Arms Control without Arms 

Control: 

The Failure of the Biological 

Weapons Convention Protocol and a 

New Paradigm for Fighting the 

Threat of Biological Weapons 

Guy B. Roberts 

INSS Occasional Paper 49 

March 2003 

USAF Institute for National Security Studies 

USAF Academy, Colorado 
ii
iii

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not 

necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of 

the Air Force, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, 

or the US Government. The paper is approved for public release; 

distribution is unlimited. 

******* 

Comments pertaining to this paper are invited; please forward to: 

 Director, USAF Institute for National Security Studies 

 HQ USAFA/DFES 

 2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 5L27 

 USAF Academy, CO 80840 

 phone: 719-333-2717 

 fax: 719-333-2716 

 email: inss@usafa.edu 

Visit the Institute for National Security Studies home page at 

http://www.usafa.edu/inss
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Foreword vii 

Executive Summary ix 

Introduction: Addressing the Fear of Biological Warfare 1 

In the Garden of Good and Evil: Defining the Problem 4 

 The Nature of Biology 4 

 And Its Capacity for Good and Evil 10 

The Threat of Biological Warfare: The “Poor Man’s 

 Atomic Bomb” 13 

 The Early History of Biological Warfare 14 

 The Current Threat: Rogue States 17 

 The Current Threat: Non-State Actors 22 

The Emperor Has No Clothes: The Failure of the 

 “Verification” Protocol at the BWC Review 

 Conference 24 

 Disarmament Efforts Prior to the BWC 25 

 Rejection of a “Maginot Treaty”: Why the 

 Proposed “Verification” Protocol Failed 28 

 The Basis for US Rejection of the Protocol 34 

 The Futility of Verification 39 

A New Paradigm for Stopping BW Programs: The 

 Seamless Web of Multifaceted International 

 Cooperation 45 

 The National Defense Imperative: First 

 Responders and Bio-Security 49 

 The Vital Importance of Compliance 

 Diplomacy: Enforcing the BWC 52 

 International Institutions: The Role of the 

 United Nations 54 

 Other International Government Organizations 

 (IGOs): Cooperative Mechanisms 58 

 Regional Collective Security Organizations 69 

 Industry Associations and Other 

 Nongovernmental Organizations 75 

 Export Controls 79 
vi

 International Law Enforcement Initiatives 81 

 Financing the Spread of Bio Terror: 

 Interdiction Initiatives 83 

Arms Control without Arms Control: Fitting the Cure 

 to the Disease 85 

Notes 89 
vii

FOREWORD 

We are pleased to publish this forty-nineth volume in the 

Occasional Paper series of the United States Air Force Institute for 

National Security Studies (INSS). Among the many dimensions of 

national security that face unprecedented changes and challenges 

after the end of the Cold War, arms control has been as directly 

affected as any other dimension. The formal, bilateral, and 

verification-based arms control that was so central to that former 

period fits neither the new environment nor the expanded focus 

beyond the strategic nuclear arena. In this paper, Guy Roberts 

presents yet another of his insightful explanations and analyses of 

the adaptations and new directions that are required to give “arms 

control” continued relevance today and tomorrow. This thorough 

analysis of the special case of biological warfare controls follows 

his January 2001 INSS Occasional Paper (#36) This Arms Control 

Dog Won’t Hunt: The Proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty at 

the Conference on Disarmament in chronicling both the failure of 

continuing emphasis on formal Cold War-type arms control 

products and the enduring centrality of cooperative “arms control” 

processes in the current national security environment. In Roberts 

line of argument, arms control is indeed dead, yet “arms control” 

can and must be reborn in the form of a wide range of integrally 

linked and multifaceted legal, diplomatic, economic, and military 

instruments to effectively fight the spread and use of dangerous 

weapons and systems. 

About the Institute

INSS is primarily sponsored by the National Security Policy 

Division, Nuclear and Counterproliferation Directorate, 

Headquarters US Air Force (HQ USAF/XONP) and the Dean of the 

Faculty, USAF Academy. Other sponsors include the Secretary of 

Defense’s Office of Net Assessment (OSD/NA); the Defense Threat 

Reduction Agency; the Air Staff’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and 

Reconnaissance Directorate (XOI) and the Air Force's 39th 

Information Operations Squadrons; the Army Environmental Policy 

Institute; and the Air Force Long-Range Plans Directorate (XPXP). 

The research leading to the papers in this volume was sponsored by 

OSD/NA, DTRA, and XONP. The mission of the Institute is “to 

promote national security research for the Department of Defense 

within the military academic community, to foster the development 

of strategic perspective within the United States Armed Forces, and 
viii

to support national security discourse through outreach and 

education.” Its research focuses on the areas of greatest interest to 

our organizational sponsors: arms control and strategic security; 

counterproliferation, force protection, and homeland security; air 

and space issues and planning; information operations and 

information warfare; and regional and emerging national security 

issues. 

INSS coordinates and focuses outside thinking in various 

disciplines and across the military services to develop new ideas for 

defense policy making. To that end, the Institute develops topics, 

selects researchers from within the military academic community, 

and administers sponsored research. It also hosts conferences and 

workshops and facilitates the dissemination of information to a 

wide range of private and government organizations. INSS 

provides valuable, cost-effective research to meet the needs of our 

sponsors. We appreciate your continued interest in INSS and our 

research products. 

JAMES M. SMITH 

 Director 
ix

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

After being terrorized by the October 2001 anthrax attacks in 

which five people lost their lives, it was anticipated that the United 

States would support a new protocol touted as a new compliance 

mechanism for strengthening the Biological Warfare Convention 

(BWC). However, in December 2001, the United States rejected 

the protocol as ineffective and fatally flawed. Backed by years of 

study and test inspections, the United States argued that traditional 

arms control approaches to biologically based substances can not 

work because of the dual nature of these substances. Unlike 

chemical or nuclear weapons, the components of biological warfare 

are found in nature, in the soil and air. The presence of these 

organisms in any quantity does not necessarily connote a sinister 

motive. Absent actual weaponization or compelling evidence of 

intent, it is virtually impossible to prove a violation of the BWC. 

Further, any information gains from such measures are more than 

offset by the risks to sensitive bio-defense programs and 

confidential and proprietary business information. 

 Despite the rejection of the protocol, the United States and 

the rest of the world recognize the tremendous threat biological 

weapons pose to peace and international security. Biological 

weapons have been used since antiquity, and efforts to constrain 

and prohibit them have been undertaken almost as long and with 

not much success. Nevertheless, the BWC coupled with the 1926 

“Gas Protocol” banning the use of bacteriological weapons forms 

the basis for the prohibitory norm banning the development, 

production and use of biological weapons. Most of the nations of 

the world are parties to these treaties. Despite the inability to craft 

effective verification measures, the prohibitory norm remains strong 

as evidenced by the fact that no country admits to developing or 

possessing biological weapons (BW). 

Still, there are a number of states and terrorist groups actively 

seeking to acquire and use these weapons. Russia, one of the BWC 

depository states, had (and is suspected of continuing to have) the 

world’s largest offensive BW program, one that is a severe 

proliferation threat. Iraq and a number of other countries maintain 

significant programs. Terrorist groups such as Al Queda are known 

to be attempting to acquire this capability. These countries are also 

pressuring the developed countries to provide them with the 

technologies and equipment to develop such programs. 
x

In recognition of the threat, the United States advocated 

moving beyond signing up to another ineffective arms control 

agreement and finding a new way to focus on a strengthened 

international commitment to combat the BW threat in all its forms. 

Recognizing that international cooperation is key, the United States 

proposed a number of alternative measures that it considered far 

more effective. These ranged from national bio-defense 

preparedness to bilateral efforts of cooperation to multilateral 

mechanisms for impeding, stopping, and rolling back illicit BW 

activities. A key element is getting serious about noncompliance 

and calling those nations who do not live up to their international 

legal and political obligations to account. 

Using the US proposal as a blueprint, the states parties to the 

BWC adopted a modest work program to strengthen the 

implementation of and compliance with the legal obligations of the 

Convention. This is complementary to a new and more effective 

approach, advocated here, to utilize the numerous multilateral 

mechanisms and on-going initiatives designed to target a specific 

aspect of the threat and to the greatest extent possible limit the 

ability of terrorists and proliferators to acquire a BW capability. 

These include, but are not limited to, initiatives by international 

governmental organizations such as the World Health Organization, 

World Food and Agriculture Organization and World Customs 

Organization; new initiatives by regional security cooperation 

organizations such as NATO; international law enforcement 

cooperative efforts such as the initiatives started by INTERPOL and 

EUROPOL; the efforts of members of the Australia Group, a 

voluntary export control organization of like-minded states; and the 

numerous national and international efforts at tracking and 

interdicting the financial networks which fund these terrorist or 

proliferation activities. These multi-faceted initiatives fully support 

the goals of the BWC and have much more capability of 

interdicting and stopping those who might try to acquire such 

weapons. 

The time for “better-than-nothing” proposals is over. A united 

world, acting in concert across a broad front of areas utilizing the 

full panoply of financial, diplomatic, economic, and military 

resources at our disposal, with the firm determination to rid the 

world of these weapons of terror, is our best hope for success. It is 

only when those that pursue these weapons learn that to do so is a 

huge miscalculation and that the world is united across this broad 
xi

band of international organizations against them will this threat to 

mankind be eliminated. 
xii
ARMS CONTROL WITHOUT ARMS CONTROL: 

THE FAILURE OF THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS 

CONVENTION PROTOCOL AND A NEW 

PARADIGM FOR FIGHTING THE THREAT OF 

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS 

GUY B. ROBERTS 

INTRODUCTION: ADDRESSING THE FEAR OF 

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE 

Germ terrorism is the single most dangerous threat to our 

national security in the foreseeable future. 

 - R. James Woolsey, former CIA director1

 

On October 5, 2001 a Florida man died after opening a letter 

containing the deadly anthrax bacteria. Subsequently, several 

more letters containing anthrax were received at the offices of 

Senators Daschle and Leahy and NBC headquarters in New York. 

These letters and others resulted in a total of five deaths and 18 

infections, and caused widespread panic. The terrorist attack of 

September 11, the prospect of more attacks by terrorists, to 

include the possible use of biological weapons, fundamentally 

changed public threat perceptions regarding the potential use of 

weapons of mass destruction (WMD),2

 and biological warfare 

(BW) in particular. The indiscriminate use of these weapons now 

seems plausible, even inevitable. Amid public calls to respond to 

this threat, it should have been relatively easy for nations to agree 

to new measures to strengthen one of the primary legal 

instruments prohibiting biological weapons (BW), the 1972 

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC).3

 The BWC, 

among other things, serves as a useful declaratory statement by the 

community of nations that the possession and use of biological 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

2

weapons is an anathema to civilized society. However, it has 

weak enforcement mechanisms and no compliance procedures. 

Nevertheless, on December 7, 2001 the Fifth Review 

Conference of the BWC ended in disarray after three weeks of 

acrimonious debate with no agreement on additional measures to 

strengthen the BWC and the norm against the illicit use of 

biological agents.4

 What was to be the culmination of ten years of 

negotiations to “strengthen” the BWC ended in ignominy leaving 

residuals of bitterness among the United States’ allies and friends, 

many of whom had invested a great deal of their time and political 

capital.5

 The key reason the Review Conference broke down was 

the United States refusal to accept what it viewed as a fatally 

flawed compliance mechanism, the so-called Protocol to the 

BWC. The outright failure of the Review Conference was 

avoided when the chairman suspended the meeting for one year 

with negotiations scheduled to resume in November 2002.6

 

As will be discussed below, it is exceedingly unlikely the 

proposed protocol in any form will be resurrected or, for that 

matter, any other “arms control” measure adopted. One key 

reason is the historically consistent and firm belief on the part of 

the United States that the work product of this effort—a 

verification protocol—was fundamentally and irreparably flawed. 

It was flawed because it is virtually impossible to detect 

violations, and none of the proposed measures would have a 

reasonable chance of detecting state-sponsored illicit BW 

programs or terrorists plotting to use BW. It was widely 

recognized that none of the proposed measures would have 

stopped, for example, the anthrax attacks in the United States or 

any act of biological terrorism by a non-state actor. The United 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

3

States argued that agreeing to non-effective measures would also 

have the potential of adversely affecting and severely 

compromising sensitive industrial proprietary information and 

national security information concerning biodefense programs. 

In the face of continuing and pervasive anxiety by the public 

over an expected biological attack on the United States or 

elsewhere,7

 it seemed counterintuitive (and counter-productive) 

for the Bush Administration to reject this proposal touted as an 

effective way to combat the scourge of BW. While the US 

Government forges ahead with national and domestic measures to 

prepare for such an eventuality,8

 there remains a sense that 

international efforts are floundering. As will be explained, not 

only is that not the case, but a number of initiatives are underway 

which, in combination, have a much greater probability of 

stopping, detecting, or rolling back illicit BW programs. These 

measures or mechanisms, while not traditional arms control, are 

fully supportive of the purposes and goals of the BWC. 

The evidence, as detailed here, is compelling that traditional 

arms control measures such as the proposed verification protocol 

have little or no utility in stopping or deterring would be 

proliferators or terrorists. Recognizing the virtual impossibility of 

detecting a BW program, even with the most intrusive of 

inspection regimes, the better and more effective approach is to 

work with the multitude of already existing international bodies to 

develop standards, practices, and cooperative working 

relationships, some of which are reviewed below, which will make 

it difficult if not impossible for rogue states and non-state groups 

to possess or use these horrible weapons. This multitude of 

mechanisms and initiatives, coupled with a rededicated 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

4

commitment to abide by the requirements of the BWC, further 

coupled with a determination to enforce compliance, is the 

appropriate strategy for signaling rogues and terrorists that the 

costs of noncompliance far outweigh any perceived gains. 

Finally, the discussion will be limited to international 

initiatives and not, except in relation to coordination efforts, the 

need for new domestic initiatives to prepare and defend against a 

biological attack.9

 Suffice to say, US domestic preparedness to an 

eventual biological attack is improving daily, and the infusion of 

over $900 million in Federal funds will go a long way to preparing 

and training state and local authorities in the event of a biological 

attack. Obviously, much more needs to be done in this area, to 

include new technologies for faster detection and response to a 

biological incident whether it is deliberate or naturally occurring. 

The focus here, however, will be on the multi-faceted, multilateral 

efforts by multiple international government organizations to limit 

this threat to its lowest denominator and, hopefully, eliminate any 

rational incentive for violating the norm condemning those who 

would use such weapons. It is this new approach, not more 

traditional arms control negotiations or agreements, that will have 

the most success in strengthening the norm prohibiting and 

condemning these weapons and those who would use them. 

IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL: DEFINING THE 

PROBLEM 

The Future ain’t what it used to be. 

 – Yogi Berra10

The Nature of Biology 

The darker corner of microbiological research is the abyss 

of maliciously designed biological warfare agents and 

systems to deliver them. 

 - Nobel Laureate Josh Lederberg11
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

5

Article I of the BWC prohibits the development or production 

of “microbial or other biological agents, or toxins,” without 

further defining them. While the BWC does not define what 

biological agents or toxins are, the World Health Organization 

(WHO) formulated a definition of biological agents considered to 

be authoritative.12 It defined biological agents “as those that 

depend for their effects on multiplication within the target 

organism and are intended for use in war to cause disease or death 

in man, animals or plants; they may be transmissible or nontransmissible.”13 For our purposes the discussion will be confined 

to these traditional notions of biological agents. These are 

generally defined scientifically as any living organism without 

restriction or limitation. Biological weapons usually consist of 

some form of bacteria, virus, or fungus. Examples include typhus, 

cholera, anthrax, small pox, and yellow fever. But there are also 

biological weapons that contain dead substances made from living 

organisms. These are known as toxins, and examples include the 

botulism toxin and shell fish poison. 

They are inherently indiscriminate and uncontrollable and, as 

noted, universally condemned. Intrinsic features of biological 

agents which influence their potential for use as weapons include 

infectivity, virulence, toxicity, pathogenicity, incubation period, 

transmissibility, lethality, and stability. “Unique to many of these 

agents, and distinctive from their chemical counterparts, is the 

ability to multiply in the body over time and actually increase their 

effect.”14 Biological agents usually are dispersed by an aerosol 

spray that must be either inhaled or ingested. 

The problem for the traditional arms control solution to this 

proliferation problem is that any microorganism able to cause 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

6

disease in man, animals, or plants is capable of being used as a 

biological agent. Every germ that exists has the potential to be a 

biological weapon, and this is part of the uniqueness and difficulty 

of trying to prohibit the development, production, and use of such 

weapons. Clearly, it would be impossible to prevent the use of 

germs, and it would be counterproductive. In addition to being 

impracticable, it would effectively destroy the biotechnology 

industry. Although many are unsuitable for military applications 

since they are hard to produce, store, and disseminate effectively, 

almost every biological agent deliberately used against humans, 

plants, or animals has the capability to cause widespread panic and 

adversely affect a nation’s perception of its national security. 

The diversity and ready availability of naturally occurring 

microbial pathogens and their associated virulence pose a 

potential biological warfare (BW) threat. Many naturally arising 

pathogens and virulence-associated genes probably are not 

currently recognized or characterized because contact with human 

populations has been limited or because of inadequate diagnostic 

capabilities. The emergence of AIDS and the West Nile Virus are 

examples of naturally arising pathogens. The easy acquisition and 

low cost of these previously unknown agents could strengthen a 

country’s or a nonstate actor’s unconventional warfare capabilities 

and provide deniability because their use can be confused with 

natural disease outbreaks. 

In the past 20 years the qualitative and quantitative impact of 

biological warfare, or the threat of such warfare, on military forces 

and urban communities has changed markedly. Improved 

production techniques have resulted in more virulent strains of 

organisms and the genetic modification of non-pathogenic 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

7

organisms to pathogenic strains with virulent characteristics. The 

biotechnology revolution has made altering microbes easier by 

turning gene splicing into an automated, industrial process. 

Posting the genetic sequences of microbes on the Web will by 

2003 provide scientists with an unprecedented resource, the 

sequences of 250,000 microbial genes. Advocates say easy access 

to genetic information will benefit scientists working on 

biowarfare defense,15 but it is also potentially an open avenue for 

a terrorist or proliferator. 

Advances in biotechnology are both exhilarating and 

frightening. The implications of genetic engineering for 

biological warfare are far-reaching and we cannot predict with any 

certainty what directions these new techniques and applications 

will take. Biological agents, which may have no useful or 

beneficial purpose today, may become tomorrow’s wonder 

treatment. Who would have believed 20 years ago, for example, 

that botulinum toxin, one of the deadliest substances known to 

man, would one day become a beauty treatment used to 

temporarily wipe out facial wrinkles. Indeed, today there are 

“Botox” parties where people gather for wine, cheese, and “antiwrinkle injections.”16 Genetic engineering provides the potential 

for improved virulence by the incorporation of genes (i.e., specific 

strands of DNA) permitting increased production of a pathogen or 

toxin. Thus, as much as 100 times more pathogens or toxins could 

be produced per cell than could be produced by naturally 

occurring strains. Cells that normally do not produce toxins may 

be altered to produce toxins for biological weapon development. 

Conversely, known pathogens or toxins may be genetically 

inactivated for vaccine countermeasure development. Cells can 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

8

also be modified to produce antibodies directly for passive 

immunization against specific infectious agents. 

In the past, offensive BW programs employed naturally 

occurring pathogens such as Bacillus anthracis, the causative 

agent of anthrax. Today and in the future, an approach based on 

"mining nature’s bioweapons" (selecting yet-to-be-harnessed 

pathogens for their virulence factors17 out of the environment for 

use as BW agents) may provide a broad and powerful platform 

upon which a wide variety of weapon development efforts can 

take place. General robustness or survivability of a pathogen can 

also be genetically improved to promote stability during 

dissemination, and nutrient additives are used to enhance survival 

of selected biological agents in aerosols. Controlled persistence of 

a pathogen to permit survivability under specified environmental 

conditions may eventually be possible. The potential also exists 

for the development of so-called “conditional suicide genes,” 

which could program an organism to die off following a 

predetermined number of replications in the environment. Thus, 

an affected area may be safely reoccupied after a predetermined 

period of time.18 

In addition to bacteria and viruses, fungi and parasites are also 

capable of lethal or incapacitating disease, and both are now seen 

in increasing numbers as naturally occurring pathogens, especially 

in immuno-compromised humans. Both classes of agents also are 

difficult to treat because they are intrinsically more similar to 

human cells; thus, the drugs needed to kill them are more toxic for 

humans. Fungi in particular are attractive biological weapons 

because many of them can sporulate to form hardy, 

environmentally resistant structures that also are quite easy to 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

9

aerosolize. Genetic tools for manipulation of fungal genes are 

increasingly available. 

Additional targets for BW include plants and animals. Plant 

and animal pathogens can be similarly mined with subsequent 

laboratory modifications. An excellent and recent example of this 

potential is foot and mouth disease, but there are many others 

which could easily and with relatively little expense be used to 

devastate an economy and put at risk the health and well being of 

a nation’s population.19

One big wake-up call came in February, 2001 when 

Australian scientists at Canberra's Research Center for the 

Biological Control of Pest Animals, publishing in the Journal of 

Virology, showed how easy it was to modify mousepox, a fairly 

innocuous virus in mice, and turn it into a killer.20 The second 

shock came with the recent announcement that scientists have 

created a live polio virus “using its genome sequence, which is 

available on the Internet, as their blueprint and genetic material 

from one of the many companies that sell made-to-order DNA.”21 

This is only a precursor of the ever-increasing technological know 

how that’s becoming almost pedestrian. As Dr. Robert Lamb, 

President of the American Society for Virology speculated, 

"Could someone make a highly pathogenic virus like Ebola? 

Could you in fact make that in a rogue laboratory that doesn't need 

more than two skilled workers? My feeling is you probably 

could."22

Well-designed germs could outwit even treatments using 

drugs. The fact is we have already stepped into an open and 

uncharted territory where novel forms of bioterror become 

possible. As with the human immune system, many current 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

10

biowarfare detection kits depend on antibodies reacting with the 

antigenic surface coatings of pathogenic bacteria or viruses. Thus, 

modified non-pathogens can be used to mask the agent from the 

immune-based detector and, potentially, from the human immune 

system itself to increase the agent’s effectiveness. 

And Its Capacity For Good And Evil 

It is hard to predict where all this will lead. What is clear is 

that the BW threat fifty years from now will be radically different 

due to revolutionary advances in the biosciences. The promise of 

the revolution in biotechnology and almost daily advances in 

medicine and treatments is a growing healthy, productive, and 

long life for all. The threat is the possibility of extermination. As 

recent history has demonstrated, biological weapons remain a real 

and prospective threat to all civilization. Against the United 

States, biological agents potentially offer advantages to those 

adversaries who cannot hope to compete on the traditional 

battlefield or in the political marketplace of ideas. There are 

clearly a number of advantages to biological warfare. First, it 

evokes a unique psychological response and will likely generate 

panic and fear in the population at large once the threat becomes 

known. As we have observed during the 2001 anthrax attacks in 

the United States, a small amount of agent caused five deaths and 

18 infections, a fraction of one day’s carnage on America’s 

highways, but it was enough to paralyze a significant portion of 

society and government, and it resulted in an enormous diversion 

of resources to ensure that the agent’s effects were contained and 

eventually neutralized. 

Equally important, because of the time required for a 

biological agent to take effect and for symptoms to appear, it is 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

11

extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to identify the 

perpetrator and, absent an obvious delivery vehicle such as a 

missile, the means and method of delivery. In 1993 the author ran 

an exercise involving leading experts from industry, health 

services, and representatives from the intelligence community, the 

military, and other government agencies to try to determine 

whether or not we could determine if an outbreak of a disease was 

a naturally occurring one or an attack.23 The consensus was that 

absent a smoking gun or unique characteristics such as a 

genetically modified agent it would be extremely difficult to 

conclusively determine one way or the other. 

Finally, another reason our adversaries may decide to use a 

biological weapon is that our defenses against such weapons are 

limited and nascent. It is virtually impossible to inoculate all US 

military personnel against the full range of possible agents—

which number in the dozens—let alone the national population. 

Deficiencies in bio detection equipment are well known, and 

although significant progress has made in developing a real-time 

detection capability that could be deployed in tactical situations, 

an actual capability is still some years away.24

Obviously, there are risks associated with weaponizing and 

employing biological agents. It is extremely difficult 

technologically to adapt BW agents to missile warheads, and there 

are a number of technological challenges to converting pathogens 

into an aerosol or dry dust for delivery by less sophisticated means 

such as crop dusters or agricultural sprayers.25 While it might be 

feasible for terrorists to get or produce those materials, delivering 

them is extremely difficult. It requires expertise, special 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

12

equipment, and practice—all of which is hard to conceal. (The 

smallpox virus is an exception to this generality.) 

However, these challenges are certainly within the capability 

of terrorist states, and of state-sponsored terrorist groups. Of 

particular concern is the technological know-how of former 

employees of the Soviet Union’s Biopreparat now offering their 

services to suspect nations.26 Also of concern are the increasing 

capabilities of biotechnology industry to potentially develop more 

lethal and vaccine-resistant agents through genetic engineering, or 

as a result of the increasing knowledge of the human genome to 

develop pathogens to target traits of specific ethnic groups.27 For 

non-state terrorist groups, while the technical challenges are 

imposing, they are not insurmountable, and the technology is 

easily obtainable.28 The pharmaceutical industry, and numerous 

bioprocess industries, produce large quantities of micro-organisms 

and employ genetics to modify microbial properties. It is hard to 

detect illicit research and development activities and easy to 

procure samples of many different bioagents from a variety of 

sources, legitimate or not. In addition, natural outbreaks of 

anthrax, bubonic plague, and other pathogens offer the terrorist the 

means to obtain seed materials. The information and technology 

for bioterrorism is ubiquitous and easily obtainable. As one 

expert describes it, 

Training in genetics, microbiology and biotechnology is 

now offered in college courses around the world. Huge 

volumes of information pertinent to bioterrorism are 

available in the non-classified scientific journals and on 

the Internet. The number of trained personnel capable of 

undertaking sophisticated genetic manipulations has 

expanded substantially, including in nations viewed as 

potential sponsors of terrorism. Technological advances 

allow the cultivation and harvesting of large quantities of 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

13

virulent micro-organisms virtually anywhere and at 

minimal expense. A survey of 1,400 US academic 

institutions revealed that 16 per cent had stocks of 

pathogens listed in the draft Biological Weapons 

Convention [Protocol], 11 per cent had high-level 

microbiological containment facilities and 3 per cent had 

large volume bioreactors. Over 2,000 new biotechnology 

companies have been formed in the US and 1,500 in 

Europe during the last 20 years, together with a parallel 

expansion of expertise in genetics and molecular biology 

within the pharmaceutical sector.29

Advances in genetic engineering have opened the door to 

limitless germ weaponry that could outfox vaccines and 

treatments. For example, 

The ultimate biothreat lies in infections caused by viruses 

that can integrate themselves into the genes of their 

victims to await activation at a later date. This is no 

longer a dystopian fantasy. Infection with latent agents 

and their controlled reactivation has already been 

achieved in animal experiments.30

We must face the stark facts. The risk of the use of biological 

weapons is here. Science, in its steady gains to manipulate genes 

primarily for the purpose of developing medical treatments, has 

made it possible for the design of lethal cut-and-paste versions of 

viruses and bacteria. All that's technically required to develop a 

deadly variation of even a common germ is access to the standard 

gene manipulation technology now available in labs worldwide. 

THE THREAT OF BIOLOGICAL WARFARE: THE 

“POOR MAN’S ATOMIC BOMB” 

Behold, the hand of the Lord will come with a very 

severe murrain on your livestock which are in the field, 

on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the 

herds, and on the flocks. . . . 

 - Exodus 9:331
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

14

The Early History of Biological Warfare 

Throughout history, infectious diseases contracted naturally 

have had a significant impact on civilization and, in particular, 

military operations.32 It was quickly recognized by warring tribes 

and nations that, although not without risk to your own army, the 

spread of these diseases to your enemies often resulted in their 

destruction with little or no cost or effort. When historians look 

back on the emergence of inhalation anthrax as a weapon in the 

fall of 2001, it is likely they will not see an anomaly, but rather the 

continuation of a pattern. The history of warfare and the history 

of disease are intertwined. The intentional dissemination of 

disease simply adds a new dimension to threats that are posed by 

infectious and toxic agents traditionally transmitted only by 

natural routes. 

The deliberate use of microorganisms and toxins as weapons 

has been attempted throughout history.33 Biological warfare has 

evolved from the crude use of cadavers to contaminate water 

supplies to the development of specialized munitions for 

battlefield and covert use. Recognition of the potential impact of 

infectious diseases on armies resulted in the crude use of filth, 

cadavers, animal carcasses, and contagion as weapons. These 

have been used to contaminate wells, reservoirs, and other water 

sources of armies and civilian populations under attack since 

antiquity, through the Napoleonic era, and into the 20th century.34 

These practices have continued to modern times, as evidenced by 

the smearing of pungi sticks with excrement by the Viet Cong in 

the early 1960s.35 

Armies have used biological warfare for millennia.36 As early 

as the sixth century BC, Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with rye 
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15

ergot, and Solon of Athens used skunk cabbage to poison the 

water supply during his siege of Krissa. In 400 BC, Scythian 

archers dipped their arrows in blood and manure, attempting to 

cause illness in their enemies. The Greeks polluted their enemy's 

wells and drinking water supplies with animal corpses in 300 BC; 

later the Romans and Persians would adopt the same strategy.37 

At the battle of Tortona, Italy, in 1155, Barbarossa put human 

corpses in his enemy's water supply, successfully contaminating it. 

Catapulting infected corpses into besieged cities was 

commonplace during the medieval period. In 1346-47, for 

example, the Muslim Tatar, De Mussis, catapulted bubonic 

plague-infected corpses over the walls of Kaffa on Russia's Black 

Sea in Crimea (now Ukraine), causing an epidemic. The city 

surrendered and the defending Christian Genoese sailors fled to 

Italy and Turkey, possibly beginning the Black Death pandemic in 

Europe.38 In 1422, during the siege of Karlstejn in the Holy 

Roman Empire, soldiers' corpses and 2,000 cart loads of 

excrement were hurled at the enemy. And, in 1485 near Naples, 

the Spanish supplied their French enemies with wine laced with 

leprosy patients' blood. During Pizarro's conquest of South 

America, it is alleged that he improved his chances of victory by 

presenting to the natives, as gifts, clothing laden with the 

smallpox. Likewise between 1754 and 1767 the British infiltrated 

smallpox-infested blankets to unsuspecting American Indians 

during the French and Indian war, and smallpox eventually 

decimated the American Indian population.39 Even Napoleon 

used biological weapons by attempting to force the surrender of 

the city of Mantua by infecting the citizens with swamp fever.40 
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16

Prior to and during World War II, the Japanese had embarked 

on a major effort to develop biological weapons with mixed 

success. They bombed several Chinese cities with anthrax and 

plague and conducted extensive experiments involving unwilling 

human subjects.41 After the war, a number of Japanese scientists 

in American custody who had participated in the infamous “Unit 

731” program were granted immunity from war crimes 

prosecution on the condition that they would disclose the results 

of their research efforts.42 

The United States offensive BW program was begun in 

1942.43 The program included a research and development 

facility at Camp Detrick, Maryland (renamed Fort Detrick in 

1956), testing sites in Mississippi and Utah, and a production 

facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. While the United States did fill 

about 5000 bombs with anthrax spores at a pilot plant at Camp 

Detrick, none were ever used.44 After the war, basic research and 

development activities were continued at Fort Detrick. 45 The 

program was expanded during the Korean War as technical 

advances allowed large-scale fermentation, concentration, storage, 

and weaponization of microorganisms. In addition, a program to 

develop countermeasures, including vaccines, antisera, and 

therapeutic agents to protect troops from possible biological 

attack, was begun in 1953. By the late 1960s, the US military had 

developed a biological arsenal that included numerous bacterial 

pathogens, toxins, and fungal plant pathogens that could be 

directed against crops to induce crop failure and famine 46 In 

addition, bio weapons were developed for the Central Intelligence 

agency using cobra venom and other toxins.47
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All of these programs were terminated after President Nixon 

announced in 1969 that the United States was unilaterally 

renouncing the right to possess or use biological weapons. 

The Current Threat: Rogue States 

Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a 

terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two 

working together, constitutes as grave a threat as can be 

imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the 

risk of action. 

 - Vice President Cheney, 26 August 2002 

We know full well that weapons of mass destruction are being 

sought by nations, despite the international norm outlawing such 

weapons, who would not hesitate to use them against us. These 

include biological weapons, which potentially have capacity to do 

far more harm than even nuclear weapons at a much lower cost.48 

Today, there is little doubt that a dozen or more or these rogue 

nations have clandestine biological weapons programs.49 And 

over the past 40 years there have been at least 121 incidents 

around the world involving the use of biological agents.50 While 

Iraq’s efforts at acquiring biological and other weapons of mass 

destruction are well documented,51 a number of other clandestine 

programs continue in a number of other countries.52 Only a few 

countries with known programs have given them up and primarily 

as a direct result of regime change to a democratically elected 

pluralistic government. 

For example, despite its ratification of the BWC in 1975, 

South Africa actively pursued an offensive biological weapons 

(BW) program. The precise scope and results of the BW program 

remain unclear, but public hearings and court documents mention 

research on bacterial pathogens, viral pathogens, and toxins. By 

1985, South Africa had certainly tested the military utility of a 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

18

number of toxins. Meanwhile, the government allegedly used 

anthrax bacteria and botulinum toxin for assassinations, and the 

military is alleged to have used cholera bacteria to contaminate 

water supplies. However, no clear evidence exists of either the 

weaponization or large-scale production of any pathogen or toxin, 

and in 1990, soon-to-be-retired President F.W. de Klerk ordered 

all work halted on lethal agents.53

Arguably the most disconcerting and dangerous program was 

(and is) the former Soviet Union’s biological warfare efforts 

subsequent to its ratification of the BWC. As documented by Ken 

Alibek,54 the former deputy head of Biopreparat, the Soviet 

agency charged with running the biowarfare program, tons of 

biological agents were produced for use against the United States 

and its allies. Biological weapons were so attractive to the Soviet 

Union that it risked international censure and spent vast resources 

to produce them. The Soviet program reached its heyday in the 20 

years after the Soviets ratified the 1972 treaty. At its height, 

32,000 people worked for Biopreparat (the civilian pharmaceutical 

and vaccine company that served as a cover for biological 

weapons work), an additional 10,000 or so worked in Defense 

Ministry bioweapons laboratories, and thousands of others were 

scattered through other agencies.55 

In 1991 then President Yeltsin agreed with the United States 

and the United Kingdom to open up BW facilities and take steps 

to ensure there were no longer any biological weapons programs 

underway. But to this day much of the former program remains 

shrouded in secrecy and "[t]here is concern . . . that there remains 

a very large production capacity, and possibly even research and 

stockpiles, that have not been destroyed as required by the 
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19

Biological Weapons Convention.”56 As a result of Russia’s 

recalcitrance, the Bush Administration in 2002 refused to certify 

that Russia was taking the necessary steps to eliminate and 

dismantle the relics of its past biological warfare programs.57 

Fears abound that these agents and weapons still exist, are poorly 

guarded and ripe for smuggling by underpaid, disgruntled, and 

desperate employees. As one Pentagon expert describes it, 

"There’s been a lot of talk of nuclear smuggling. However, I 

personally believe that loose [germs] could perhaps be even more 

realistically used by terrorist groups to attack targets over here and 

in the United States."58 

The Russians still refuse to allow inspectors or the public into 

many of the sites known to be laboratories for producing bio 

weapons.

59 One of the closed labs, the Center of MilitaryTechnical Problems of Biological Defense at Yekaterinburg 

(formerly Sverdlovsk), was the site of an accidental anthrax 

release in 1979 that killed at least 68 people.60 While the US 

Government has provided millions of dollars under the 

Cooperative Threat Reduction program61 to enhance security and 

retrain scientists at Russia's civilian-run bioweapons factories, the 

veil of secrecy surrounding military labs has fueled suspicions that 

Russia is continuing research on offensive BW weapons. Equally 

troubling is the probability that many scientists and technicians 

employed in these programs have sought employment in countries 

known to have active BW programs. These include Iran, Syria, 

North Korea, and Iraq. 

Iraq’s thirst for weapons of mass destruction is well known 

and serves as the basis for the current international security threat 

that is poses. There is overwhelming evidence that one of the core 
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20

objectives of the Iraqi regime is the acquisition of biological 

weapons. Saddam Hussein has evidently sacrificed all other 

domestic and foreign policy goals to the singular aim of acquiring 

WMD. A recent report by the Institute of International Strategic 

Studies recounts Iraq's denials of weapons capacity, its strenuous 

attempts to deceive and hinder UN inspectors, and the many UN 

resolutions it has failed to obey. It concludes that, if unchecked, 

Iraq will most certainly rebuild, if it hasn’t already, its WMD 

capabilities, and "it seems likely that the current Iraqi regime will 

eventually achieve its objectives."62 In the past decade, Saddam 

has systematically broken every agreement he’s made with the UN 

and violated with impunity all of the Security Council resolutions 

demanding he disarm and eliminate his WMD capabilities. In 

fact, the Iraqi regime has been doing the opposite; busily 

enhancing its biological weapons and other weapons of mass 

destruction capabilities.63 As Vice President Cheney has declared, 

“These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these 

are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a 

massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over 

the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.”64 

Iraq is believed to have maintained a substantial stock of 

biological warfare agents and is researching different ways of 

"weaponising" them. In fact, Iraqi officials have even bragged 

about the fact they possess biological weapons.65 Following 

revelations made by Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel, a son-inlaw of the Iraqi leader who defected to the United States in 1995, 

Baghdad admitted for the first time that it had produced biological 

agents. According to the Iraqi government, Baghdad produced 

8,400 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinum, and 2,000 liters 
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each of aflatoxin and clostridium. A single gram of anthrax—

roughly 1/30 oz—contains 1 trillion spores, or enough for 100 

million fatal doses if properly dispersed. Iraq now claims to have 

destroyed these agents. But as Charles Duelfer (former UNSCOM 

Inspector) stated, "In terms of where it went, we could never nail 

it all down."66 

Even if inspectors had found all the materials before they left 

the country, Iraq has almost certainly made more in the past four 

years. Thanks to Rihab Taha, a British-educated Iraqi biochemist, 

nicknamed Dr. Germ by the U.N. inspectors, Saddam still has the 

best biological expertise in the region.67 There are fears that Iraq 

has developed large quantities of smallpox, Ebola virus, bubonic 

and pneumonic plague bacteria, and the toxin, ricin. Other 

defectors had described in detail the hidden underground 

laboratories and mobile laboratories designed to thwart any 

attempt at detection or to be subject to inspection by UN 

inspectors.68 As far as delivery vehicles are concerned, in addition 

to using Scud missiles, Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for 

Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a 

recent report, 

Iraq can certainly produce new stocks of bulk BW agent, 

including botulinum toxin and anthrax with its existing 

facilities, equipment and materials. BW agent could be 

delivered by short range munitions including artillery 

shells and rockets. Delivery by ballistic missile is more 

problematic given that much of the agent would be 

destroyed on impact and the immediate area of dispersal 

would be small. Civilian casualties could still be in the 

hundreds or thousands. Refurbished L-29 trainer aircraft 

could operate as weapons-carrying UAVs with a range of 

over 600km. Such UAVs, in theory, would be 

considerably more effective than ballistic missiles in 

delivering CBW. Commando and terrorist attack is also 

possible.69
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22

The Current Threat: Non-State Actors 

It is a certainty that the al Qaeda is pursuing [weapons of 

mass destruction] and has succeeded in acquiring at least 

a crude capability to use them. 

 - Vice President Cheney70

Some have argued that biological weapons are too difficult to 

disperse to be feasible, and that terrorists fear these agents too 

much or know too little about them to be willing to fabricate or 

use them in any effective way.71 The relative historical rarity of 

BW use can most likely be explained by a combination of factors 

such as deterrence, delayed and unpredictable consequences, the 

risk of self-injury, and moral qualms about using such weapons. 

On the other hand, as the former deputy head of the Soviet 

Union’s biological warfare program stated “These weapons are 

attractive to some nations and terrorist groups alike, because they 

are relatively easy and inexpensive to produce and can cause 

widespread illness, fatalities and panic. And the effect of these 

weapons is not immediately obvious, allowing time for the 

terrorists to escape.”72 

Terrorist threats to use or steal biological agents are real and 

must be taken seriously. Indeed, it is widely recognized that just a 

few kilograms of these agents can inflict severe, long-lasting and 

widespread harm on a par with or even greater than the 

devastation of a nuclear explosion. The description of the horrors 

that may be visited upon us when—not if—biological weapons 

fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue states is well 

documented73 and the stuff of popular culture. Indeed as one 

proliferation expert describes it “Only a blind, deaf and dumb 

terrorist group could have survived the last five years and not been 

exposed at least to the possibility of the use of WMD while the 
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23

more discerning terrorists would have found some tactically 

brilliant possibilities already laid out on the public record.”74 

Evidence that it is possible to amass the material and know-how

without a government's assistance exists in the case of Aum 

Shinrikyo, an apocalyptic cult that conducted several acts of terror 

in Japan in the 1990s. 

Aum Shinrikyo, which had about 40,000 members worldwide, 

produced large amounts of botulinum toxin and the bacterium that 

causes anthrax. Aum Shinrikyo's experience, however, 

demonstrates that access to the raw materials does not ensure 

successful attacks. From 1990 to 1993, cult members released the 

botulinum toxin five times and anthrax spores four times, causing 

no casualties. The organization's most notorious terrorist act—the 

release of sarin in the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995—killed 

only 12 people, although it injured more than 1,000 and caused 

panic. 

The only modern example of biological terror in the United 

States, prior to the anthrax letter attack in 2001, occurred in 1984 

when a religious group called the Rajneeshees put salmonella 

bacteria in salad bars and coffee creamers in 10 restaurants in 

Oregon. This caused 751 cases of illness but no deaths. While 

not significant in terms of numbers or fatalities, there have been a 

number of other individual cases over the last several decades in 

which biological agents have been used or the threat of such use 

against individuals or groups.75 

Terrorists are generally not too concerned with the yield 

effectiveness of their weapons of terror. That fact alone raises the 

chance that some group may eventually attempt an act of terror 

using biological or chemical means. Indeed, "The chance of a 
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24

large [bioweapons] attack that affects tens of thousands or 

hundreds of thousands is very small. But is that what the terrorist 

cares about? Inducing enough disease to produce panic or disrupt 

life is probably enough.”76 The likelihood of BW use will 

continue to increase due to the increasing attractiveness of 

asymmetrical warfare, and the extensive public attention given to 

BW in the media and by political leaders, which has increase 

awareness of US vulnerabilities and the possibilities of paralyzing 

and undermining the Government. 

Over the last several years fanatical groups have embarked on 

concerted efforts to acquire biological weapons. With money no 

object, fanatics are supposedly being trained to use these agents on 

Western populations.77 For example, Osama Bin Ladin’s Al 

Qaeda has threatened to unleash a terrorist offensive using 

chemical and biological weapons.78 And, as recent discoveries in 

Afghanistan have confirmed, terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda are 

actively pursuing the capability to use biological agents for 

terroristic purposes against the United States and its allies.79

Clearly, there are advantages in using BW to include its 

accessibility; destructive potential; potential covertness; political, 

social and psychological salience; and the intensive media 

attention an attack would attract. Despite prodigious efforts at 

protection and preparedness, there is, unfortunately, little doubt 

that a BW attack will occur again against the United States or its 

interests, probably within the next ten years. 

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES: THE FAILURE OF 

THE “VERIFICATION” PROTOCOL AT THE BWC 

REVIEW CONFERENCE 

In my opinion—and I know some people are going to be 

disappointed in my response—this treaty is worthless. It 

isn't worth the price of the paper it's written on. Why? 
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25

Because I believe enforcement is impossible. Research 

and production are easy to hide and difficult to prove. 

Timetables for inspections are very limited, and it is 

impossible to search countries like Russia and China with 

such limited timeframes. Iraq is a small country, but we 

were unable to find everything until Saddam's son-in-law 

defected. But even in this case we have not "discovered" 

everything. 

 - Dr. Ken Alibek, former deputy head of Russia’s 

secret biological warfare program80

Disarmament Efforts Prior to the BWC 

The history of mankind’s efforts to proscribe, limit, and 

restrict the use of biological weapons is as long as the history of 

the use of such weapons. In approximately 100 BC an Indian 

treatise on the conduct of war urged combatants not to use 

poison.81 German gunners in the late Middle Ages pledged not to 

use “poisoned globes” or any poison since to use such devices was 

considered unjust and “unworthy of a real soldier.”82 In 1675 

French and German armies agreed not to use poisoned weapons 

against each other.83 W.T. Sherman's memoirs contain an account 

of Confederate soldiers poisoning ponds by dumping the carcasses 

of dead animals into them. Incidents like this led to the issuance 

by the US Army of General Order No. 100 which stated “The use 

of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is 

wholly excluded from modern warfare.”84 Finally, the Hague 

Convention No. III on the rules of war of 1907 prohibited the 

employment of “poison or poisoned weapons.”85

During World War I, bacteriological warfare became much 

more sophisticated after the causative organisms for many 

diseases were identified and cultured. However, most biological 

attacks were directed at livestock. The United States and other 

nations experimented with the use of biological agents, but by the 
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1920’s most nations had concluded that BW was impracticable, 

either because of inadequate delivery systems or improved public 

health systems. Consequently, as a result of a US initiative, 

biological agents (and chemicals) as a method of warfare were 

banned by the 1925 “Gas Protocol”86 but the possession of such 

weapons was not. By World War II all the great powers had 

ratified the Protocol except the United States and Japan. 

However, most nations agreed to the ban on condition they could 

respond in kind if chemical or biological weapons were ever used 

against them, the so-called “second use reservation.” 

Efforts to ban the development or possession of biological 

weapons continued as part of the general disarmament efforts of 

1930’s. Notable was the 1933 British Draft Convention on 

Disarmament, which included provisions banning the materials for 

producing such weapons.87 These efforts stalled with the outbreak 

of World War II and the perceived need to continue to do research 

on the potential for such weapons in the possible event that their 

use may be necessary in response to a chemical or biological 

attack. Nevertheless, such was the aversion to using these types of 

weapons that in 1943, President Roosevelt declared that these 

types of weapons were “outlawed by the general opinion of the 

civilized world.”88

During the late 1960s, there was increasing international 

concern regarding the indiscriminate nature, unpredictability, 

epidemiological risks, and lack of epidemiological control 

measures for biological weapons, as well as the ineffectiveness of 

the 1925 Gas Protocol for preventing biological weapons 

proliferation. In July 1969, Great Britain submitted a proposal to 

the Committee on Disarmament of the UN prohibiting the 
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27

development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons 

and providing for inspections in response to alleged violations. 

During the following September, the Warsaw Pact nations 

submitted a biological disarmament proposal similar to the British 

proposal, but without provisions for inspections. Two months 

later, the World Health Organization issued a report regarding the 

potentially staggering consequences of biological warfare.89 

Amid growing doubts over the utility and morality of ever 

using these weapons, President Richard Nixon ended the US germ 

warfare program in 1969. Subsequently, in 1972, the United 

States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, along with more 

than 100 other nations, signed the Biological Weapons 

Convention (BWC). 

The BWC established a global ban on biological weapons. 

Under its terms, countries undertake not to develop, produce, 

stockpile, or acquire biological agents or toxins "of types and in 

quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective, 

and other peaceful purposes," as well as weapons and means of 

delivery. One hundred forty-five countries, including the United 

States, have joined the treaty. This complements the 1925 Gas 

Protocol which prohibits the use in armed conflict of biological 

weapons. In view of the fact that both the BWC and the Gas 

Protocol have near universal membership (and since 1969 no state 

has professed a right to possess and use such weapons) most 

international legal experts have concluded that biological weapons 

are prohibited by customary international law.90 Signatories 

agreed to end their germ warfare programs, although they retained 

the right to continue research into defensive measures against such 

weapons. The United States destroyed its stockpile, along with 
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most, if not all signatories, the notable and lamentable exception 

being the former Soviet Union, as previously discussed. 

Rejection Of A “Maginot Treaty”: Why The Proposed 

“Verification” Protocol Failed 

Not having a verification regime has long been considered by 

many as a weakness in the BWC regime, particularly the lack of 

on-site measures to address allegations of noncompliance. 

Politically binding confidence-building measures were endorsed 

and accepted in 1986 and 1991, but it was recognized that these 

voluntary measures would be inadequate to address the perceived 

weaknesses of the Convention.91 

While most European members of the BWC “Western Group” 

negotiating bloc believed, and publicly stated,92 that verification 

was possible, the United States consistently and well prior to the 

adoption of the BWC took a different view. In a 1951 report to 

President Truman the authors opined that “it would be practically 

impossible to detect biological warfare activities by an inspection 

scheme.”93 Forty years later, at the 1991 BWC Review 

Conference, US Ambassador Ronald Lehman, Director of the 

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, would state 

unequivocally that 

 The BTWC could not be verified effectively94 because 

biological production facilities are dual-use and lack 

distinctive “signatures”; 

 A negotiated regime could not be sufficiently intrusive to 

detect clandestine facilities, generating false confidence 

that a country was in compliance when in fact it was not; 

and 

 Highly intrusive inspections by multinational teams could 

expose both government and commercial facilities to 

foreign espionage. In particular, the loss of valuable trade 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

29

secrets could weaken the competitive edge of the US 

biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. 95

Nevertheless, the parties agreed in 1991 to convene a group of 

experts to explore the possibility of additional measures which 

would, from a scientific and technical standpoint, provide 

additional confidence that states were in compliance with their 

legal obligations under the BWC. It had no negotiation mandate. 

In 1993, after meeting four times in 1992 and 1993, the expert 

group issued a consensus report that concluded that some 21 

confidence-building measures, either singly or in combination, 

could strengthen the “effectiveness and improve implementation 

of the” BWC by providing additional information on whether or 

not a party was engaged in prohibited or permitted activities.96 

Importantly, the experts did not recommend that these measures 

be made legally binding, and predicated their endorsement of 

verification measures by stating that “appropriate and effective 

verification could reinforce the Convention.”97 This language was 

a compromise driven more by political considerations than any 

hard scientific evidence that methodologies and technology could 

effectively verify compliance or noncompliance.98

A Special Conference of parties was called in September 1994 

to review the report. Despite misgivings over the efficacy of a 

legally binding “verification” protocol to the BWC, the newly 

elected Clinton Administration agreed to the convening of an Ad 

Hoc Group (AHG) to develop a legally binding Protocol to the 

BWC, which most member states characterized as a “verification 

protocol.” 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

30

When negotiations on the protocol began in 1995, the US 

Government reaffirmed its consistently held position that the 

BWC is not verifiable. As one of the chief negotiators recently 

stated: "the goal established by the administration was to promote 

measures that would provide some degree of increased 

transparency of potential biological weapons-related activities and 

facilities," not verification.99 This, however, was not the view of 

most of the United States’ allies. In 1999 the European Union 

issued its “Common Position” calling for the establishment of a 

“verification and compliance regime.”100

In April 2001, after six years of fruitless multilateral 

negotiations which produced a heavily bracketed “rolling” text,101

the chairman of the AHG proposed a compromise text102 of the 

Protocol that sought to bridge the remaining gaps among national 

positions. This text contained a number of key elements; 

• Mandatory declarations of facilities and activities that 

could be diverted most easily to develop or produce 

biological weapons; 

• Consultation procedures to clarify questions that might 

arise from declarations, including the possibility of onsite visits; 

• Randomly selected transparency visits to check the 

accuracy of declarations; and 

• Challenge investigations to pursue allegations that a 

country is developing, producing, or employing 

biological weapons.103

This text proved to be just as unacceptable to the United 

States, and on July 25, 2001, the United States announced that it 

would formally oppose the Protocol.104 An unidentified US 

official elaborated, saying that the Protocol added nothing to our 

verification capabilities and that “looking at this treaty in purely 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

31

cost-benefit terms, it has zero benefits. And it has three categories 

of substantial downsides.” The downsides are: “First, it would 

have caused risks in US biological warfare defensive preparations. 

Second, there was a risk of the loss of highly sensitive and highly 

valuable intellectual property from the US pharmaceutical and 

biotechnology industries, and finally the risk of the loss of 

integrity and utility in the multilateral export control regimes the 

US participates in.”105 

As one senior official explained, "We strongly believe in the 

importance of the Biological Weapons Convention and the need to 

strengthen it. But the anthrax attacks against Americans show that 

a treaty is not the be-all and end-all to stopping the spread of 

biological weapons or preventing and dealing with germ 

attacks."106 US officials argued, among other things, that it was 

useless to add more paperwork if countries such as Iraq, Iran, and 

North Korea were already flouting their obligations. 

As an alternative to the “dead and not going to be resurrected” 

protocol, the United States offered a package of nine measures 

that could be implemented through national legislation. US views 

were explained in detail prior to the conference in a speech by 

President Bush proposing an alternative series of measures to 

strengthen the norm against biological weapons.107 Subsequently, 

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International 

Security John Bolton explained in some detail the US alternatives. 

These included arrangements to enhance criminal extradition 

agreements with respect to BW offences and legislation making it 

a criminal offence for persons to engage in activities prohibited by 

the BWC. Furthermore, he believed that countries should (a) 

adopt and implement regulations restricting access to dangerous 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

32

micro-organisms, as well as on domestic and international 

transfers; (b) report internationally any releases or adverse events 

that could affect other countries; and (c) sensitize scientists to the 

risks of genetic engineering, explore national over-sight of highrisk experiments, and establish a code of conduct for scientists 

working with pathogens. The United States also sought the 

elaboration of a mechanism for international investigations of 

suspicious outbreaks of disease or alleged BW incidents. 

Countries would need to "accept international inspectors upon 

determination by the UN Secretary General that an inspection 

should take place." Washington also advocated "setting up a 

voluntary cooperative mechanism for clarifying and resolving 

compliance concerns by mutual consent." 

Under the heading of assistance to victims and technical and 

scientific cooperation, Bolton proposed that countries "adopt and 

implement strict biosafety procedures, based on WHO [World 

Health Organization] or equivalent national guidelines," support 

the WHO's global disease surveillance and response capabilities, 

and develop a capacity for rapid emergency medical and 

investigative assistance in the event of a serious outbreak of 

infectious disease. Taken together, this range of measures to 

restrict access, strengthen international disease detection tools, and 

provide assistance in the event of an outbreak would "enhance 

collective security and collective well-being.”108

In view of these events, a key objective of the November 

2001 Fifth Review Conference was to develop alternative 

strategies for strengthening the BWC. At the outset of the 

conference, the head of the US delegation, Undersecretary of State 

Bolton, accused six states of violating the BWC: Iran, Iraq, 
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Libya, and North Korea (all parties to the Convention); Syria 

(which has signed but not ratified); and Sudan (which has neither 

signed nor ratified). Bolton insisted that the Conference's Final 

Declaration refer to the problem of noncompliance, but several 

countries, led by Iran, objected. 

In an attempt to develop a compromise formula, the European 

Union (EU) proposed annual meetings of BWC member-states 

and the creation of governmental "expert groups" that would 

assess the implementation of strengthening measures agreed by 

the Review Conference and consider new ones. The EU proposal 

appeared to offer a workable compromise. Nevertheless, late in 

the afternoon on the last day of the conference the United States 

said it would accept the EU formula only on the condition that the 

mandate of the Ad Hoc Group was "terminated." Because 

preservation of the Ad Hoc Group mandate (and hence the 

possibility of restarting the multilateral negotiations when the 

political climate improved) had long been a bottom line for many 

delegations, this last-minute US proposal blocked the consensus 

needed to adopt the politically binding Final Declaration. 

The US proposal at the Conference angered other delegations 

and NGO advocates109 not only because of its controversial 

content but also because of its late introduction, less than two 

hours before the meeting was scheduled to end. In a highly 

charged atmosphere, to prevent the Review Conference from 

failing completely, Chairman Tibor Tóth suspended the meeting 

for a year, to be re-convened in November 2002, allowing a year's 

“cooling-off” period.110 While it was clearly the United States 

refusal to agree to the protocol that was the reason for this unusual 

situation, the United States was not the only country opposed to 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

34

the protocol. Rather, the United States was the one with such 

important interests at stake that it was willing to take the political 

heat for rejecting it.111

The Basis for US Rejection of the Protocol 

The concerns over the effectiveness and feasibility of the draft 

protocol, which led to its rejection by the United States, centered 

on the burdens declarations, investigations, and export controls 

would impose upon a state party and its bio-pharmaceutical 

industry. Undersecretary of State John Bolton described US 

objections to the Protocol this way: 

The reason the United States rejected the protocol was 

best summarized by a 1993 Congressional report which 

stated: “While the controversy over [BWC] verification 

has focused largely on technical issues, it is 

fundamentally a political debate over whether the burden 

of uncertainty associated with verification would hamper 

more severely the verifier or the violator.112 

For the United States, with its massive biotechnology 

industry, and its sensitive bio-defense programs, the costs of 

putting these at risk outweighed the minimal gains. More 

specifically, the United States rejected the protocol for three 

reasons. First, it was based on a traditional arms control approach 

that will not work on biologically based substances. Second, it 

would have compromised national security and confidential 

business information. Third, it would have provided a “false 

sense of security,” and been used by proliferators to undermine 

other effective international export control regimes.113 Indeed, a 

number of BWC parties that have been publicly accused of 

possessing BW capabilities appeared to be quite prepared to sign 

up to the protocol; obviously not fearing that they would be 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

35

unduly exposed and expecting they would derive a degree of 

legitimacy by becoming a party to the protocol. 

Even Protocol adherents agree that BW programs are 

inherently difficult to detect because BW-related activities lack 

unique, distinguishing features, are easily concealed, are often 

dual-use in nature, and may be nested within legitimate facilities. 

At best inspection activities have only the possibility of providing 

some useful information to enhance our understanding about 

suspect activities. As the United Kingdom contended, 

If the objective is on greater levels of transparency, better 

tools for tackling non-compliance and focused scientific 

and technological co-operation measures, then a useful 

role can be demonstrated for the draft Protocol as an 

adjunct to other measures. Its defence does not lie in 

protestations that it is better than nothing, or that any 

agreement on these issues is worth having as an end in 

itself.

114

 

Even if one ignores the risks to legitimate industry and biodefense programs, this is thin gruel. Given the clearly marginal 

increase in confidence-building information, coupled with only 

the hope it will foster greater compliance and cooperation in 

stopping proliferators, it did not make much sense from the United 

States’ point of view to put a heavy burden and large risk on the 

United States’ biological defense programs and its pharmaceutical 

and biotechnology industries. 

The United States has by far the largest biodefense program in 

the world. Department of Defense researchers are exploring a 

host of technologies and scientific advances, including biological 

agent detectors, decontamination equipment, and treatments or 

preventatives to counter the effects of BW agents. In addition, 

biologically based new technologies are being explored which 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

36

hold the promise of new advances in the use of organisms for both 

military and peacetime uses. These efforts have the potential to 

transform the way the military conducts surveillance and 

communicates, and they open up additional possibilities for nonlethal uses of biologically based agents. Such programs involve 

both proprietary and classified information. 

Under the proposed protocol the United States would have 

been obligated to reveal extensive details on these programs in 

complying with the protocol’s requirements for declarations and 

inspections. Attempting to comply with this requirement without 

exposing the sensitive and classified details of such programs 

would be problematic. First, “[p]roviding extensive information 

about these efforts in an unclassified format to an international 

organization under the guise of ‘transparency’ runs the risk of 

providing a proliferator or terrorist with a roadmap to exploit our 

vulnerabilities.”115 Terrorists and rogues would learn not only of 

promising defensive capabilities but also about areas of 

vulnerability. Second, in cases where for national security reasons 

the United States refused to provide a sufficient level of detailed 

information or access to highly classified programs there would be 

the inevitable allegations of a clandestine BW program and no 

way for the United States to satisfy those concerns without 

exposing the program(s) to international scrutiny. 

Concerns over protecting the investments of the 

pharmaceutical and nascent bio-technology industries were also a 

key reason the United States rejected the protocol. In their zeal to 

achieve a verification protocol, most of our European allies 

downplayed the potential impact of intrusive investigations and 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

37

inspections on their industries. Interestingly, while the United 

States produces about 45% of all the drugs produced world-wide, 

Europe produces about 42%.116 The world’s pharmaceutical 

industry cautioned against imposing onerous burdens on the 

industry and raised the specter of potentially major losses of 

commercial proprietary information; protocol advocates tended to 

ignore these warnings. 

The United States $120-billion-per-year pharmaceutical 

industry is the world leader in the research, development, and 

production of new drugs. Expenditures represent about 1.5% of 

Gross Domestic Product.117 The investment in terms of time and 

money is extraordinarily high. It takes on average 15 years and 

over $500,000,000 to bring a potential product to market118 

Protecting this huge investment is a key concern, particularly 

since the organisms, processes, and equipment are not patented or 

otherwise protected, and industrial espionage is rampant in this 

industry. A clandestine swipe of a laboratory desk top could 

result in the loss of years of research and hundreds of millions of 

dollars in investment. 

Control over proprietary data would be extraordinarily 

difficult, if not impossible, under the proposed protocol. There is 

extreme risk that valuable proprietary information could be lost 

either through required declarations or as a result of a visit or 

investigation by inspectors. Managed access, the procedure used 

under the Chemical Weapons Convention, to try to protect 

information, is unlikely to protect, for example, formulae for 

newly developed drugs, or data on processes, methodologies, and 

materiel that give a company a competitive edge.119 Likewise, the 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

38

mere fact a firm was the subject of a biological weapons 

inspection could result in the loss of consumer and investor 

confidence in the firm and its products. At a minimum, the 

potential exists that the firm’s integrity and professional reputation 

could be called into question. Firms that participate in 

Government sponsored biodefense programs have been extremely 

reluctant to advertise their participation in these important 

programs primarily because of concerns over how that 

participation would affect the public’s perception of the firm. The 

potential for this was dramatically revealed during US trial 

inspections at US pharmaceutical firms. 

Finally, the United States conducted trial inspections 

demonstrated that how such inspections or so-called “visits” could 

have unintended consequences, creating ambiguities and 

generating suspicions rather than allaying them. As one of the 

participants noted, “Indeed, the inspecting teams in these mock 

exercises left with less confidence that a perfectly legal facility 

was in compliance with the convention than they had before the 

visit took place.”120 In other words, its perfectly legitimate 

activities could be construed as covers for illicit biological 

weapons activities. No wonder the United States was and remains 

skeptical about the viability and advisability of agreeing to the 

protocol which would require just these types of inspections and 

investigations. Given these potential losses and risks there would 

have to have been a significant return in terms of being able to 

verify if a state was engaged in illicit biological activities. Even 

protocol adherents agree that was not the case. 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

39

The Futility of Verification 

In many cases you need to produce more biological agent 

for the vaccines than for the actual biological weapons. 

 - Mr. Ron Cochran, Bio warfare expert, 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory121

Many protocol advocates have argued that verification is 

possible and that the United States was setting an impossible 

standard for verification noting that it had agreed to verification 

inspections in a number of other arms control agreements.122 The 

United States contended, however, that “verification” requires, at 

a minimum, that it be “more probable than not” that measures be 

able to come to a definitive conclusion with a greater than 50 

percent probability that a suspect activity was or was not in 

violation of the BWC. Unlike other arms control agreements 

where treaty limited items were countable (for example, the 

Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), visible (for example, 

the Limited Test Ban Treaty), measurable (for example, the 

Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty), or unique and nonnaturally occurring (such as the toxic chemicals in the Chemical 

Weapons Convention), none of these characteristics pertain to 

biological weapons. The United States argued that “verification,” 

although imperfect in each of agreements noted above, has a 

standard that cannot be met for biological materials with current 

technologies. Interestingly, the “verification” standard, despite 

United States’ stated doubts about its efficacy in this area, was 

never discussed in detail by any other states party throughout the 

10-year history of BWC protocol negotiations. 

In order to accurately assess US conclusions about the futility 

of inspections and other measures in the protocol, the United 

States objectively conducted inspection exercises at a number of 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

40

facilities likely to be targets for inspections or investigations. 

Scientific methods and controls were used in a scrupulously 

unbiased effort to fairly determine whether any of the proposed 

measures could provide sufficient evidence or information so as to 

make conclusive judgments about the presence or absence of a 

program. These inspections took place from 1994 to 1996 at 

vaccine production facilities, university laboratories, and US 

biodefense sites. The conclusions derived from these mock 

inspections were that the measures contained in the protocol for 

checking national declarations would not build confidence, and in 

all likelihood not unearth an illicit BW program. Indeed, the 

proposed measures of visits and investigations—euphemisms for 

inspections—would almost certainly result in more ambiguous 

data generating even more suspicion. Activities normally carried 

out in pharmaceutical and bio-defense facilities are 

indistinguishable from those that would be used to develop and 

produce BW agents. Absent the actual weaponization of the agent 

(filling a bomb or spray device for example), there are logical, 

rational, and perfectly innocent reasons for maintaining quantities 

and types of agents that have in the past been used as weapons. 

Also, efforts by the visited site to protect data often raised 

more questions as well as more suspicions. Unauthorized efforts 

to exceed the boundaries of the agreed inspection areas, for 

example, heightened industry concerns over potential losses and 

objections simply increased the suspicions of the inspectors.123 

Ultimately, the difference is simply one of intent. While intent 

can be gleaned from other factors and sources (for example, 

intelligence gathering, analysis, defectors), the activities subject to 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

41

inspections and investigations hardly ever contribute anything to 

the “intent” assessment. 

The mock inspections did, however, reveal that challenge 

inspections, in some situations, and disease-outbreak surveillance 

and inspection could be useful to a degree. For example, if a very 

specific allegation were to be made about BW use in a given 

location, and if immediate access (defined in terms of hours) to 

that place was obtained, there is a greater degree of likelihood 

illegal activity there would be discovered. On the other hand, a 

challenge inspection to a pharmaceutical facility, for example, 

would be exceedingly unlikely to uncover illicit activity even if it 

existed, due to the size and multiplicity of the processes taking 

place there.124 For example, the author visited Monsanto 

Industries in St. Louis, Missouri where the plant facility was 

several hundred acres in size and there were 18 vaults each 

containing thousands of samples of biological agents. One of the 

scientists commented that he could hide anthrax in ears of corn 

growing in their experimental fields and finding it would be 

problematic. Large vaccine production facilities would also be 

ideal places to hide illicit BW activity since there would be 

legitimate requirements for maintaining large quantities of agents 

for production purposes. 

It should be noted that there were some trial inspections 

conducted by other countries (notably the United Kingdom and 

the Netherlands) where results were at variance with mock 

inspections conducted by the United States, claiming that the 

results proved that verification was possible or more likely than 

the conclusions arrived at by the United States.125 However, 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

42

skepticism is called for since we only have the conclusions of 

those obviously biased in favor of such measures. The 

methodologies, the procedures, and the standards used have not 

been made available publicly for an objective assessment. As one 

of the chief scientists for the US mock inspections stated, 

To the best of my knowledge, none—and I mean none—

of these so-called mock inspections meet any of the 

scientific requirements of trial experiments. And 

none . . . have been published with their methodologies, 

hypotheses, and analyses intact for all to see. Trial 

inspections are difficult and expensive to execute 

properly. It is all too easy to construct a trial and 

populate it with hand-picked participants to get the 

answer one wishes to hear. We can do—and did do—

better than this.126

The results, shared with members of the Western Group, were 

anathema to BW verification advocates. “Confidence building,” 

“declaration checking,” and other transparency measures failed 

miserably in their ability to provide any usefully information to 

make a compliance determination. Indeed, the inspecting teams in 

these mock exercises left with less confidence that a perfectly 

legal facility was in compliance with the convention than they had 

before the visit took place. Given that the vast majority of 

activities advocated for the protocol would be time consuming and 

operationally onerous visits rather than formal investigations 

neither of which would provide very little if anything to the 

compliance-noncompliance calculus, the United States came to 

believe that the protocol could actually weaken the BWC. 

Further, given the real and substantial potential loss of intellectual 

property there was little incentive to “go along” with trying to 

create measures to verify that which was unverifiable in a benign 

environment. 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

43

The experience in Iraq with UNSCOM on-site inspections 

was the final nail in the coffin of BW verification. This 

experience conclusively demonstrated the futility of on-site 

inspections even under circumstances where inspectors could “go 

anywhere, any place, any time.” As Time Reporter Joanna 

McGeary recently wrote, 

Despite more than 30 searches for various unconventional 

arms, inspectors did not even know of its existence until 

mid-1995, when Saddam's defecting son-in-law Hussein 

Kamal revealed that secret labs buried in Iraq's security, 

not military, apparatus were cooking up deadly germs. 

Iraq subsequently admitted it made batches of anthrax 

bacteria, carcinogenic aflatoxin, agricultural toxins and 

the paralyzing poison botulinum. Iraqi officials reported 

they had loaded 191 bombs, including 25 missile 

warheads, with the poisons for use in the Gulf War. They 

said they destroyed them after the conflict, but they 

presented no proof, and Western officials don't believe 

them.127

As the Iraqi experience proved the absence of evidence is 

certainly not evidence of absence. If anything the Iraqis have 

since the end of inspections in 1998 become increasingly 

sophisticated and knowledgeable in the ways and methods of 

hiding clandestine BW labs and weapons facilities.128 Even the 

most intrusive and coercive inspections are unlikely to reveal 

anything absent Hussein’s unimaginable cooperation.129

Obviously, if an intrusive inspection effort such as was 

undertaken by UNSCOM proved unable to find a clandestine BW 

program, it is hard to see how anything less would have any 

greater success. Even more disturbing, arguably the lessons 

learned out of the UNSCOM experience will likely give 

proliferators the knowledge necessary to circumvent their 

international legal obligations and effectively hide illicit 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

44

programs. Arguably the lessons learned of the UNSCOM 

experience will likely give proliferators the knowledge necessary 

to circumvent their international legal obligations and effectively 

hide illicit programs. 

In the face of a determined effort to hid such programs, short 

of a long-shot fortuitous discovery, the chances of finding any 

evidence of a BW program is virtually nil. A critic of recent 

efforts to resume inspections in Iraq best summed up this hopeless 

task. 

Inspections can only do one thing well: verify that a 

country's declarations about a weapons program are 

honest and complete. It is feasible for inspectors to look 

at sites and equipment to see whether the official story 

about their use is accurate. Inspectors can rely on 

scientific principles, intelligence information and surprise 

visits to known weapons production sites to test what they 

are told. It is a different proposition altogether to wander 

about a country looking for what has been deliberately 

concealed. That is a task with no end.130

Thus, the United States strongly opposed labeling the protocol 

as a “verification” regime and advocated only challenge 

inspections as a potentially meaningful contribution to 

strengthening the convention. This approach has met with 

profound disapproval within the Western Group, whose other 

members continued to insist that “verification” was an achievable 

goal in the new protocol.”131 Some experts, while agreeing with 

the United States’ position that the Protocol could not provide 

confidence that countries were not cheating, argued that “a pact 

establishing standards and verification measures would deter some 

countries while also helping to build norms of international 

behavior.”132 In response, Undersecretary of State John Bolton 

told delegates to last year's review conference that "the time for 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

45

'better-than-nothing' protocols is over. We will continue to reject 

flawed texts like the BWC draft protocol, recommended to us 

simply because they are the product of lengthy negotiations or 

arbitrary deadlines, if such texts are not in the best interests of the 

United States."133 

Obviously, if the protocol can do little to strengthen the norm 

prohibiting the development, possession, and use of these 

weapons, are there any alternatives? In fact, there are a significant 

number of initiatives and mechanisms being undertaken or 

proposed which will have a much greater impact on this problem 

than any of the proposals contained in the now defunct protocol. 

A NEW PARADIGM FOR STOPPING BW PROGRAMS: 

THE SEAMLESS WEB OF MULTIFACETED 

INTERNATIOAL COOPERATION 

A single arrow is easily broken, a bundle of ten is not. 

- Japanese proverb134

In October 2001 President Bush, in the face of mounting 

criticism over the Administration’s rejection of the Protocol, 

proposed the following seven measures as alternatives and as 

measures that would by measurable standards have concrete 

results:

1. Enact strict national criminal legislation against prohibited 

BW activities with strong extradition requirements; 

2. Establish an effective United Nations procedure for 

investigating suspicious outbreaks or allegations of biological 

weapons use; 

3. Establish procedures for addressing BWC compliance 

concerns; 

4. Commit to improving international disease control and to 

enhance mechanisms for sending expert response teams to cope 

with outbreaks; 

5. Establish sound national oversight mechanisms for the 

security and genetic engineering of pathogenic organisms; 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

46

6. Devise a solid framework for bioscientists in the form of a 

code of ethical conduct that would have universal recognition; and 

7. Promote responsible conduct in the study, use, 

modification, and shipment of pathogenic organisms.

135

The President’s proposals have served as a useful blueprint 

for tackling the many-faceted threat of bio warfare and terrorism, 

and are a useful point from which to build additional proposals to 

be discussed in more detail here. They also served as the basis for 

discussion and agreement at the re-convened BWC Review 

Conference in November 2002. 

In the year following the suspended November 2001 Review 

Conference, a number of nations, primarily from the Western 

Group, discussed alternative proposals with the United States 

which could form the basis for agreement on a work program at 

the resumed Review Conference. Ultimately, in early Fall, the 

Western Group, led by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, 

and European Union Chairman Denmark, presented to Conference 

Chairman Tibor Toth a package of proposals which they believed 

would command consensus at the resumed Review Conference. 

The United States signaled its willingness to accept the Western 

Group initiative as long as it was presented as a take-it-or-leave-it 

proposal. Desperate for a successful outcome, Chairman Toth 

agreed, albeit reluctantly, to present the proposal as his proposal 

and as the best and only hope to avoid a failed conference.136 

The proposal package followed closely President Bush’s 

initial 2001 proposals and included the following: 

1. The adoption of national measures to implement the 

prohibitions of the BWC; 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

47

2. National mechanisms to establish and maintain the security 

and oversight of pathogenic microorganisms and toxins; 

3. Enhancing national capabilities for responding to, 

investigating and mitigating the effects of alleged use of biological 

weapons; 

4. Strengthening national and international institutional 

efforts for the surveillance, detection, diagnosis and combating of 

infectious diseases; and 

5. The creation, promulgation and adoption of codes of 

conduct for scientists.137

In addition the parties would agree to meet twice a year with 

the first meeting being a two-week meeting of experts followed by 

a one-week meeting of the states parties to consider the prior work 

of the experts. Items one and two would be considered in the first 

year, items three and four in the second year, and item five in the 

third year. The results of this effort would then be considered at 

the Sixth Review Conference in 2006. After almost a week of 

tense behind the scenes meetings and discussions, the Western 

Group, Eastern Group, and Non-Aligned Group agreed to the 

proposal and the Review Conference concluded successfully.138 

While concerns remain over whether some states may try to 

expand the scope of these meetings and attempt to resurrect the 

verification protocol or use these opportunities to attempt to create 

a new international enforcement and compliance organization 

similar to the Chemical Weapons Convention Organization for the 

Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the agreed program of work 

complements nicely with the efforts of national governments and 

existing international governmental organizations to stop or 

rollback the proliferation of biological weapons. As a first step, 

states parties will need to fully comply with their already existing 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

48

legal obligations under the BWC, such as implementing criminal 

legislation and controlling and regulating the transfer of agents. 

One study indicated that only 14 out of the 146 states parties have 

implementing legislation.139 The first-year work program will 

focus attention on this noncompliance issue and work to establish 

much needed national standards on criminalization and bio-safety. 

It is also expected that international governmental organizations, 

such as the World Health Organization and INTERPOL, will have 

active roles in the work program. This work program by states 

parties to the BWC complements the multitude of other initiatives 

currently ongoing which address the threat of biological warfare 

or terrorism. 

Overall, with the encouragement of the United States and on 

their own initiative, dozens of international governmental 

organizations and regional cooperative groups have declared 

policies, undertaken initiatives, and instituted mechanisms for 

combating terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass 

destruction. Almost all of these have relevance to the special 

problem of biological warfare and bioterrorism. Significantly, 

contrary to critics who decried the United States rejection of the 

draft Protocol as unilateralist, the US has aggressively pursued 

cooperative, multilateral approaches in these other, more effective 

areas and forums to enhance national, regional and international 

peace and security. It is in the unique case of biological agents 

and weapons that the US quickly recognized that a cumbersome 

multilateral arms control negotiation arriving at an ineffective and 

potentially costly agreement was not the way to achieve a world 

free of this threat. Following on and complementary to the 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

49

agreement reached at the Fifth Review Conference for a three-year 

work program, the approach proposed here is that strengthening 

the prohibitory norm will only succeed by instituting a 

comprehensive set of denial mechanisms that involve national 

defensive measures, multiple measures by multitudes of subject 

matter specific international government organizations, national 

implementation of already-in-place compliance mechanisms, and 

the willingness of the community of nations to call to account 

BW—proliferators and terrorists alike. 

The National Defense Imperative: First Responders And BioSecurity 

While it is not the purpose here to discuss the full range of 

national initiatives to prevent and respond to a attack with 

biological weapons either by terrorists or rogue states,140 it is 

nevertheless imperative that nations urgently develop defensive 

and responsive measures to protect their populations and send a 

message to would be attackers that they are fully prepared to 

respond to this type of attack, and that such attacks will not 

achieve the purposes for which they were intended. Further, 

because a biological defense security system would offer 

protection against both natural and nefarious transmission of 

disease, full implementation would directly benefit society even if 

no attack ever happened. Effective biological security requires that 

we fit the cure to the disease. Despite the fact that in 2002 an 

extra $11 billion has been allocated for WMD defense, it has been 

provided without clear priorities or objectives.141

In any event, the United States is slowly but surely training, 

equipping and preparing for the likely eventuality of a BW 

incident. While some of these efforts are at the nascent stage, all 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

50

are being assiduously developed and implemented as resources 

and technology make them available. These areas include the 

development of vaccines, establishing national disease 

surveillance networks, dramatically increasing the numbers and 

training of laboratory technicians with an emphasis on qualified 

microbiologists, training medical response teams, developing 

biological agent detection systems, developing advanced portable 

decontamination systems that can be immediately deployed in 

large numbers, creating special wings of isolation wards in 

existing hospitals to handle victims of BW, and conducting 

regular drills of the public safety and health systems to determine 

weaknesses in our response capabilities. As an added benefit, this 

kind of preparedness would also help to prevent unintentional 

outbreaks of disease. 

All of these efforts will require additional state and Federal 

funding, greater coordination and cooperation, and a crash 

program in research and development of new technologies to 

detect rapidly the presence of biological agents.142 Admittedly, 

there are a number of scientific, financial, and legal hurdles to 

overcome in developing this comprehensive defense system. We 

are a long way from development of and approval for vaccines for 

the most common of biological warfare agents.143 We still have 

not developed an effective biological agent detection system, and 

the funding for these measures is insufficient. 

For all the other measures to work, it is essential that nations 

support national defensive measures. States of the former Soviet 

Union, in particular Russia, need to do more nationally as well as 

cooperatively with other nations to ensure that mistakes of the past 

do not become nightmares of the future.144 Just as importantly, 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

51

because infected passengers can travel the world in less time than 

it takes for a disease to incubate, it is crucial, for the national 

interest as well as for humanitarian reasons, to improve 

cooperative efforts, such as disease surveillance, with other 

nations and international organizations. Disease cannot be 

stopped at the border. The United States must act internationally 

as well as nationally. This is one area the United States needs to 

do more. 

The United States has slowly embarked on cooperative 

research and development initiatives in the detection and response 

to biological weapons. For example, in July, 2002, the 

Department of Energy and the British Ministry of Defense signed 

an agreement to collaborate on ways to detect and address the 

threat of biological (and chemical) weapons.145 Other similar 

cooperative efforts are in the works. Currently however, there 

exists no national body to coordinate the multitude of national 

defense efforts with the initiatives of other nations and 

organizations. There should be a central clearing house for health, 

customs, police, military, financial, and intelligence organizations 

to share information on what initiatives and measures they are 

pursuing, whether or not there is any overlap in their efforts and 

for the encouragement of cooperative arrangements across 

specialized fields. As discussed below, while specialized 

international organizations are already embarked on similar 

efforts, there is as yet no organized effort to tie in national 

defensive initiatives with the multilateral efforts of the 

international community in which the United States is playing a 

key role. 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

52

The soon-to-be-instituted Homeland Security Department will 

have as its goals the consolidation and synchronization of the 

efforts of Federal agencies, and to establish national policy and 

guidelines for state and local governments. With respect to the 

BW threat, since early detection of biological attacks will be 

crucial to saving lives, the new department will be tasked with 

developing, deploying, managing, and maintaining a national 

detection system.146 That system will most likely consist of a 

national public health data surveillance system and a sensor 

network to detect and report the release of biological agents in 

densely populated areas. Logically, this new department would be 

best situated to lead the effort to integrate domestic efforts with 

international efforts at defending and responding to this threat, to 

include the integration of the national public health data 

surveillance system with the global networks being developed by 

WHO. In any event, for any of the other deterrence and denial 

strategies to have a chance at success, nations must be willing to 

commit to their BW national defense. 

The Vital Importance of Compliance Diplomacy: Enforcing 

the Prohibitory Norm 

In the days of the Cold War, we were able to manage the 

threat with strategies of deterrence and containment. But 

it's a lot tougher to deter enemies that have no country to 

defend. And containment is not possible when dictators 

obtain weapons of mass destruction and are prepared to 

share them with terrorists who intend to use them to 

inflict catastrophic losses on the United States. 

 - Vice President Dick Cheney147

It is also not the purpose of this paper to discuss what 

mechanisms are available to deter would-be proliferators and 

WMD terrorists.148 While the threat of complete annihilation may 

be sufficient to deter despots with BW, it may be of limited use in 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

53

preventing biological attacks by terrorists or doomsday cults such 

as Aum Shinrikyo. Biological terrorism could remain largely 

immune to the threat of force. Hopefully, a nation that harbors 

such terrorists could be compelled to stop them or allow the 

international community to intervene to eradicate the threat. As 

previously noted, absent the “smoking gun” it is difficult to detect 

an actual attack. The incubation times of most diseases—for 

example, seven to 17 days for smallpox—may lead terrorists to 

hope they can cover their tracks through covert releases of 

biological agents. Obviously, an attacker who cannot be identified 

cannot be threatened. 

So, if all the other measures and mechanisms discussed here 

are to be fully successful they must be backed up with a 

willingness of nations, regions, and the world to take swift and 

effective action against those who would threaten to use BW. 

Through appropriate Security Council Resolutions, many of which 

already form the basis for action,149 statements by regional 

collective organizations, and a demonstrated willingness to use 

force when necessary, will augment and reinforce other noncoercive, cooperative measures and mechanisms. This willingness 

to be serious about the threat will forcefully communicate to other 

BWC member states that we take seriously their commitments and 

so should they. 

This includes the obligation to submit Confidence and 

Security Building data they agreed to at the 1986 and 1991 

Review Conferences. Next, those who are named suspect 

proliferators should be pressured by all member states, but 

particularly the Western Group, to “come clean” with respect to 

their programs. In addition, as will be discussed below, nations 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

54

must institute police and regulatory measures so that the 

suspicious activities of members of groups like Aum Shinrikyo 

will be detected, interdicted, and punished for their actions. 

Nations must demonstrate the political will to pass on information 

regarding proliferation activities and act on it when received. The 

forceful determination of like-minded states should leave no room 

for doubt that the consequences of failing to live up to the 

obligations of the BWC and adhering to the norm against such 

weapons will be severe. 

It should be made quite clear that continued noncompliance 

could lead to territorial occupation or regime change. As Vice 

President Cheney stated, “Wars are never won on the defensive. 

We must take the battle to the enemy. We will take every step 

necessary to make sure our country is secure, and we will 

prevail.”150 The enemies of civilization, peace, and security must 

be assured that conspiring to use biological or other weapons 

against America or her friends will fail, and they will face a swift, 

certain, and devastating response. It would go a long way to 

maintaining the norm against these weapons if the international 

community through the United Nations, a regional cooperative 

security arrangement, or coalition of the willing demonstrated an 

equal commitment of intolerance towards noncompliance. 

International Institutions: The Role of the United Nations 

Investigating and Responding to Non-Compliance. Under 

Article VI of the BWC any state party who suspects another state 

is violating the provisions of the BWC may “lodge a complaint” 

with the Security Council, and all states parties are obligated to 

cooperate with the Security Council in its investigation. The 

assumption of Article VI is that if a violation is found it will be 
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left up to the Security Council to decide what measures, if any, to 

take in response. While finding an illicit BW program is 

problematic, the Security Council and the United Nations 

secretariat could serve as a vehicle for reinforcing the norm of 

nonuse of biological weapons by committing itself to investigating 

any use of such weapons by non-state parties to the BWC.151 At a 

minimum, the Security Council should signal its willingness 

through an appropriate resolution(s) that any development, 

production, or use of such weapons or agents for hostile purposes 

will be subject to sanctions and collective enforcement actions. 

For example, by resolution, the Security Council could buttress 

the BWC by making an explicit and unqualified commitment: 

a. To treat any use of weapons prohibited by the 

Convention as a crime against humanity, not open to be 

excused or palliated by any claim of justifying 

considerations; 

b. To regard any regime guilty of the crime, or of 

sheltering or supporting perpetrators, as having forfeited 

legitimacy; 

c. to pursue individually as criminals, by international 

process, any such regime’s leaders and any others 

participating in the crime; and 

d. To reverse any advantage secured by its commission, 

and to succor its victims.152

This type of commitment should reinforce to any would-be 

proliferator that the costs of noncompliance would not only be 

world opprobrium but a swift, certain, severe, and collective 

response. A more traditional but no less important role for the UN 

would be in providing a forum for developing standards for the 

regulation and criminalization of illicit activities related to 

biological weapons. This was proposed by the United States as 

one of the many alternatives to the draft protocol. 
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Forum for Criminalizing the Development, Possession, and 

Use of Biological Weapons. Article IV of the BWC requires 

member states to take “all necessary measures” to prevent the 

development, acquisition, and production of biological agents for 

hostile purposes. This article commits states parties to extend the 

obligations contained in the BWC to their citizens and 

residents.153 However, only about one-third of the BWC states 

parties had reported the enactment of implementing legislation.154 

And only a few, mostly Western, states have enacted legislation 

criminalizing such activities and even fewer have established the 

necessary regulatory schemes, with inspectors and 

approval/licensing arrangements to investigate and inspect 

facilities which have the potential of becoming a biological 

weapons facility. Likewise, few states have extradition 

arrangements whereby miscreants who have acquire, produced, or 

developed such weapons could be extradited for prosecution. If 

we are to have any hope of going after indigenous terrorist groups 

who are hell bent on acquiring these agents for terrorist use, this 

needs to be a high priority. 

National legislation often differs drastically from country to 

country. Article IV of the BWC requires all states to undertake 

measures to prohibit the development, possession, or acquisition 

of agents, toxins, weapons, or delivery systems for use as 

biological weapons. This would require nations to implement 

national legislation criminalizing such acts and creating the 

necessary administrative and regulatory bodies to ensure that 

agents, materials, and technology are not diverted from legitimate 

and peaceful purposes to a biological weapons program or for 
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terroristic use. Treaties defining international crimes are based on 

the concept that certain crimes are particularly dangerous or 

abhorrent to all and that all states therefore have the right and the 

responsibility to combat them. Certainly in this category, 

threatening to the community of nations and to present and future 

generations, are crimes involving the hostile use of disease or 

poison and the hostile exploitation of biotechnology. 

Compiling data on national implementing legislation and 

working to help states parties draft legislation and coordinate 

legislation regionally would be a prospective task for the UN 

Secretariat and interested NGOs. For example, at a recent 

workshop on an international law approach to biological terrorism, 

various draft international conventions were discussed in which 

state parties would agree to (1) establish jurisdiction with respect 

to the specified crimes extending to all persons in its territory, 

regardless of the place where the offense is committed or the 

nationality of the offender; (2) investigate whenever any person 

alleged to have committed the listed crimes is present in the 

nation’s territory, and (3) to prosecute or extradite any such 

alleged offender if satisfied that the facts so warrant.155 

This is another possible and promising avenue for UN active 

participation. Pursuing such a convention under the auspices of 

the UN’s Sixth (legal) Committee has a great deal of merit and 

should be pursued. Adoption and widespread adherence to such a 

convention would create a new dimension of constraint against 

biological weapons by applying national criminal law to hold 

individual offenders responsible and punishable should they be 

found in the territory of any state that supports the convention. 

Such individuals would be regarded as hostes humani generis, 
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enemies of all humanity. The norm against biological weapons 

would be strengthened, deterrence of potential offenders would be 

enhanced, and international cooperation in suppressing the 

prohibited activities would be facilitated. 

Other International Governmental Organizations (IGOs): 

Cooperative Mechanisms 

The United States has placed great emphasis on working 

multilaterally and with likeminded groups to combat the BW 

threat. The benefits of international cooperation and coordination 

to address with the threat are self-evident. Recognizing that the 

traditional “arms control” approach, with so-called verification 

and confidence-building measures incorporated into new 

agreements that proliferators know they can ignore with impunity, 

has failed to stem the proliferation of this threat, a new diverse and 

multi-faceted, multilateral approach is needed. This approach 

requires the determined cooperation of nations and international 

organizations, and the support of industry and the scientific 

community. 

In addition to national initiatives to protect and prepare for an 

eventual attack with biological weapons, the United States must 

work within the panoply of international governmental 

mechanisms to develop and support a determined and multifaceted 

approach emphasizing the need for better coordination and 

cooperation among these organizations and the member states. 

There are currently a number of international governmental 

organizations (IGOs) engaged with their member states in creating 

mechanisms, initiating programs, and supporting national and 

international efforts at stopping illicit BW activities. The 

following descriptions of such efforts are a representative but not 

a comprehensive listing of those endeavors. 
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Despite the frustration and bitterness that the United States’ 

strong stand ignited at the BWC Review Conference among the 

arms control crowd of diplomats and NGOS, a wide and growing 

array of national governments and IGOs is working together to 

develop concrete and effective measures to meet the challenge of 

stopping illicit and clandestine biological weapons programs. 

These new initiatives currently lack coordination and often occur 

without public knowledge or appreciation for the contribution to 

nonproliferation. One of the ways this recognition could be 

accomplished is by inviting these organizations to the BWC 

Review Conference to give reports on their efforts. Putting these 

efforts “under the umbrella” of the BWC would go a long way to 

demonstrating that the norm is not in danger and that the world, 

including the United States, is actively engaged in this effort. 

Meetings could even be held every year to provide a forum for 

these organizations to report on their efforts at stopping and 

deterring BW proliferators or would-be biological terrorists. 

The G-8 Summit Process. Recently, the major powers took a 

significant step in a cooperative effort at stemming the 

proliferation of WMD. This was the June 2002, G-8 Summit 

Statement announcing the "G-8 Global Partnership Against the 

Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.”156 The 

United States pledged $10 billion toward this effort and urged 

other G-8 states to donate $10 billion over 10 years, with the aim 

of enhancing projects underway in the former Soviet Union, 

including projects dedicated toward reducing the potential loss of 

technology, materials, and information from the clandestine BW 

program. Assuming full implementation, this is a major step in 

eliminating one of the most significant proliferation concerns. 
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The G-8 Statement also adopted six principles for fighting the 

spread of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism. 

These included the adherence to current norm-building treaties, 

strict enforcement of export controls, and providing assistance to 

other states that lack the financial ability to deter or stop terrorist 

groups within their borders from acquiring these weapons. This 

statement, along with the many similar such statements that have 

been promulgated before, reinforces the commitment of the major 

countries to taking whatever steps are necessary to limit access by 

terrorist groups, their supporters and proliferators to the materials, 

information, and technology for making such weapons. 

World Health Organization. One constructive provision in 

the draft protocol proposed to conduct investigations in event of a 

disease outbreak is to determine whether the origin is natural or a 

deliberate release. To limit and successfully interdict the spread 

of disease, it is very important to understand the origin and means 

by which it is spreading. This requires researchers to be able to 

interview victims and health care workers at the site of the 

outbreak. Also, countries suffering from a disease outbreak are 

inevitably sensitive to outside interference and wary of 

accusations that the disease is caused by BW activity. For this 

reason, cooperation is more likely to be forthcoming if there is no 

initial assumption that foul play may be involved. Therefore, 

depending on the type of outbreak, it makes more sense for the 

relevant epidemiological investigations to take place under the 

mantle of the World Health Organization, the Food and 

Agriculture Organization, or the World Organization for Animal 

Health; organizations that are not directly associated with the 

BWC. 
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One of the critically important areas for early warning and 

identification of a potential biological attack is the worldwide 

monitoring of the spread of dangerous infectious diseases. The 

United States and others have strongly supported the creation of a 

global infectious disease surveillance network as a tool to detect 

biological attacks and combat naturally occurring outbreaks of 

diseases. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is currently 

working with the World Health Organization (WHO)157 to create a 

“network of networks” comprised of national public health 

authorities, military laboratories, UN agencies, media, and 

nongovernmental organizations.158 In that regard, there are a 

number of hurdles that need to be overcome. These include the 

extremely poor health care infrastructures of many nations and the 

reluctance of governments to allow outside organizations into 

their countries fearing possible negative impacts on trade and 

tourism if a disease outbreak is announced. Additionally, WHO is 

particularly protective of its reputation as a neutral and its general 

policy of confidentiality. 

WHO is currently engaged in a project to expand its 

surveillance coverage, which currently only covers three diseases: 

yellow fever, plague, and cholera (small pox is also monitored 

although there has been no reported case since 1979). While 

WHO, in order to preserve its global access, has purposefully 

distanced itself from any initiative to support national and 

international efforts against proliferators, it has recognized that it 

is particularly well placed to strengthen public health surveillance 

and response activities for naturally or deliberately occurring 

outbreaks of disease. As a result, the 55th World Health Assembly 

passed a resolution159 urging member states to collaborate “in the 
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rapid analysis and sharing of surveillance data of international 

humanitarian concern,” and “to treat any deliberate use . . . of 

biological agents . . . as a global public health threat.” It has also 

recently published a guide on how populations and governments 

should respond to biological and chemical weapons.160 Further, it 

directed WHO to strengthen and expand its global surveillance of 

infectious diseases, coordinate information gathering on potential 

disease outbreaks, and to work with other international 

organizations to develop “new tools, within the mandate of WHO, 

including modeling of possible scenarios of natural occurrence, 

accidental release or deliberate use of biological . . . agents.” 

WHO is actively engaged in a number of initiatives to prevent 

the spread or deliberate release of biological agents. For example, 

it recently, at UN request, completely revised the Model 

Regulations for the Transport of Dangerous Goods establishing 

security standards for the transportation of hazardous biological 

substances to prevent theft or accidental release.161 WHO is also 

working on developing a civilian-military health network to 

monitor and report outbreaks of diseases. They are currently 

working with the US Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center 

and other national military health systems to develop a global 

military health surveillance system. The Department of Defense 

has established a Global Emerging Infections System for the 

detection and reporting of biological attacks and outbreaks of 

disease,162 and this system will hopefully be incorporated 

eventually into WHO’s developing worldwide civilian-military 

health surveillance network. This has particular promise since 

almost every country in the world has a military but not all have 
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public health services. Military reporting could be extremely 

useful in the early detection of suspicious outbreaks of disease. 

Following the 2001 anthrax attack in the United States, a 

Chemical and Biological Working Group was established to 

provide information and resources on preventing, preparing for, 

and responding to deliberate releases of chemical and biological 

agents.163 It has also subsequently strengthened its biosafety 

training programs, begun work on model practices for security 

issues of pathogens, and will soon re-issue its Laboratory 

Biosafety Manual.164

WHO has already established a comprehensive health 

surveillance and alert system via the Internet called the Global 

Outbreak Alert and Response Network.165 Global Alert allows the 

sharing of information with over 1000 other organizations and 

countries on outbreaks of diseases and other public health 

information. Likewise, member countries usually share 

information with the WHO because of the resources WHO can 

bring to bear on any public health problem, the fact that WHO 

officials are usually co-located with the health ministry, and the 

maintenance of a neutral non-political reputation.166 This data 

base can be accessed by any person or organization. So, while 

WHO avoids formal relationships with military or law 

enforcement agencies, such as NATO or INTERPOL, those 

organizations still have access to WHO medical intelligence 

information. WHO will also readily consult with any organization 

seeking information on preventing or detecting outbreaks of 

diseases. WHO efforts to expand their surveillance system to 

cover other diseases and to support an increased capability around 

the world to rapidly detect and respond to any outbreak of disease, 
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whether deliberately released or naturally occurring, Congress has 

proposed an addition $70 million dollars be provided to WHO for 

this purpose.167 

We are a long way from a comprehensive and global network 

for detection and syndrome surveillance for rapidly detecting new 

patterns of disease outbreaks, but this should be one of our highest 

priorities in the fight against biological warfare. This will depend 

on educating, training, and collaborating with scientists and health 

officials throughout the world, and utilizing the on-going 

development of rapid throughput methodologies and new 

technologies to create this global network. And it will be WHO 

that plays a critical role in building and strengthening this vitally 

important mechanism. 

WHO is primarily concerned with diseases affecting humans 

and usually does not concern itself with diseases affecting plants 

or animals specifically. Two other international organizations 

address issues associated with food and agriculture and animals. 

There are a much larger number of animal and plant pathogens 

and pests that could be used as a weapon against the economic 

viability of a society. Fungi, viruses, and bacteria cause more than 

50,000 diseases of plants in the United States, for example. There 

is also a clear intersection between crops and livestock in the case 

of animal feed, and it is quite possible that an undetected crop 

disease could adversely affect livestock if not caught and treated 

or isolated in time. 

Food and Agriculture Organization. The Food and 

Agriculture Organization (FAO), with 175 member states, 

provides technical and humanitarian assistance to natural and 

man-made disasters affecting crops.168 The FAO has not formally 
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been involved in any effort to prevent the spread and use of 

biological weapons. It is, however, prepared to play an active part 

within its broad mandate of providing humanitarian assistance and 

protecting crops and food resources. The FAO is well placed to 

serve as a clearinghouse on information concerning suspicious 

outbreaks of crop diseases and provide resources to combat 

outbreaks. Here is another international governmental 

organization that the United States and other like-minded 

countries could utilize in their efforts at stopping BW 

proliferation. FAO has long been engaged in efforts at biosafety 

in food and agriculture, and it has produced a number of codes of 

conduct for ensuring the continued safety and viability of food 

stocks and agricultural products. These have included the Code of 

Conduct for the Import and Release of Exotic Biological Control 

Agents (1995), the Code of Conduct on Biotechnology as it relates 

to Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (under 

negotiation), and the International Code of Conduct for the Plant 

Germplasm Collecting and Transfer of Germless (1993). 

World Animal Health Organization. The Office International 

Des Epizooties (OIE), with 157 member states, reports on the 

occurrence and course of animal diseases worldwide, and of ways 

to control these diseases, provide international coordination of 

research on, and control of, important animal diseases, and works 

toward the harmonization of trade regulations for animals and 

animal products.169 OIE has established an information system to 

collect and disseminate information on outbreaks of animal 

diseases, and routinely sends missions to developing countries in 

need of technical assistance in fighting animal diseases. Currently 

OIC has no program or initiative with the specific objective of 
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preventing or reacting to biological warfare. The United States 

should encourage the OIE to develop a reporting and prevention 

program for its members in order to more rapidly identify and 

respond to suspicious outbreaks of animal diseases. One proposal 

worth considering is the establishment of regional (and 

international) risk assessment units and a centralized database on 

surveillance and disease data. This would include a near 

continuous review of the data to provide early warning of animal 

disease threats.170 Just as there is currently no United States 

national system that can report diseases and infestations of animal 

pathogens and pests, there is no international system. 

The FAO, WHO, and OIE set standards for food safety and 

the protection of animal health. These three organizations could 

be used as a forum for establishing international policy and 

creating a regulatory framework for biosecurity in toto. There is a 

need for a coordinated approach to biosecurity and a need to have 

these organizations work together with their member partners to 

ensure the response and regulatory resources are in place to 

address any potential biological threat. As already noted, terrorist 

threats to use or steal biological agents and nuclear materials must 

now be taken far more seriously. Indeed, unlike traditional 

chemical weapons, just a few kilograms of these agents or 

materials can inflict enormous harm. This, in turn, increases the 

importance of monitoring the spread of dangerous infectious 

diseases to know if and when one has been attacked and to be able 

to take timely remedial action. 

World Customs Organization. In the wake of the September 

11 terrorist attack no international governmental organization has 

been more proactive than the World Customs Organization 
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(WCO). WCO, with 159 member states, is actively engaged in 

and aggressively pursuing a wide array of cooperative measures 

with dozens of international organizations and NGOs in addition 

to appealing to its members to institute previously approved 

compliance and enforcement measures to thwart the smuggling of 

materials for weapons of mass destruction. First, they have 

developed an action plan to improve border security and prepared 

initiatives for adoption by the member states on securing and 

inspecting international cargo traffic. For countries which lack the 

financial capability or expertise, WCO provides technical experts 

for training and arranges for grants and loans to buy the necessary 

equipment to fully implement these measures. Second, WCO has 

signed over 40 agreements with international organizations, such 

as INTERPOL and WHO, and business-related NGOs such as the 

International Association of Ports and Harbors, to share 

information, provide subject-matter expertise, and to develop 

strategies for combating the smuggling of biological, chemical, 

and radioactive materials.171 

In addition, WCO works closely with member states customs 

authorities and it has created a restricted Customs Enforcement 

Network (CEN) database for sharing intelligence information 

among the members. It has established eleven Regional 

Intelligence Liaison Offices (RILO), one recently opened up in 

Moscow, that put information into the database along with 

national customs authorities. 

WCO has recognized that there is a vital need to secure and 

protect the international trade supply chain but has also recognized 

the vulnerability of that supply chain to terrorist attack or being 

utilized by terrorists and rogue states for transporting weapons of 
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mass destruction. The only way to interdict this illicit traffic is 

through the cooperation and exchange of information among all its 

members. In that regard, WCO is working on a number of 

cooperative initiatives with member countries. This includes 

examining the possibility of doing “bio alerts” similar to the 

International Atomic Energy Agency’s alerts for the theft of 

radioactive materials. The idea is that items could be identified as 

being in danger of diversion to illicit BW programs and an alert 

issued. WCO could then use their tariff trade codes as “identity” 

trackers for items of concern to places of concern. So, any 

terrorist group that was trying to acquire materials or equipment 

for a BW program through international trade routes would have a 

much greater chance of being picked up by national customs 

officials. WCO could work with export control groups, such as 

Australia Group, to help identify items of concern. Finally, WCO 

has embarked on a campaign to work with business NGOs to 

develop mechanisms for reporting suspicious activities at each 

link in the chain of transport. This would go from the exporter to 

the freight forwarders to the handlers (air, land, sea) to the 

importers to the end users. One example is the Business AntiSmuggling Coalition, which WCO is working with to institute 

measures to interdict WMD smuggling.172

International Maritime Organization. The United States is 

leading an effort within the International Maritime Organization 

(IMO) to stop the shipping of biological agents for hostile 

purposes and to criminalize the use of BW on maritime vessels. 

IMO currently has 162 member states, has concluded cooperative 

arrangements with 37 international governmental organizations, 

and routinely consults with over 60 NGOs. One of the key 
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objectives of the IMO is to take all action necessary to proactively 

respond to any threat to the safety of ships and those on board, and 

to the maritime environment. The IMA agreed to hold a 

Conference on Maritime Security in December 2002, to adopt new 

regulations to enhance ship and port security and avert shipping 

from becoming a target of international terrorism. In addition 

adopting and enforcing among its members practical preventative 

measures, it is also important to ensure that criminals who have 

perpetrated acts of violence at sea be properly brought to trial and 

punished. IMO's legal committee is currently reviewing the 

Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the 

Safety of Maritime Navigation, 1988 and the Protocol for the 

Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed 

Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf, 1988 (the SUA 

treaties).173 

The United States has proposed amendments to these treaties 

to broaden the list of offenses to include using biological agents to 

harm persons on board ships and to use the cargo as a biological 

weapon. As a follow-up to this initiative, member states should 

also consider new rules for maritime boarding of ships suspected 

of transporting weapons of mass destruction. This could be 

modeled after the hot pursuit, boarding at sea, and other 

interdiction agreements negotiated among various states to stop 

drug smuggling. Similar arrangements could be negotiated under 

the auspices of the IMO using the drug cooperation agreements as 

a model.174 

Regional Collective Security Organizations 

One of the key areas of multilateral cooperation in fighting 

the threat of biological weapons is the ability of collective security 
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and cooperation organizations to band together and develop 

comprehensive plans for defending and responding to threats and 

the actual use of BW. There is probably no greater deterrent to a 

prospective proliferator or terrorist group than the knowledge that 

targeted countries are prepared to defend and protect themselves 

from these weapons and the certainty that the capability is there to 

respond overwhelmingly to an actual use. Recognizing that there 

is a long way to go, the United States and other nations are acting 

promptly and effectively to defend against and limit the damage of 

any BW attack. However, national solutions will not be 

sufficient, and the United States is working on a number of levels 

with its allies and friends to respond to any collective threat. 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The most obvious and 

important of these relationships is with the NATO alliance. After 

the September 11 attack the NATO alliance declared that the 

attack was, under Article V of the Alliance Charter,175 an attack 

against all 19 NATO allies. As one senior NATO official 

declared, "There is a broad recognition now in the alliance—but 

there was not on Sept. 10, 2001—that the combination of 

terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is the single greatest 

threat, not just to the United States but to every member of the 

alliance."176 NATO subsequently agreed to provide its assets and 

capabilities to support operations undertake by other international 

organizations or by coalitions involving Allies to respond to any 

threat of use of biological or other WMD and other acts of 

international terrorism.177 NATO has evidenced a willingness to 

act as the primary responder to international acts of terrorism 

world-wide and support out-of-area non-NATO operations. 

Subsequently, the Alliance leadership has agreed on a number of 
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enhancement measures to strengthen NATO’s ability to respond, 

but unfortunately these promises have yet to be fully funded by 

America’s NATO partners. For example, in May 2002, NATO’s 

Defense Group on Proliferation set forth a number of initiatives to 

improve NATO’s ability to combat and counter any biological 

weapons attack, including stockpiling medicines and protective 

equipment. These initiatives have yet to bear fruit.178 If NATO is 

truly going to develop the response capabilities to affect a 

proliferator or state-sponsored terrorist group it must follow 

through on its political commitments to transform NATO. 

NATO has also laid out a blueprint for improving its ability to 

assist national authorities in protecting civilian populations and 

critical infrastructure. This includes five new initiatives: “a 

prototype Deployable Nuclear, Chemical and Biological 

Analytical laboratory; a prototype NBC Event Response Team; a 

Virtual Center of Excellence for NBC Weapons Defense; a NATO 

Biological and Chemical Defense Stockpile; and a Disease 

Surveillance System.”179 Admittedly, the work on these initiatives 

is proceeding at a snail’s pace primarily due to a lack of funding 

on the part of the Alliance members. Nowhere is this more starkly 

apparent than in the staffing of NATO’s Weapons of Mass 

Destruction [intelligence collection and coordination] Center. 

While promising to upgrade the Center from its current staff 

of 12,180 there is no funding forthcoming for upgrading the Center, 

and there is no effort to enhance its role as an intelligence sharing 

and analytical center.181 Originally established with the idea that 

the Center would employ as many as 200 scientists, economists, 

intelligence, and criminal experts to produce analytical reports 

based on intelligence and information from Alliance members and 
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other sources, the Center is a shell of the original concept. The 

CIA is the only national intelligence agency to maintain a liaison 

officer, but there is little flow of information to the Center from 

any source. There is a biologist on the staff to work on biologicalrelated issues, and the Center does generate some high-quality 

assessments, but clearly the role of the Center needs to be 

enhanced. The Center is active in the development of the Virtual 

Center of Excellence, and work has finally begun on creating an 

information-sharing database with connectivity to all NATO 

member capitals on chemical, biological, and nuclear terrorism 

and proliferation threats.182 Success, of course, will depend in 

large part on the willingness of members to provide national 

intelligence information. 

One of the promising proposals, hopefully to be approved 

soon by the Alliance, is to combine military and civilian health 

surveillance data among NATO members and then to combine 

that information with other databases from multinational reference 

laboratories to provide NATO-wide surveillance to detect 

outbreaks of diseases including BW attacks. This would be a 

useful and appropriate role for the WMD Center. The Center 

could be custodian of databases, and these databases would be 

improved, upgraded, and integrated into a useful comprehensive 

system. For example, one idea being considered is to have a 

stockpile of antibiotics/vaccines, which would be made available 

for all of NATO as required. The Center would track the location 

and stock availability and provide that information to members as 

required. The Center would maintain databases for nuclear, 

chemical, and biological (NBC) defense schools, NBC equipment, 

and national response capabilities.183 
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The Center would also be the logical place for maintaining a 

“virtual staff” for accessing expertise in times of crisis, which 

would alleviate some staffing costs. While NATO officials are 

already working with WHO to create a medical surveillance data 

base, as discussed above, it would increase the effectiveness of 

NATO’s efforts in combating terrorism and responding to WMD 

threats by creating the same cooperative working and coordinating 

relationships with international police and regulatory 

organizations such as Interpol, Europol, and the World Customs 

Organization. Certainly combining NATO’s capabilities with 

police, regulatory, and health organizations along with the 

national capabilities of its members would be far more effective 

than some hollow inspection or verification regime in stopping 

and responding to the threat of biological terrorism or warfare. 

NATO’s efforts and initiatives should serve as models for 

other regional organizations as they grapple with the threat of BW. 

While NATO is now the world’s only collective security 

organization with committed military forces, other regional 

organizations in their commitment to fighting terrorism could 

approve and encourage member states to collectively adopt 

measures and share information on potential proliferators or 

terrorist groups. 

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. For 

example, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe 

(OSCE), with its 55 member states covering an area from 

Vancouver to Vladivostok, recently affirmed its collective 

commitment to battle all forms of terrorism including the use of 

WMD.184 Recognizing that these weapons pose a threat to 

international peace, security, and stability, the OSCE has 
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expressed its political support for export control groups such as 

the Australia Group and proposed organization-wide standards for 

effective licensing and enforcement procedures covering the BWrelevant pathogens and BW-related dual-use equipment. 

Accordingly, it has sponsored a series of conferences to urge 

member states to comply with relevant international standards, 

cooperate with enforcement organizations, and continue to 

examine ways to cooperate and coordinate nonproliferation 

efforts. 

Within OSCE member states sub-regional cooperation is also 

beginning. Recently, the defense ministers of southern European 

nations began a series of meetings to develop common 

assessments and promote cooperation among themselves in 

responding to the threats of WMD. Proposed measures to be 

developed included regional defense intelligence and information 

sharing among militaries and border security.185 These types of 

regional and sub-regional efforts need to be encouraged, 

strengthened, and recognized as the front line in defending and 

responding to WMD terrorism and proliferation. 

Other Regional Organizations. Other regional organizations 

such as the European Union,186 Organization of American States 

(OAS),187 and the Association of Southeastern Nations 

(ASEAN)188 could and are implementing similar measures. For 

example, ASEAN recently signed a joint declaration with the 

United States to continue and improve intelligence and terrorist 

financing information sharing; enhance liaison relationships with 

law enforcement agencies to counter terrorism; strengthen 

capacity-building efforts through training and education programs, 

and joint operations; and provide mutual assistance on 
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transportation, border, and immigration controls.189 Other 

regional organizations such as the African Union (formerly the 

Organization of African Unity), the Arab League (where most of 

the countries of proliferation concern and sponsoring terrorism 

reside), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, 

and the British Commonwealth could embark on similar and 

complementary efforts. Of course, political commitments of this 

sort often do not translate into concrete action. But it is the allimportant first step towards full regional cooperative efforts in 

fighting both terrorism and the proliferation of WMD. These 

concrete, day-to-day cooperative efforts in tracking illicit financial 

transactions; law enforcement; intelligence gathering; military 

exchanges; training and education programs; customs, 

immigration and border patrol cooperation demonstrate the 

world’s commitment to stopping this world threat. 

Industry Associations and Other Nongovernmental 

Organizations 

It is clear that the pharmaceutical and biotechnology 

industries have a large role to play in both domestic and 

international preparedness, prevention, denial, and responses to 

the use of biological weapons. On the defense/response side, the 

industry will have the lead in developing new vaccines and 

medicines, although this will be a challenging, difficult, and timeconsuming endeavor.190 In regards to prevention and denial of 

access to the agents, technology, and related materials, industry 

should also be committed and willing to work with national 

governments, IGOs, and other NGOs to further reduce the 

likelihood of proliferation or the use of such agents. 

One way the biotechnology industry can support and 

contribute to the struggle against the illicit use of biologic agents 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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is through cooperative measures with NGOs and strict 

enforcement of standards for safety and security and ethical 

practices. For example, recently the International Institute for 

Strategic Studies and the Chemical and Biological Arms Control 

Institute initiated a biotechnology “project” with the objective of 

establishing “a world association of biotechnology companies, to 

encourage safe and secure operation of facilities and business 

practices. So far, the response has been favorable and the project 

team continues to be engaged in bringing together biotechnology 

and pharmaceutical companies, along with other government and 

non-governmental organizations interested in public safety and 

security in relation to developments in biotechnology.”191 

One of the US alternatives to the BWC protocol included the 

need to “sensitize scientists to the risk of genetic engineering,” 

and to establish “national oversight of high-risk experiments.”192 

Life sciences researchers can no longer ignore the national 

security implications of their work and must participate in limiting 

the potential proliferation of new modes of bioterror. This is not 

to say that areas of research should be prohibited. Rather, 

boundaries need to be defined where the freedom of research is 

not impeded, but access to certain forms of research data should 

be limited to those with bona fide credentials. Certainly freedom 

of intellectual enquiry must be protected. However, researchers in 

physics, chemistry, and engineering have long had to accept 

constraints on public domain knowledge. Biology and medicine 

should not escape the same responsibilities. As one expert 

proposes, 

In 1975, at the dawn of the biotechnology era, scientists 

were concerned that new gene splicing methods and 

cross-species transfer of genes might convert harmless 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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microbes in the body into virulent pathogens or produce 

long-term genetic damage. These concerns stimulated the 

Asilomar conference, which led to a voluntary 

moratorium on certain forms of genetic manipulations 

until the risks were evaluated. Asilomar is a model for 

how science can independently regulate its own inquiries. 

This ethos must now be reawakened.193 

There are several additional ways industry and its 

representatives, such as the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of 

America (PHRMA) and the Association of American 

Microbiology (AAM), can “fill in the gaps” of national and 

international efforts at stopping the BW threat. In an effort to 

raise the conscious level of academics and scientists they could 

help draft and implement codes of conduct for the sharing of 

information and transfers of technology across borders. Using 

their expertise they could develop, in concert with WHO, WCO, 

and interested national agencies, indications and warning signs of 

unusual or suspicious activities, requests, or organizations. 

Suspicious requests would be logged and reported to a central 

database that would be monitored by export control and/or police 

agencies. Obviously misguided or criminally minded scientists 

will pay scant attention to ethical codes of behavior. No doubt 

Russian medical personnel in their BW program took the 

Hippocratic oath yet still engaged in weapons research. 

Nevertheless, establishing a code of conduct will increase 

awareness and equip those engaged in legitimate, peaceful 

research with the tools to help identify and report illicit activities. 

PHRMA and AAM could also establish ethics committees 

within their organizations to develop standards or practice and 

ethical codes of conduct for sharing of information that could be 

used for the development and production of BW. In conjunction, 
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78

the licensing of life sciences specialists should include testing on 

ethics, codes of conduct, and patterns of behavior, which could 

lead to a conclusion that activities were not legitimate research. 

This type of requirements is standard in the legal and medical 

professions. It is more than appropriate under the clear and 

present danger we face that these professionals receive the training 

and understand the consequences of the inappropriate sharing of 

sensitive information. Since industry already imposes severe 

restrictions on the transfer of commercial proprietary information 

it would have much to contribute in the development and 

promulgation of ethic standards and codes of conduct. 

WHO has already begun work on model practices for security 

issues related to pathogens? It has engaged the American and 

European Biosafety Associations on issues related to the custody 

of pathogens and how they should or should not be distributed, 

similar to the US Select Agent regulations that prohibit the 

unauthorized shipment of selected agents. Active participation 

and agreement by industry, NGOs, and national governments in 

such practices will heighten awareness, prevent inadvertent loss, 

and make more difficult the deliberate unlawful transfer of 

pathogens. 

Biosecurity is another area where industry has a significant 

role to play. Currently, there are hundreds of companies and 

laboratories around the world that work with dangerous 

pathogens. While the United States has regulations which require 

anyone shipping or receiving listed pathogens or toxins to register 

with CDC and demonstrate a legitimate necessity for the material, 

most nations lack this type of regulation, and there is no 

international standard for regulating, licensing, and registering 
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companies, labs, or universities which work with these dangerous 

agents. One idea that has merit is the negotiation and 

implementation of an international insecurity convention, building 

on the ongoing implementation of the 1992 Biological Diversity 

Convention and its 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.194

The proposed convention would “include provisions for the 

safe handling, transfer, and use of genetically modified 

organisms.” Nations would agree on a set of basic obligations and 

guidelines, which would be implemented in detail by each 

member state through enactment of legislation and regulation. 

While the authors of this proposal support a legally binding 

instrument,195 it might be done just as effectively through the 

voluntary agreement of member states. Those nations or 

companies that did not follow the new international standards 

established by the convention would not be allowed to participate 

in the sharing of technology and information that other member 

states would have access to. The technology and economic 

advantages in the sharing of this knowledge is self-evident and 

forms the basis for most export control regimes, which are all 

voluntary restraint mechanisms. Industry participation and 

endorsement of either a legally binding or voluntary convention is 

both necessary and desirable since the standards must 

accommodate both safety and commercial concerns. 

Export Controls 

One of the many critical areas of cooperation is the control of 

exports which may have relevance to the development of 

biological weapons. Most BWC members have national export 

control laws and regulations regarding the transfer of BW-related 

technologies and materials. Countries that do no or are unable for 
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financial reasons to implement appropriate export control 

regulations can receive direct assistance from the United States 

through the Export Control Assistance Program.196 It is essential 

that member states keep sensitive BW-related goods and 

technologies out of the hands of terrorists and their state 

sympathizers. To do so requires not only the enactment of 

national measures but to also work bilaterally to assist other 

countries in upgrading their tracking and enforcement capabilities 

and to use a multilateral forum for ensuring supplier cooperation 

in curbing illicit BW-related trade. 

One export control group established specifically for the 

control of chemical and biologically related materials and 

technology is the Australia Group (AG).197 The AG is an informal 

network of 33 countries plus the European Commission that 

consult on and harmonize their national export licensing measures 

on chemical and biological items. All participants are members of 

the BWC, which legally obligates states parties not to assist in any 

way the development and production of BW. AG participants 

agree, through a series of agreed guidelines, to prevent any 

inadvertent contribution to a BW program. While it is true that 

proliferators and terrorists can undertake BW research, 

development, and production with off-the-shelf items, restricting 

their access to more advanced technologies, information, and 

strains of pathogens will impede their programs to varying 

degrees. 

Recently, the AG adopted formal guidelines governing the 

licensing of biological items and applying more rigorous controls 

on the export of fermentors, lowering the threshold from 100 liters 

to 20 liters, and adding eight new toxins to the Group’s biological 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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control list (currently a total of 19).198 The Group also for the first 

time controlled the “intangible transfer of information and 

knowledge which could be used for BW programs.”199 Australia 

Group participants also share information regarding proliferation 

concern. The AG participants contend that export licenses operate 

to deter proliferation by monitoring trade in relevant materials, 

and provide authority to stop a sale in the infrequent cases where a 

prospective export is likely to contribute to a BW program. The 

licensing measures applied by AG participants affect only a small 

number of countries where there is evidence of developing or 

maintaining a BW capacity. 

Currently, the AG does not have any formal working or 

coordination relationships with any other international 

organization, governmental or otherwise, except the European 

Commission. Several inter-governmental organizations have 

expressed interest in participating in AG activities.200 This has 

merit since these organizations, like individual nations, recognize 

that to effectively counter proliferation of bioterrorist activities 

will require cooperation over a wide area of activities. 

International Law Enforcement Initiatives 

International law enforcement organizations have been at the 

forefront of developing cooperative relationships with numerous 

national and international crime fighting and regulatory 

organizations to stop the proliferation of WMD. The best known 

is the International Criminal Police Organization, better known as 

Interpol. It currently has 179 member nations and its goals are “to 

ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between 

criminal police authorities within the limits of laws existing in the 

different countries and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of 
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Human Rights.”201 Interpol’s Public Safety and Terrorism subdirectorate (PST) deals with matters relating to terrorism and 

weapons of mass destruction. PST coordinates the widest possible 

cooperation and exchange of information among member law 

enforcement agencies by utilizing its extensive communications 

network and central records archives. It collects, stores, analyzes, 

and disseminates intelligence about suspect terrorists groups. 

Interpol’s Safety and Terrorism Branch also assesses potential 

BW threats and issues alerts and warnings as appropriate. Finally, 

Interpol enters into a number of cooperative relationships with 

other police (Europol), regulatory (WCO), subject matter expert 

(for example, the International Atomic Energy Agency) agencies, 

or other international organizations (for example the International 

Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts) to 

monitor, track, interdict, and arrest terrorists or smugglers of 

biological, chemical, or radiological material. 

One agency Interpol has a close relationship with is the 

European police organization or Europol. Europol works mainly 

through formal agreements with law enforcement, security 

services, national police, military police, and customs agencies to 

coordinate policies and share intelligence.202 It has a cooperation 

agreement with the United States and other out-of-area countries. 

So far, Europol is hampered by its inability to share only generic 

information on types of threats. It cannot share information on 

particular individuals suspected of crimes.203 To be an effective 

intelligence sharing organization this will have to change. 

Europol also has a serious crime unit which deals exclusively with 

terrorism and the illegal trafficking of NBC materials. It is 

currently working to establish a link between normal police-type 
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activities and response efforts in the wake of a biological attack. 

In recognition of the bio threat it is proposing a “center of 

excellence” on bio terrorism, which would be a database and 

virtual staff of experts on biological warfare and how to respond 

to an attack. It also is attempting to establish a database of “best 

practices” of law enforcement on how best to respond to a 

particular crisis such as a BW attack.204 These initiatives require a 

minimum of additional funding. They do, however, require the 

political will and commitment of member nations to share national 

information and participate actively in these international efforts. 

The United States has been very active in providing training 

and equipment and expertise in a number of areas. However, 

there remains much more to be done in the information sharing 

area due to the sensitivities of methods and means in the 

acquisition of such information and differing laws and 

perspectives on the safeguarding of personal information. In the 

wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks these barriers are 

slowly being removed. 

Financing the Spread of Bio Terror: Interdiction Initiatives 

One of the most significant and critical international 

cooperative initiatives is the set of on-going efforts at interdicting 

the financing networks of terrorists. There are a multitude of 

national, regional, and international initiatives underway to dry up 

the financing of those groups secretly engaged in acquiring the 

capacity to use WMD. Briefly, UN Security Council resolution 

1373 requires all states to stop financing terrorism and freeze 

without delay the assets of terrorists and their associates and close 

their access to the international financial system.205 In that regard, 

nations should quickly ratify the UN Convention for the 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.206 Regional 

organizations are meeting to institute region-specific plans to 

cooperate in the interdiction of financial transactions by terrorist 

groups. For example, the United States recently hosted a meeting 

of the ASEAN Regional Forum on this topic. It endorsed a work 

plan for implementing specific measures to eliminate these 

financial networks and seize the assets of terrorist groups. 

Specifically, it called on member states to 

[W]ork co-operatively and in collaboration with the 

International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, 

Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering 

(FATF) and FATF-style bodies, Financial Stability 

Forum (FSF), Basle Committee of Banking Supervisors 

(BCBS), and other relevant international and regional 

bodies to promote the adoption, implementation, and 

assessment of international standards or recommendations 

to combat the abuses of the financial system, including in 

respect of terrorist financing, financial regulation, and 

money laundering.207

In addition, like-minded states should consider implementing 

similar initiatives against rogue nations bent on acquiring BW or 

sponsoring surrogate terrorist groups. In the last year the US 

Department of Treasury, in cooperation with its EU counterparts, 

has blocked the assets of 210 entities and individuals, and 161 

countries have “taken concrete action to block the assets” of 

terrorist groups and individuals with, so far, $116 million 

frozen.208 Similar actions can and should be taken against the 

sponsors of these terrorist groups and those who would violate 

international legal obligations by engaging in WMD proliferation. 

Nations which cannot participate in world-wide financial markets 

worry about their assets being frozen in foreign banks and other 

financial institutions, cannot get loans for development projects, 

generally suffer the same deprivations applied to their terrorist 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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counterparts, and may re-think their decision to develop and 

produce biological weapons. In any event, without financial 

resources states and terrorist groups will have little chance to 

acquire WMD capabilities no matter how much the desire and 

determination. 

ARMS CONTROL WITHOUT ARMS CONTROL: 

FITTING THE CURE TO THE DISEASE 

We stand on the threshold of a new era in which hundreds 

of millions of people will at last be safe from some of the 

world’s most terrible diseases. . . . We also stand on the 

brink of a global crisis in infectious diseases. No country 

is safe from them. No country can any longer afford to 

ignore their threat. -- Hiroshi Nakajima, Director General of WHO209

In the wake of the events of 11 September, controlling such 

horrific and morally abhorrent weapons was given an even greater 

imperative and wider global attention. While it is unlikely that the 

protocol will be resurrected, it is important we maintain the norm 

that relegates those that acquire or use BW to the status of 

international criminals and enemies of civilized society. To do so, 

the United States and its allies must remain creative, vigilant, and 

forward-looking in dealing with the multi-dimensional threat 

posed by biological weapons. The proposals submitted here posit 

a new paradigm for addressing this problem. It is one that 

recognizes that the only real chance for success in this war is 

through a multi-disciplinary approach involving as many IGOs 

and nations as possible. 

It is easily demonstrable and compelling that in the case of 

stopping biologically based threats to international peace and 

security traditional arms control will not work. The road to 

international hell is often paved with the best of bad conventions, 

and the protocol was surely a prime example. The traditional 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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approach—declarations, visits/inspections, and challenge 

investigations in a “verification” treaty—simply provides no 

greater level of confidence in compliance. It is fairly easy to 

count and inventory missiles and tanks and have a high degree of 

confidence that you have counted them all. It is virtually 

impossible to count microscopic bugs. Even assuming you could, 

the dual-use nature of these biologic agents—unlike tanks and 

missiles, which have only one purpose—means you cannot verify 

intent with traditional arms control measures. Given the real 

dangers to national biodefense programs and vital commercial 

interests in one of the major industries of the 21st century, it is 

difficult to see how accepting a broad-based, elaborate, 

multilateral but totally ineffective regime advances United States 

and international security interests. On top of a totally ineffective 

treaty, adding another major international bureaucracy dedicated 

to inspecting declared facilities in countries that do not have a BW 

program and that could not find one in those countries that do, is a 

price too high to pay. 

As extensively discussed, this is a real and present danger to 

national security and to the security of our friends and allies. The 

threat is more serious than ever. Clearly, biological weapons can 

be developed secretly and used without warning, leaving little 

time for the targeted nation to discern intentions or formulate a 

response. It is a hard fact that we now and for the foreseeable 

future live in a world in which biological weapons (and other 

weapons of mass destruction) not only exist, but are proliferating. 

It is clear that there are terrorist states that currently possess these 

weapons or are actively seeking to develop or acquire them. 

Likewise, state-sponsored terrorist groups, terrorist networks, and 
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doomsday cults exist which are actively pursing such weapons. 

And, as recent revelations about the Al Queda terrorist network 

has revealed, any one or combination of these enemies of freedom 

would not hesitate to use these weapons if they believed it would 

serve their purposes. Further, new technologies and genetic 

modification of traditional agents could defeat protective 

measures, including vaccines. Biological weapons-related 

activities lack unique distinguishing signatures, can be small-scale 

and very easily concealed, and do not require a large production 

infrastructure to make significant amounts, either for terroristic or 

military purposes. The protocol, or any arms control agreement 

for that matter, is incapable of addressing these sophisticated 

threats to national and international security. 

The BWC is not the only possible—although extremely 

important—mechanism for preventing the acquisition and use of 

BW. Indeed, while it and the Gas Protocol remain the 

international basis for condemning any possession or use of 

biological agents as a crime against humanity, serving as the 

written embodiment of the BW nonproliferation norm, there are a 

number of alternative institutions and mechanisms that offer 

realistic and concrete methods for detecting, stopping, rolling 

back, and deterring clandestine BW programs. The painstaking 

and deliberate construction of this web of measures, some of 

which are described in detail here, along with holding nations 

accountable for their compliance failures, is the best hope for 

ultimately ending the threat of these weapons of mass destruction. 

As biological weapons sophistication and the threat increase, 

so should our approaches to combating it. The overarching 

concern, however, is the inherent difficulty of crafting a single 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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mechanism to address this unique threat. The threat of biological 

weapons and bioterrorism is a threat that cannot be appeased, 

cannot be ignored, but must not be allowed to dominate our future 

or the future of the world. So, in sum, the prescription for fighting 

this threat is not another traditional arms control verification 

regime but rather a web of carefully crafted and directed measures 

and initiatives instituted by nations and technically proficient 

international governmental organizations backed by no-nonsense 

enforcement and compliance mechanisms to bring would-be 

miscreants, either individuals or governments, to justice for 

violating the norms of humanity. 

A united world, acting in concert across a broad front of areas 

utilizing the full panoply of financial, diplomatic, economic, and 

military resources at our disposal, with the firm determination to 

rid the world of these weapons of terror is, frankly, our best hope 

for success. Those that pursue the acquisition and use of such 

weapons must learn that to do so is a huge miscalculation. 

Specifically, that using such weapons will not spell success for 

their perverted aims but bring about with certainty the end of them 

and any chance of achieving their aspirations. Once theses 

enemies of mankind understand no legitimate government will 

support them, that international police and other regulatory 

international organizations are actively seeking to impede, stop, 

and punish them; once nations which would attempt to acquire 

them understand that the costs far outweigh any perceived benefit; 

and once the scientific and industrial sectors accept a 

responsibility to safeguard the technology and information which 

makes possible the development and use of these horrible 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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weapons; only then can we confidently hope that this threat to 

mankind will be eliminated. 

Making this broad commitment will take time, money, effort 

and political will. But the multi-faceted efforts proposed and 

described here are already being undertaken as more and more 

nations and institutions realize this is the only effective way to 

stop this scourge. As the late Ambassador Robert Strausz-Hupé 

presciently commented, “I have lived long enough to see good 

repeatedly win over evil, although at a much higher cost than need 

have been paid. This time we have already paid the price of 

victory. It remains for us to win it."210 By moving beyond the 

“arms control” solution and adopting this approach our victory 

over this threat to civilized society is within sight. 

NOTES 

 

1

 Quoted in Biohazard News at http://biohazardnews.net. 

2

 The term "Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)" is a short-hand 

way of referring to chemical, biological, or nuclear or radiological 

weapons and their means of delivery, usually ballistic missiles. It is 

noted and understood that other weapons could easily produce mass 

casualties. Radiological dispersion devices and information or cyber 

attacks have also been described as WMD. Any definition of WMD 

always includes “biological” weapons. 

3

 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and 

Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and 

on their Destruction, 26 UST. 583; TIAS 8062; 1015 U.N.T.S. 163. 

Signed on April 10, 1972 and entered into force March 26, 1975. 

There are currently 145 states parties and 18 signatories. 

4

 Biological agents are either replicating agents (bacteria or viruses) 

or nonreplicating materials (toxins or physiologically active proteins 

or peptides) that can be produced by living organisms. Some 

nonreplicating biological agents can also be produced through either 

chemical synthesis, solid-phase protein synthesis, or recombinant 

expression methods. Office of the Surgeon General, US Army, 

Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare, 1997, 4. 

Biological agents which may be used as weapons can be classified as 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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follows: Bacteria (free-living organisms), viruses (requiring living 

cells in which to replicate), rickettsia (microorganisms which have 

characteristics common to both bacteria and viruses), chlamydia 

(intracellular parasites incapable of generating their own energy 

source), fungi (primitive plants which do not utilize photosynthesis, 

are capable of anaerobic growth, draw nutrition from decaying 

vegetable matter, and most form spores), and toxins (poisonous 

substances produced and derived from living plants, animals, or 

microorganisms). 

5

 See Jonathan B. Tucker, “A Farewell to Germs: The US 

Renunciation of Biological and Toxin Warfare, 1969-70,” 

International Security, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer 2002). 

6

 For a comprehensive blow-by-blow account of the Fifth Review 

Conference see Jenni Rissanen, “Left in Limbo: Review Conference 

Suspended On Edge of Collapse” located at website 

http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd62/62bwc.htm. 

7

 Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Judith Miller, “Many Worry That Nation Is 

Still Highly Vulnerable To Germ Attack,” The New York Times, 

September 9, 2002, 1. 

8

 In January, 2002 President Bush signed a bill authorizing $1.1 

billion for bioterrorism preparedness, with the bulk of it, $930 

million, designated to be parceled out among the states for 

improvements in public health. Obviously, much needs to be done to 

prepare the United States for a likely WMD attack. However, the 

focus of this study is on international cooperative measures not on 

domestic preparedness. See Chemical and Biological Arms Control 

Institute, Bioterrorism in the United States: Threat, Preparedness, 

and Response, November 2000; National Research Council, Making 

the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering 

Terrorism (National Academy Press: Washington DC, 2002). 

9

 The literature on these efforts is quite extensive. See, for example, 

Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, Bioterrorism in the 

United States: Threat, Preparedness, and Response, November 2001. 

10 Attributed to Yogi Berra at website http://www.workinghumor. 

com/quotes/yogi_berra.shtml. 

11 Letter to Jack Woodall posted at http://praxis.md/post/friendlyfire/ 

071200/1. 

12 Jozef Goldblat, “The Biological Weapons Convention: An 

Overview,” International Review of the Red Cross 318 (June 30, 

1997), 251-265 at 253. 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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13 Ibid., at 253-54 (citing World Health Organization, Health aspects 

of the use of chemical and biological weapons, Geneva, 1970). Also 

see Joint Pub 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and 

Associated Terms (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 

1998), defining “biological weapons” as “items or material which 

project, disperse, or disseminate biological agents including arthropod 

vectors.” 

14 See Biological Weapons Primer, Federation of American Scientists 

at http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/bw/intro.htm. 

15 Steve Sternberg, “Building the Ultimate BioWeapon,” USA Today, 

November 14, 2001, 9D. 

16 Maura Lerner, “Pretty Poison Botox is All the Rage,” Washington 

Times Weekly Edition, April 29-May 5, 2002, 2; Sarah Womack, “Get 

a Botox Facelift in the High Street for ₤200,” Daily Telegraph, May 

24 2002, 1. 

17 A virulence factor is an organism’s capability to cause disease by 

breaking down the protective mechanisms of the host. 

18 See Melinda Willis, “Genetic Threat: Scientific Advances Could 

Help Make New Biological Weapons,” at website http://abcnews.go. 

com/sections/living/DailyNews/WTC_weaponsengineering011005.ht

ml. 

19 Others might include the rabies virus transmitted by bats, and the 

orbivirus (blue tongue disease) transmitted by biting flies. See M. 

Willis, R. Casagrande, L. Madden, “Biological Attack on Agriculture: 

Low Tech High Impact Bioterrorism,” at website www.fas.org/bwc/ 

index.html. 

20 William Broad, “Australians Create a Deadly Mouse Virus,” New 

York Times, January 23, 2001, International Section, 1. 

21 Andrew Pollack, “Scientists Create a Live Polio Virus,” New York 

Times, July 12, 2002, 1. 

22 Ibid. 

23 There was actually a series of exercises called Elfin. This one was 

denominated Elfin Mayhem. A copy of the report of the exercise is 

on file with the author. 

24 See Mark Hewish, “On Alert Against Bio Agents,” International 

Defense Review, vol. 31, no. 11 (November 1998): 53. 

25 For a detailed discussion of these technological barriers and other 

problems associated with “weaponizing” biological agents, see Karl 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

92

 

Lowe, “Analyzing Technical Constraints on Bio-Terrorism: Are 

They Still Important?” in Terrorism with Chemical and Biological 

Weapons: Calibrating Risks and Responses, ed., Brad Roberts 

(Alexandria, VA: The Chemical and Biological Arms Control 

Institute, 1997), 53-64. 

26 See Judith Miller and William Broad, “The Germ Warriors: A 

Special Report; Iranians, Bioweapons in Mind, Lure Needy Ex-Soviet 

Scientists,” New York Times, December 8, 1998, A1. 

27 Malcolm Dando, “’Discriminating’ Bio-Weapons Could Target 

Ethnic Groups,” International Defense Review, vol. 30, no. 3 (March 

1997), 77; Barbara Starr, “Bio Agents Could Target Ethnic Groups, 

Says CIA,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, June 25, 1997, 6. 

28 See William Broad, “US Selling Papers Showing How to Make 

Germ Weapons,” New York Times, January 13, 2002, 1. 

29 George Poste, , “Biotechnology and Terrorism,” at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk (May 2002), 2. 

30 Ibid. 

31 The book of Exodus describes 10 plagues that affected both 

humans and animals in Egypt. The fifth plague was a murrain, a 

cattle-pest, which killed the Egyptians' livestock. In the sixth plague, 

boils erupted on men and beasts. One of the symptoms of anthrax is 

boils. 

32 See “Patho-Factlets: Examples of How Disease Altered History,” at 

http://www.science-projects.com/Pathlets.htm. For example, Measles 

and smallpox wiped out 95% of native South Americans in the early 

1500's leaving the continent safe for the Spanish to settle with 

families. Cortez took over Mexico City when 1,000 Aztecs per day 

were dying. Seventy percent of the 300,000 core troops that marched 

with Napoleon out of France died of typhus before reaching Moscow. 

During the Civil War, 90% of the deaths on both sides were due to 

disease rather than direct death from military trauma. Nearly a third 

to half of all babies born in the USA in 1900 never saw their 5th 

birthday. Whooping cough, dyphtheria, and both rheumatic fever and 

scarlet fever (strep throat gone really serious) were major killers. See 

also Robert Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster 

in Medieval Europe (New York: Free Press, 1990); William McNeill, 

Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor Boosk, 1976); Arno 

Karlen, Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and 

Modern Times (Boston: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Michael B. A. 

Oldston, Viruses, Plagues & History (Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 1998); Jeanette Farrell, Invisible Enemies: Stories of Infectious 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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Disease (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998); Gina Kolata, Flu: 

The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (New York: 

Simon & Schuster, 2001). 

33 There are a number of books and articles on the history of 

biological warfare. The best include LTC George W. Christopher, 

USAF, MC; LTC Theodore J. Cieslak, MC, USA; MAJ Julie A. 

Pavlin, MC, USA; COL Edward M. Eitzen, Jr, MC, USA, 

“Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective,” Journal of the 

American Medical Association, Vol. 278 No. 5, August 6, 1997; 

Kenneth V. Iverson, “Demon Doctors: Physicians as Serial Killers” 

(Chapter 8: History of Biological Warfare) (Tucson: Galen Press, 

2002). 

34 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SPIRI),The Rise 

of CB Weapons: The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, 

(New York, NY: Humanities Press; 1971), 1. 

35 Stubbs M., “Has the West an Achilles heel: possibilities of 

biological weapons,” NATO's Fifteen Nations, June/July 1962, 94-99. 

36 For a chronological viewing of the history of biological warfare see 

http://www.bioterry.com/History_of_Biological_Terrorism.asp. 

37 Ibid. 

38 V.J. Derbes, “De Mussis and the great plague of 1348: a forgotten 

episode of bacteriological war.” Journal of American Medicine 

Association 196 (1966): 59-62. 

39 F. Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After 

the Conquest of Canada (Boston: Little Brown & Co Inc., 1901); 

C.H. Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania. (Harrisburg, Pa: 

Telegraph Press, 1929); E.W & A.E. Stearn, The Effect of Smallpox 

on the Destiny of the Amerindian (Boston, Mass: Bruce Humphries; 

1945). But see M Hugh-Jones, “Wickham Steed and German 

biological warfare research,” Intelligence & National Security, Vol. 

7, 379-402, 1992 (Smallpox epidemics among immunologically naive 

tribes of Native Americans following initial contacts with Europeans 

had been occurring for more than 200 years. In addition, the 

transmission of smallpox by fomites was inefficient compared with 

respiratory droplet transmission). 

40 Supra, note 36. 

41 Sheldon Harris, “Japanese biological warfare research on humans: 

a case study of microbiology and ethics,” Annals of New York 

Academy of Scence, 1992; 666: 21-52; Hal Gold, Unit 731: 

Testimony (Tokyo: Charles Tuttle Co., 1996); Peter Williams and 
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David Wallace, Unit 731: Japan’s Secret Biological Warfare in World 

War II (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1989); Doug 

Struck.”Tokyo Court Confirms Japan Used Germ Warfare in China,” 

Washington Post, August 28, 2002, 15. 

42 See Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological 

Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-up (New York: 

Routledge, 1994). 

43 See US Dept of the Army. US Army Activity in the US Biological 

Warfare Programs, Washington, DC: US Dept of the Army; 

February 24, 1977; 2. Publication DTIC B193427 L. 

44 See generally, Harris R, Paxman JA. A Higher Form of Killing

(New York, NY: Hill & Wang; 1982). 

45 Ibid. 

46 US Dept of the Army. US Army Activity in the US Biological 

Warfare Programs, Washington, DC: US Dept of the Army; 

February 24, 1977;2. Publication DTIC B193427 L. See also, Ed 

Regis, The Biology of Doom: The History of America’s Secret Germ 

Warfare Project (London: Henry Holt & Co., 1999); Judith Miller, 

Stephen Engelberg, William J. Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons 

and America’s Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster) 2001. 

47 See US Senate, “Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents: Hearings 

before US Senate Intelligence Committee,” 94th Cong, 1st Sess. 

Washington, DC: US Senate; September 16-18, 1975. 

48 See Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Evolving Threat From Weapons 

Of Mass Destruction In The Middle East,” at http://usinfo.state.gov/ 

journals/itps/0702/ijpe/cordesman.htm. Estimated costs for 

producing mass casualties per square kilometer are: 

 $1 for biological 

 $600 for chemical (nerve agent) 

 $800 for nuclear 

 $2,000 for conventional 

See Richard Danzig, "Biological Warfare: A Nation at Risk—A Time 

to Act," Institute for National Strategic Studies 58 (January 1996): 1. 

49 The unclassified literature detailing the allegations and evidence of 

current illicit programs is vast and compelling. See Gideon Rose, 

“Expert: Russia Retains Biological Weapons Ability,” Dallas 

Morning News, October 21, 1999, 1; Graham S. Pearson, “The Threat 

of Deliberate Disease in the 21st Century” at website 

http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/sbtwc/other/disease.htm; Jong-Heon Lee, 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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North Korea Amasses Chemical Weapons, Washington Times, 

September 17, 2002, 1. 

50 Jeremy Laurence, “US on Alert for Smallpox Terror Attack,” The 

Independent, April 22, 2001 at web site http://news.independent.co. 

uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=68020. One of the most 

comprehensive listing of these incidents can be found in W. Seth 

Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological 

Agents in the 20th Century,” Center for Counterproliferation 

Research, National Defense University, July 1999. 

51 See Johanna McGeary, “What Does Saddam Have?” Time, 

September 16, 2002. 

52 The list includes, in addition to Russia and Iraq, China, Iran, North 

Korea, Syria, Cuba, Libya, Sudan, Taiwan, Egypt and Israel. 

Countering the Chemical and Biological Weapons Threat in the PostSoviet World, Committee on Armed Services, House of 

Representatives (US Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 

23 February 1993). See also Bill Gertz, “China has biological 

arsenal, Congress told,” Washington Times, July 15, 1995, 2; David 

Seagrist, “Not So False Alarm,” Washington Post, August 28, 1999, 

17; Jim Lea, “North Korea Stockpiling Chemical Weapons, South 

Reports, Pacific Stars and Stripes, November 2, 1999, 1; Martin 

Arostegui, "Fidel Castro's Deadly Secret, Insight, July 20, 1998, 1; 

Nicholas Kralev, “Havana Pursues Biologocial Warfare,” Washington 

Times, May 7, 2002, 1; Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

Proliferation:Threat and Response, January 2001 at web site 

www.defenselink.mil. 

53 For an extensive discussion of the South African BW program see 

Stephen Burgess and Helen Purkitt, The Rollback of South Africa’s 

Biological Warfare Program, INSS Occasional Paper No. 37 (USAF 

Institute of National Security Studies 2001); “Mad Scientists: South 

Africa’s Chemical and Biological weapons Program on the internet at 

http://www.geocities.com/project_coast/. The head of the program, 

Dr. Wouter Basson, a respected South African cardiologist, became 

known as “Dr. Death” when it was revealed in 1998 that he headed 

the decade-long effort to develop biological weapons for the 

apartheid South Africa government. 

54 Alibek defected in 1992 and wrote about his experiences (with 

Stephen Handelman) in Biohazard (New York: Delta/Dell 

Publishing, 1999). Frighteningly, he noted with some pride that a 

genetically modified strain of anthrax was named after him. He 

documents how Russian scientists have created genetically altered 

antibiotic-resistant strains of plague, anthrax, tularemia and glanders, 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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and were working to create a strain of anthrax that will overcome the 

immune system. They have been developing methods for genetically 

altering smallpox virus while preserving its virulence, and they have 

developed techniques for cultivating the almost-always –fatal 

Marburg and Machupo viruses. 

55 David Hoffman, “Deadly Germs From Cold War,” Washington 

Post, June 7, 2000, 24; Lesley McKenzie, “Threat Seen in Russia’s 

Biological Agents,” Washington Times, October 6, 2000, 1. 

56 Robert Galucci, former Assistant Secretary of State for 

Nonproliferation, quoted in Lesley McKenzie, “Threat Seen in 

Biological Agents,” Washington Times, October 6, 2000, 1. 

57 Judith Miller, “US Warns Russia of Need to Verify Treaty 

Compliance,” New York Times, April 8, 2002, 1; Philip C. Bleek, 

“Bush Refuses to Certify Russian Chem-Bio Compliance,” Arms 

Control Today, May, 2002 at web site www.armscontrol.org/act/ 

2002_05/threatredmay02.asp. 

58 Dana Lewis, “A Deadly Soviet threat Lives On: In a Kazakh 

Institute, Living Germs Designed for Warfare are a ‘Terrorist’s 

Treasure,’” January 19, 2001, at website, www.msnbc.com. 

59 Joby Warrick, “Russia Denies US Access on Bioweapons,” The 

Washington Post, September 8, 2002, p. 25.; Peter Eisler, “US, 

Russia Tussle Over Deadly Anthrax Sample,” USA Today, August 

19, 2002, 1. Russian recalcitrance has put in jeopardy US funding for 

a number of programs associated with the dismantlement of the 

former Soviet Union’s weapons of mass destruction programs. 

60 Jeanne Guillemin, “The 1979 Anthrax Epidemic in the USSR: 

Applied Science and Political Controversy,” Proceedings of the 

American Philosophical Society, March 1, 2002, 18. Also, a 1971 

smallpox outbreak in Kazakhstan may have been the result of a 

Soviet biological weapons test. See Jonathan B. Tucker and 

Raymond A. Zilinskas, eds., “The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in 

Aralsk, Kazakhstan, and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program,” 

CNS Occasional Papers: #9, August 2002, located at website 

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/opapers/op9/index.htm. 

61 Under the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991, P.L. 102-

228, 25 USC. § 2551, a program was established in the Department of 

Defense entitled the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Its 

purpose is to assist the states of the former Soviet Union in the 

destruction, protection and accounting of its weapons of mass 

destruction. While primarily focused on nuclear materials and 

delivery systems, there are initiatives underway to enhance the 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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security of biological pathogen collections and to eliminate the 

biological weapon organization that existed under the Soviet Union. 

62 Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Net Assessment, 

International Institute for Strategic Studies located at website 

www.iiss.org.

63 Judith Miller, “An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at Least 20 

Hidden Weapon Sites,” New York Times, December 20, 2001, 1; 

Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, “White House Lists Iraq Steps to 

Build Banned Weapons,” New York Times, September 13, 2002, 

located at web site www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/ 

middleeast/13ARMS.html. 

64 Vice President Speaks at VFW 103rd National Convention Located 

at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html. 

65 Etgar Lefkovits, “Iraq Brags of Biological Weapons to ‘Deal with 

Zionist Entity,’” Jerusalem Post, July 18, 2000, 1. 

66 Ibid. 

67 Josh Tyrangiel, “What Saddam’s Got,” Time, May 13, 2002, 34. 

68 Marie Colvin and Nicholas Rufford, “Saddam’s Arsenal 

Revealed,” London Sunday Times, March 17, 2002, 1. 

69 Anthony Cordesman, Terrorism, Asymmetric Warfare, and 

Weapons of Mass Destruction (Praeger/CSIS: Washington DC, 2002) 

at website http://www.iiss.org/news-more.php?itemID=88. 

70 Vice President Cheney Speech to Korean War Veterans, 29 August 

2002, located at website http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 

2002/08/20020829-5.html. 

71 See Nicholas Wade, “Germ Weapons: Deadly, but Hard to Use,” 

New York Times, November 21, 1997, available on the internet at 

www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/germ.htm; Jessica Stern, “Taking the 

Terror Out of Bioterrorism,” New York Times, April 8, 1998, 

available on the internet at www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/stern.htm. 

72 Ken Alibek, "Russia's Deadly Expertise," New York Times, March 

27, 1998 available on the internet at www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ 

rusbio.htm. 

73 Indeed, the literature, both fiction and non-fiction is voluminous. 

See, for example, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William J. 

Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (New 

York: Simon & Schuster, 2001); Richard Preston, The Cobra Event

(New York: Ballantine Books, 1997); John S. Marr & John Baldwin, 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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The Eleventh Plague (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1998); 

Jonathan Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of 

Chemical and Biological Weapons (Boston: MIT Press, 200); 

Richard Falkenrath, et. al, America’s Achilles’ Heel: Nuclear, 

Biological and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Boston: MIT 

Press, 1998); K.C. Bailey, Death for Cause; Ken Alibek with Stephen 

Handelman, Biohazard, supra, note 54; Joshua Lederberg, ed., 

Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat (Boston: MIT Press, 1999); 

Jonathan Tucker, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, September 2001). 

74 David Kay, “WMD Terrorism: Hype or Reality,” in James M. 

Smith and William C. Thomas, ed., The Terrorism Threat and US 

Government Response: Operational and Organizational Factors (US 

Air Force Academy: INSS Book Series, 2001), 75. 

75 Carus, supra, note 50. 

76 David Brown, “Biological, Chemical Threat Is Termed Tricky, 

Complex,” Washington Post, September 30, 2001, 12. 

77 Recently, news reporters, "posing as middlemen for a medical 

laboratory in North Africa, were offered samples of anthrax, plague 

and brucella by a laboratory in the Far East" for around $1000 a 

sample. See "Need a Biological War? Labs Sell Anthrax Germs by 

Mail Order," London Sunday Times, November 22, 1998, 1. 

78 Guido Olimpio, “Islamic Cell Preparing Chemical Warfare, Toxins, 

Gases Against West,” Milan Corriere della Sera, 8 July 1998, 9 

(translation by Foreign Broadcast and Information Service). 

79 Judith Miller, “Lab Suggests Qaeda Planned to Build Arms, 

Officials Say,” New York Times, September 14, 2002, 1. 

80 Interview with Dr. Ken Alibek online at New Scientist website 

www.newscientist.com/hottopics/bioterrorism/bioterrorism.jsp?id=22

994800. 

81 Bühler, G. (trans.), The Laws of Manu (Oxford University Press: 

Oxford, 1886), reprinted under UNESCO sponsorship as The Sacred 

Books of the East, vol. 25 (Motilal Banarsidass: Delhi, 1975), 230, 

251-52. 

82 Siemienowicz, C. Grand Art d'Artillerie (1650), as quoted by 

Appfel, J. `Les projectiles toxiques en 1650, ́ Mar. 1929, 234. 

Available on the SIPRI website at http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/ 

docs/cbw-hist-pledge.html. 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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83 The 1675 Strassbourg Agreement, available on SIPRI at web site 

http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/cbw-hist-strassbourg.html. 

84 Article 70, Instructions For The Government Of Armies Of The 

United States In The Field, prepared by Francis Lieber, promulgated 

as General Orders No. 100 by President Lincoln, 24 April 1863 

located at website http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/ avalon/lieber.htm. 

Article 16 also prohibited the use of poison. General Orders No. 100 

is regarded as one of the first extensive formulations of the laws of 

armed conflict. 

85 Hague Convention No. III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 

18 October 1907, US Treaty Series No. 538, 36 Stat. 2259. 

86 The 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of 

Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological 

Methods of Warfare, 17 June 1925, 26 UST. 571, TIAS 8061, 

reprinted in 14 Int’l Leg. Mat’s 49 (1975), entered into force for the 

United States on 10 April 1975. There are currently 147 state parties. 

87 See Articles 50-52 of the Draft Convention available on website 

http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/docs/cbw-hist-britishdraft.html. See also 

J. Goldblat, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, 

Volume IV: CB Disarmament Negotiations 1920-1970 (SIPRI and 

Almqvist & Wiksell: Stockholm, 1971), 167-170, for a discussion of 

the disarmament efforts during this period. 

88 Quoted in Thomas Graham, “Biological Weapons and International 

Law,” Science, March 29, 2002, at 2325. 

89 WHO Group of Consultants, Health Aspects of Chemical and 

Biological Weapons (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health 

Organization; 1970). 

90 See Leslie Green, The Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict, 47-48 

(New York: Manchester Press, 1993); Oeter, “Methods and Means of 

Combat,” in Dieter Fleck, The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in 

Armed Conflict at 151-152 (New York: Oxford University Press, 

1995); Levie, “Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons,” in H 

Robertson, The Law of Naval Operations (Newport: Naval War 

College, 1991) at 342-45. 

91 Marie Isabelle Chevrier and Iris Hunger, “Confidence building 

Measures for the BTWC: Performance and Potential,” 

Nonproliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2000). 

92 See Arms Control: US and International Efforts to Ban Biological 

Weapons, Government Accounting Office Report GAO/NSIAD-93-

113 (GAO:Washington DC, December 1992), 20-21. Germany, for 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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example, stated that “a verification regime need not be 100-percent 

foolproof and that anything that provides for a level of assurance 

exceeding 50 percent makes sense.” 

93 Frederick Aandahl et al., eds., “Formulation of a United States 

Position with Respect to the Regulation, Limitation, and Balanced 

Reduction of Armed Forces and Armaments, July 6, 1951,” Foreign 

Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. 1 (Washington DC: US 

Government Printing Office, 1979), NSC-112, 489. 

94 The verification standard commonly accepted in the US policy 

community was that a measure should make it more likely than not 

that noncompliant activity could be identified before that activity 

resulted in a significant security risk to the US and to US allies. 

95 Statement before the Third Review Conference, September 10, 

1991, cited in United States Congress, Office of Technology 

Assessment, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction, 

(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1993), 74. 

96 United Nations, Summary Report, Ad Hoc Group of Governmental 

Experts to Identify and Examine Potential Verification Measures 

from a Scientific and Technical Standpoint, Fourth Session, Geneva, 

BWC/CONF.III/VEREX/9, 24 September 1993, ii. 

97 Ibid. For a detailed summary of the US view on the results of the 

experts group meetings see ACDA 1996 Fact Sheet on the Biological 

Warfare Convention at web site www.fas.org/nuke/control/bwc/ 

news/bwcover.htm, and the ACDA 1993 Fact Sheet at web site 

http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/bwc/news/931123-bwc.htm. 

98 The author participated in the experts group meetings and was 

involved in the interagency and multilateral negotiations where this 

language was drafted, debated and negotiated. 

99 Dr. Edward Lacey, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State 

for Verification and Compliance, Testimony before the US House of 

Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee 

on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, 

July 10, 2001. 

100 BTWC Protocol: European Union Common Position, adopted by 

the Council on the basis of Article 15 of the Treaty on European 

Union, May 17, 1999, located at website http://projects.sipri.org/cbw/ 

docs/btwc-EU-commpos.html. 

101 Available for viewing at the Federation of American Scientists 

web site http://www.fas.org/bwc/papers/doc56-1.pdf. 
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102 The so-called “Chairman’s” text may be viewed at Federation of 

American Scientists web site http://www.fas.org/bwc/papers/ 

chairtxt.htm. The 210 page document—totaling 30 articles, 3 

annexes, and 9 appendices—was formally introduced on April 23, 

2001 at the AHG’s 23rd session. 

103 For a detailed discussion of this see articles in “Special Section: 

The Chairman’s Text of the BWC Protocol,” Arms Control Today, 

May 2001 on web site http://www.armscontrol.org/act/ 

2001_05/default.asp. 

104 Merle D. Kellerhals, US Department of State, “Proposed 

Biological Weapons Protocol Unfixable, US Official Says,” at 

website http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/stories/01072503.htm. 

105 Ibid. 

106 Judith Miller, “US Seeks Changes in Germ War Pact,” New York 

Times, November 1, 2001, 1. 

107 “Strengthening the International Regime Against Biological 

Weapons,” Statement by President George W. Bush, The White 

House, Office of the Press Secretary. November 1, 2001.) located at 

website http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01110110.htm. 

108 Undersecretary of State John Bolton Briefing on Biological 

Weapons Pact, November 19, 2001, reported at website 

http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01112003.htm. 

109 See FAS Comments on US Rejection of the BWC Protocol, 

delivered by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg at NGO Seminar for Ad Hoc 

Group, 25 July 01 at FAS web site http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/ 

fasgenevastate.htm. 

110 “Misstep on Germ Warfare,” Boston Globe, December 13, 2001, 

p. 18; Elizabeth Olsen, “US Calls for Global Action to Counter Germ 

Weapons,” New York Times, November 20, 2001, 1. For a discussion 

of the 2002 reconvened Review Conference, see text accompanying 

footnotes 135-139, infra. 

111 See D. Feakes and J. Littlewood, “Hope and Ambition Turn to 

Dismay and Neglect: The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention 

in 2001,” Medicine, Conflict and Survival, vol. 18 (2002): 170. 

112 United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 

Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction, 

(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1993), 75 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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113 Under Secretary of State Bolton, “Bolton Cites Need to Respond 

to Biological Weapons Threat,” August 27, 2002 in Tokyo Japan 

reported at website http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/. 

114 This is, frankly, the best and most candid case for 

inspection/investigation activities. United Kingdom White Paper on 

Strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: 

Countering the Threat from Biological Weapons (London, 2002). 

115 Testimony of Ambassador Donald Mahley before the US House 

Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on National Security, 

Veterans Affairs and International Relations, July 10, 2001. See also, 

G. Pearson, M. Dando, & N. Sims, “The US Rejection of the 

Composite Protocol: A Huge Mistake Based on Illogical 

Assessment,” Evaluation Paper No. 22, University of Bradford, 

Department of Peace Studies, August 2001; Elisa Harris, “The BWC 

After the Protocol: Previewing the Review Conference,” Arms 

Control Today, December 2001, 10. 

116 Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, 

Pharmaceutical Industry Profile 2000: Research for the Millennium,

Washington DC, 2000, 90. 

117 Ibid. at 50. 

118 Ibid. at 25. Inflation and added regulatory costs have greatly 

increased that figure. 

119 This point was proven at a December 1993 trial inspection at a US 

company’s pharmaceutical facility. Company officials, in 

cooperating with inspectors (whose roles were played by US and UK 

officials), found that they revealed too much information piecemeal. 

At the end of the exercise, they felt they had, in aggregate, revealed 

both process and throughput proprietary information. Were such 

information to be acquired by a competitor, the company almost 

certainly would have suffered severe losses. 

120 Alan P. Zelicoff, “An Impractical Protocol,” Arms Control Today, 

May, 2001 (available at http:///www.armscontrol.org/act/ 

2001_05/zelicoff as of 6/8/02). 

121 Presentation on Future Arms Control Treaties and Agreements, 

International Arms Control Conference, 18-20 April 2002, Sandia 

National Laboratories. 

122 See G. Pearson, M. Dando, & N. Sims, “The US Rejection of the 

Composite Protocol: A Huge Mistake Based on Illogical 
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Assessment,” Evaluation Paper No. 22, University of Bradford, 

Department of Peace Studies, August 2001; Elisa Harris, “The BWC 

After the Protocol: Previewing the Review Conference,” Arms 

Control Today, December 2001, 10. 

123 Letter from Mr. Steere, Chairman of the Board, Pfizer 

Incorporated to Secretary of Commerce William Daley, February 27, 

1998 (noted that unlimited access to facilities and the right to take 

samples, video and audio recordings and documents would result in 

“substantial” loss of intellectual property and proprietary information, 

and complained about unauthorized taping of by the inspectors, 

interference with legitimate commercial operations and the 

difficulties of managing the inspection teams). Letter on file with 

author. 

125 That is not to say that other states parties did not carry out trial 

inspections or investigations. In fact, a number of states did conduct 

limited trial visits or inspections under extremely controlled 

circumstances and without reporting on the methodologies used. It is 

clear from reading the reports of these exercises that problems 

encountered were minimized and the positive results of these efforts 

pre-ordained. Copies of these reports may be found at the Federation 

of American Scientists web site http://www.fas.org/bwc/papers/ 

protpaptrial.htm. 

126 Alan P. Zelicoff, Testimony before the US House of 

Represenatives, Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee 

on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, 

June 5, 2001, 2 at www.sandia.gov/news-center/resources/congresstestimony/pdf/010605.pdf. 

127 Supra, note 51. See also Anton La Guardia, “Terror of Saddam’s 

Hidden Arsenal,” London Daily Telegraph, March 13, 2002, 1 (UN 

does not believe Saddam has destroyed his biological agents and, in 

fact, may have even more than was accounted for during the 

UNSCOM inspections which ended in 1998). 

128 See Helen Kennedy, “Defector: I Bought Iraq Nukes,” New York 

Daily News, April 3, 2002 (The defector explains how he bought 

eight trucks which became mobile germ making labs moving on short 

notice to undisclosed locations throughout Iraq); David Rose “Iraq’s 

Arsenal of Terror,” Vanity Fair, May 2002, 120; Marie Colvin and 

Nicholas Rufford, “Saddam’s Arsenal Revealed, London Sunday 

Times, March 17, 2002, 1. For a critique of UN Monitoring, 

Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the successor 

to UNSCOM, see Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz, “Why Iraq Will 

Defeat Arms Inspectors,” New York Times, September 16, 2002, 1. 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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129 Khidhir Hamza, “Inspectors in Iraq? Hiding His Weapons is Easy 

for Saddam,” International Herald Tribune, September 18, 2001, 5; 

Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz, supra. 

130 Milhollin & Motz, supra, note 128. 

131 Zelicoff, supra note 120. 

132 Peter Sleven, “US Drops Bid to Strengthen Germ Warfare 

Accord,” Washington Post, September 19, 2001, 1. 

133 Bolton, supra, note 108. 

134 Ibid. Quoted by Undersecretary of State John Bolton. 

135 Statement by President George Bush, The White House Office of 

the Press Secretary, 1 November 2001 at website www.whitehouse. 

gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011101.html. 

136 The drafting and negotiations that led up to the draft proposal was 

a complicated process that stretched over several months. Initially 

the United States was content to have a short conference where the 

parties simply agreed to meet again in 2006, the date for the next 

Review Conference. However, given the crisis with Iraq in 

2002/2003, the need for coalition building, and constant pressure 

from key allies, particularly the UK, the US agreed to accept a 

minimalist work program in the intervening years along the lines of 

President Bush’s 2001 proposal as long as it was to be a take-it-orleave-it proposal and there was to be no flexibility in the work 

programs which would potentially resurrect the “verification” 

protocol. Personal knowledge of the author who served as Deputy 

Head of the US Delegation to the 2002 resumed BWC Review 

Conference. 

137 Draft Decision of the Fifth Review Conference of the States 

Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, 

Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) Weapons 

and on Their Destruction, BWC/CONF.V/CRP.3, 6 November 2002 

(Copy on file with the author). 

138 Report of the Fifth Review Conference of the States Parties to the 

Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and 

Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) Weapons and on Their 

Destruction, BWC/CONF.V/L.1, 14 November 2002 (Copy on file 

with the author). 

139 Interview with UK official who did a preliminary review of 

implementing legislation, December 10, 2002. This represents 

roughly 10% of the states parties to the BWC. While this figure may 
Roberts—Arms Control without Arms Control 

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be low, clearly the vast majority of states have not bothered to live up 

to their legal obligations under the Convention. 

140 See the references supra, note 9. 

141 See The Patriot Act, Public Law No: 107-56, signed by President 

Bush on October 26, 2001. 

142 See, for example, Dan Vergano, “Laser 'Breakdown' Technique 

Focuses On Terrorist Weapons,” USA Today, September 17, 2002, 

11D (System that 'makes the invisible visible' could detect chemical, 

biological agents). 

143 “Experts: DOD Vaccine Program Limited By Organization, Not 

Science,“ Inside The Pentagon, September 12, 2002, 1. Nine of the 

14 vaccines remain unlicensed and available only in IND status, 

making their long-term availability uncertain. This list includes 

Eastern equine encephalitis vaccine; Q fever vaccine; and Rift Valley 

fever vaccine. Licensed vaccines used by the program include 

Anthrax Adsorbed, Hepatitis B, Rabies and Yellow Fever. 

144 Russia has instituted new criminal code provisions prohibiting the 

production, stockpiling and transferring of biological weapons, added 

new customs regulations and established stricter controls over the 

export of agents of human, animal and plant diseases as well as “dual 

purpose” equipment. They have also agreed to establish a WCO 

intelligence center in Moscow and implemented a number of other 

measures. Much more needs to be done, however, given the sorry 

state of Russia’s economy and a society rift of graft and corruption, a 

topic beyond the scope of this paper. See Vladimir Kotliar, 

“Statement at the Workshop on Bio-Terrorism,” Washington DC 14-

17 May 2002, on file with the author. 

145 “United States and United Kingdom Scientists to Collaborate on 

Ways to Detect Chemical and Biological Weapons,” National 

Nuclear Security Administration News Release NA-02-14, July 3, 

2002. 

146 The Department of Defense is also participating in this effort 

committing $300 million to this effort. See Pamela Hess, “Pentagon 

to Track Disease Outbreaks,” Washington Times, August 28, 2002, 1. 

147 Speech by Vice President Dick Cheney to Korean War Veterans, 

29 August 2002, reported at website http://www.whitehouse.gov/ 

news/releases/2002/08/20020829-5.html. 

148 See Kenneth Watman and Dean Wilkening, US Regional 

Deterrence Strategies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995). 
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149 Over the years the Security Council has passed a number of 

resolutions on international peace and security condemning any and 

all acts of terrorism, including the use of biological weapons and 

other weapons of mass destruction. See, for example, Security 

Council Resolutions 687 (3 April 1991, Iraq), 1189 (13 August 1998, 

terrorism), 1269 (19 October 1998, terrorism), 1377 (12 November 

2001, international peace and security), 1373 and 1368 (September 

2001, terrorism). These resolutions may be found at website 

www.un.org/documents/scres.htm. 

150 Supra, note 143. 

151 UN General Assembly Resolution 42/37C of November 1988 

mandated the Secretary-General to investigate reports “concerning 

the possible use of . . . biological or toxin weapons.” The SecretaryGeneral has established a panel of experts for carrying out on-site 

investigations. It has never been used and it is unlikely it ever will be 

because of the vast potential of abuse by endlessly responding to 

charges and counter-charges and Western concerns over allowing an 

international body access to the proprietary information of its 

biotechnology industries. 

152 Dr. Lewis Dunn and Michael Quinlan, “Tackling Biological 

Weapons,” unpublished paper, 2002 (on file with the author). I am 

indebted to Dr. Dunn for kindly providing me a copy of this paper 

and discussing the ideas with me. 

153 See Statement of Ambassador James Leonard in Senate Report 

101-210 on the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, 

November 16, 1989, 189. 

154 The US law implementing the BWC is P.L. 101-298 enacted in the 

US Code at 18 USC. §§ 175-178. 

155 See Matthew Meselson and Julian Robinson, “A Draft Convention 

to Prohibit Biologcial and Chemical Weapons Under International 

Criminal Law,” available at website www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsp/ 

crim01.pdf. The proposed convention is the work of the Harvard 

Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation and is 

known as the Harvard Sussex Draft Convention. Professor Barry 

Kellman of the International Weapons Control Center at Depaul 

University School of Law, who ran the workshop, also tabled a Draft 

Convention on the Prohibition and Prevention of Biological 

Terrorism. Available at website http://www.law.depaul.edu/. 

156 The G-8 includes the US, Canada, Japan, Russia, France, 

Germany, the UK, Italy and the European Union. Statement available 

at website http://www.g8.gc.ca/kan_docs/globpart-e.asp. 
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157 WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations with 191 

member states. It is headquartered in Geneva, and has six regional 

offices and 141 country offices, over 270 collaborating centers and 

partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and industry. 

158 See Global Health: Challenges in Improving Infectious Disease 

Surveillance Systems (GAO-01-722, Government Printing Office: 

Washington DC, August 31, 2001). 

159 Fifty-Fifth World Health Assembly Resolution , Global Public 

Health Response to Natural Occurrence, Accidental Release or 

Delilberate Use of Biological and Chemical Agents or Radionuclear 

Materal that Affect Health, WHA 55.16, 18 May 2002 at website 

www.who.int/gb/EB_WHA/PDF/WHA55/ewha5516.pdf. 

160 Public Health Response to Biological and Chemical Weapons, 

WHO Guidance, Second Edition, WHO, November 2001. 

161 Interviews with WHO officials, 27 June 2002. 

162 Interviews with WHO Officials; Unattributed, “Study: Military 

System Can Detect Epidemics,” Washington Post, September 22, 

2002, 15. 

163 See website www.who.int/emc/deliberate_epi.html. 

164 Interviews with WHO officials, 27 June 2002. 

165 WHO, in partnership with Health Canada, also developed the 

Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN). This is a semiautomated electronic system that continuously scours world 

communications for rumors of unusual disease events. It is more 

comprehensive that Global Alert, covering some 30 communicable 

diseases. For more information on GPHIN see website www.hcsc.gc.ca/hpb/transitn/gphin_e.pdf. 

166 Interviews with WHO officials 27 June 2002. 

167 Senate bill 2487, the Global Pathogen Surveillance Act of 2002, 

passed the Senate and is pending in the House. As of this writing it 

has widespread bipartisan support. 

168 The FAO website is at www.fao.org. 

169 The OIE website is at http://www.oie.int/eng/en_index.htm. 

170 The British Royal Society has made a number of proposals to 

increase the ability of OIE to monitor, report, respond and contain 

animal disease threats whether naturally occurring or deliberately 

caused. See The Royal Society, Infectious Diseases in Livestock

(Latimer Trend Ltd: Plymouth, July 2002). 
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171 Interviews with WCO Officials, July 1, 2002. 

172 Ibid. 

173 Available at website http://www.imo.org/home.asp?topic_id=161. 

174 The comprehensive model agreement includes standing authority 

to take the following enforcement actions: 

1. Board and search vessels claiming the flag of a signatory nation; 

2. Embarkation of a coastal state shiprider empowered to authorize 

patrols, boardings, searches, seizures, and arrests in sovereign waters; 

3. Pursuit of suspect vessels into sovereign waters with permission to 

stop, board, and search; 

4. Entry into sovereign waters to investigate suspect vessels and 

aircraft, also with permission to stop, board, and search; 

5. Overflight by state aircraft of sovereign airspace in support of 

counterdrug operations; and 

6. Authority to relay an order-to-land in the territory of a signatory 

nation. 

See Statement Of Rear Admiral Ernest R. Riutta On Maritime 

Bilateral Counterdrug Agreements Before The Subcommittee On 

Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, And Human Resources Committee On 

Government Reform U. S. House Of Representatives May 13, 1999, 

At website http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-o/g-opl/testimony/ 

13may99.htm. 

175 Article V states that “The Parties agree that an armed attack 

against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be 

considered an attack against them all. . . .” The Alliance Charter may 

be found at website http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm. 

176 John Hendren, “September 11th, Changing NATO’s Scope,” Los 

Angeles Times, September 24, 2002, 1. 

177 Speech by the Secretary General of NATO Lord Robertson at the 

American Enterprise Institute’s New Atlantic Initiative, 20 June 

2002, Washington, D.C. 

178 Past promises in Europe to boost defense spending proved empty. 

The US currently spends more than twice as much on defense as the 

other 18 allies combined. France, a rare European country with forces 

able to deploy overseas, recently made good on a promise to boost 

defense budgets. But others have reneged; the EU's proposed A400-
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M cargo plane can't get off the ground, for example, as European 

governments can't seem to find the money to pay for it. 

179 Supra, note 154. 

180 See Final Communique, Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic 

Council, Reykjavik, 14 May 2002, at website www.natio.int/docu/pr/ 

2002/p02-059e.htm. 

181 Interviews with NATO WMD Center staff, 2 July 2002. 

182 Ibid. 

183 Ibid. 

184 OSCE Bucharest Ministerial Declaration, Ninth Meeting of the 

Ministerial Council, December 3-4, 2001 at website www.osce.org/ 

docs/english/1990-1999/mcs/9buch01e.htm#21. Also See OSCE 

1994 Budapest Summit Declaration at website www.osce.org/docs/ 

english/1990-1999/summits/buda94e.htm#Anchor_PRINCIPLE_ 

37449. 

185 Otakar Mika, “SEDM Initiative on Defence/Military Support to 

WMD Counterproliferation, Border Security, and Counter 

Terrorism,” Concept Paper, 2002 (on file with author). 

186 See for example the Joint EU-US Action Plan (on 

Nonproliferation) at website http://europa.eu.int/comm/ 

external_relations/us/action_plan/1_promoting_peace_stability.htm. 

There are currently some 34 agencies in the EU that are engaged in 

the fight against terrorism and the spread of WMD. 

187 Resolution on Strengthening Hemispheric Cooperation To 

Prevent, Combat, And Eliminate Terrorism, /Ser.F/II.23 

RC.23/RES.1/01 adopted at the first plenary session, held on 

September 21, 2001 of Foreign Ministers at website 

http://www.oas.org. 

188 2001 ASEAN Declaration on Joint Action to Counter Terrorism, 5 

November 2001, at website www.aseansec.org/viw.asp?file=/ 

newdata/2001_asean_declaration.htm. 

189 ASEAN-United States Of America Joint Declaration For 

Cooperation To Combat International Terrorism, 1 August 2002 at 

website http://www.aseansec.org/newdata/6.htm. 

190 See G. Woolett & S. Radcliffe, “Bioweapons, Bioterrorism and the 

New Threats of the 21st Century,” Regulatory Affairs Focus, March 

2002, 7. 
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191 Interview with Terry Taylor, IISS, and Mike Powers, CBACI, 10 

June 2002. See also International Institute of Strategic Studies News, 

Autumn 2002, 10. 

192 See P.L. 107-56, the USA Patriots Act, passed in October 2001, 

which imposes security background checks for scientists working 

with those pathogens deemed most likely to be used by terrorists. 

193 Supra, note 29. 

194 M. Barletta, A. Sands & J. Tucker, “Keeping Track of Anthrax: 

The Case for a Biosafety Convention,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 

May/June 2002, 57. 

195 Ibid. at 61. 

196 See “Improving US Export Control Technical Assistance to 

Prevent Proliferation,” at website http://wwics.si.edu/NEWS/digest/ 

bunton.htm. 

197 So-called because it was an Australia initiative and the meetings 

are held in the Australian embassy in Paris. 

198 See Australia Group website www.australiagroup.net for AG 

activities related to BWC related items. 

199 Australia Group Press Release, June 7, 2002, at website 

www.australiagroup.net/press_07_06_02.html. 

200 Interviews with WCO and Europol officials, 1-2 July 2002. 

201 See Interpol Website at www.interpol.int/Public/Icpo/default.asp. 

202 Interviews with Europol Counter-terrorism official, 3 July 2002. 

203 Ibid. 

204 Ibid. 

205 UN Security Council Resolution 1373, Threats To International 

Peace And Security Caused By Terrorist Act, September 23, 2110, at 

website http://daccess-ods.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N01/557/43/ 

PDF/N0155743.pdf?OpenElement. 

206 Available at website http://www.un.org/law/cod/finterr.htm. The 

Convention was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly 

on December 9, 1999, and has been open for signature since January 

10, 2000. It will enter into force when ratified by 22 states. 
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207 See ARF Statement on Measures Against Terrorist Financing, 30 

July 2002, at website http://www.aseansec.org/newdata/3.htm. 

208 See US-EU Terrorism Financiers Fact Sheet, June 11, 2002 at 

website www.treas.gov/press/releases/po3070.htm. 

209 World Health Organization, Fighting Disease, Fostering 

Development: 1996 World Health Report, 1996, v. 

210 Robert Strausz-Hupé quoted in Daniel Pipes “Death to America,” 

New York Post, September 8, 2002, at website 

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/460. 
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