prominent part of the threat matrix, but terrorist acquisition and use of BW requires both the motivation to use disease as a weapon and the technical capability to do so, a combination that is quite rare. At present the threat of mass-casualty BW attacks emanates primarily from nation-states, while terrorist use of biological weapons will likely remain limited in scale and impact. Nevertheless, the emergence of new biotechnologies with a potential for misuse could result in more damaging incidents of bioterrorism in the future.
The editors mourn the loss of Dr. Jonathan B. Tucker, who died unexpectedly during the preparation of this book.
2.1 Introduction
A starting point for assessing the current threat of biological weapons (BW) is the unclassified arms control compliance report prepared periodically by the U.S. State Department, most recently in July 2010, although it does not cover all countries of proliferation concern. The section of the report addressing compliance with the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) suggests that Iran, North Korea, and Syria (a signatory state) may have active BW programmes and that China and Russia have been less than forthcoming about their past offensive activities [16, pp. 10–26].
Because the BWC lacks any formal multilateral verification mechanisms, these assessments are based on U.S. national intelligence capabilities. The 2010 State Department report uses extremely hedged language, however, suggesting the high level of uncertainty that surrounds the BWC compliance of several countries. The entry on Iran, for example, reads: “Available information indicates that Iran has remained engaged in dual-use BW-related activities. The United States notes that Iran may not have ended activities prohibited by the BWC, although available information does not conclusively indicate that Iran is currently conducting activities prohibited by the Convention” [16, p. 16].
This uncertainty stems from the fact that monitoring clandestine BW programmes is a challenging task for several reasons. First, BW development and production capabilities can be concealed at ostensibly legitimate industrial sites, such as vaccine plants or facilities for the production of single-cell protein or biopesticide. Second, the equipment and know-how needed for the manufacture of BW agents is entirely dual-use, although technologies for weaponization and delivery are more specialized. Third, because only tens of kilograms of an agent such as dried anthrax spores can be militarily significant, even small-scale production facilities are relevant from a security standpoint. Fourth, proliferant states often use deception and denial techniques to conceal their BW-related activities, as was demonstrated by the cat-and-mouse game played by Iraq and United Nations biological weapons inspectors after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Finally, since the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent mailing of letters contaminated with anthrax bacterial spores, the biodefence programmes of several countries have expanded dramatically, providing a potential cover for offensive BW development.
Because of the difficulty of monitoring clandestine BW programmes, several countries have violated the BWC in the past with impunity, including the Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. From the 1970s through the early 1990s, Moscow conducted a vast, top-secret biological warfare programme that was partially concealed inside a pharmaceutical development and production complex known as Biopreparat. The full scale and scope of this effort were not detected by Western intelligence agencies at the time and were only revealed after the defection of high-level Biopreparat officials in the late 1980s and early 1990s [1].
The lack of clear technical signatures of biological weapons development and production means that most current estimates of foreign BW capabilities draw heavily on human sources. Unfortunately, spies and defectors are notoriously unreliable. Before the 2003 Iraq War, for example, the CIA was seriously misled by an Iraqi source code-named “Curveball,” who claimed that after the UN weapons inspectors the country in December 1998, the regime of Saddam Hussein had reconstituted its BW programme by deploying mobile biological production facilities. The CIA unwisely placed credence in this uncorroborated source, who later turned out to have fabricated his story out of whole cloth [4]. In sum, for the reasons noted above, publicly available lists of countries suspected of possessing or seeking biological weapons should be viewed as little more than educated guesses.
2.2 Perceived Military Utility
An important factor affecting the state-level BW threat is the perceived military utility of biological weapons. Most of the microbial pathogens that states have developed in the past as BW agents are zoonotic bacteria and viruses that infect humans as well as animals but are not transmissible from person to person; examples include the causative agents of anthrax, tularemia, Q fever, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis. Such non-contagious agents are best suited for targeted military use because only troops directly exposed to the agent cloud would be affected. During the Cold War, however, the Soviet Union developed two contagious agents (the smallpox virus and the plague bacterium) as strategic biological weapons for attacks on U.S. cities. Soviet military planners apparently assumed that the delivery of these agents against distant targets in the United States would trigger local epidemics that would not spread widely enough to boomerang against the Soviet population [1].
Because microbial BW agents have an asymptomatic incubation period lasting days or even weeks after infection before they produce incapacitating symptoms, they have little tactical utility on the battlefield. Instead, paramilitary or special-operations forces might employ biological weapons for non-time-sensitive operations, such as attacking troop reinforcements or command-and-control centers deep behind enemy lines or targeting dug-in troops or insurgents in remote areas or mountain redoubts. Anti-crop or anti-livestock agents might also be used for covert sabotage attacks in order to undermine the agricultural economy of an adversary nation.
Some countries that are currently assessed to possess a BW capability appear to view it as a means of holding a potential adversary’s populated urban centers at risk for deterrence purposes. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for example, once suggested obliquely in an interview that his country was justified in acquiring biological and chemical weapons as a means of balancing Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons capability. “We are a country which is [partly] occupied and from time to time we are exposed to Israeli aggression,” Assad said. “It is natural for us to look for means to defend ourselves. It is not difficult to get most of these weapons anywhere in the world and they can be obtained at any time” [2].
Acquiring a BW capability may also be attractive to militarily weak states as an asymmetrical means of deterring or countering conventional attack by a much stronger military power. Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, for example, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the crash production of a stockpile of biological weapons, including aerial bombs and missile warheads filled with anthrax spores, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin. Saddam viewed this BW capability as an “ace in the hole” to secure his regime from the internal and external opponents seeking to topple him from power. Although it is not clear how a secret weapons programme could serve as an effective deterrent against the United States and Israel, Saddam may have counted on the rumors before the Gulf War that he possessed biological weapons [9].
After Iraq’s military defeat, Saddam ordered the unilateral destruction of the biological weapons stocks so they would not be found by UN inspectors. At the same time, however, he continued to maintain ambiguity about whether or not the weapons still existed in order to deter Iran as well as his domestic enemies, the Shiites and the Kurds. The CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, which searched in vain for Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, concluded that Saddam had bluffed about possessing biological and chemical weapons because he felt vulnerable without them [7].
2.3 Impact of Economic Globalization
In recent decades, economic globalization has affected the dynamics of BW proliferation. Several developing countries, including China, Cuba, India, Malaysia, and Singapore, have invested heavily in industrial microbiology as a vehicle for economic development. The global spread of the biotechnology industry has complicated the task of regulating the international trade in items of biological production equipment, such as fermenters and spray-driers, increasing the risk of their diversion and misuse for bioweapons production. Despite the existence of the Australia Group, an informal forum of more than 40 countries that harmonize their national export controls on dual-use materials and equipment relevant to chemical and biological weapons, suppliers in countries that do not participate in the Australia Group (such as China, Cuba, India, and Russia) have sold dual-use items to countries of BW proliferation concern.
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