Preparations for consequence management should also highlight the risks that will be faced by would-be perpetrators should they initiate BCW attacks. Defense encompasses both passive and active efforts. Passive defenses, including equipment, preparations, and training of medical response and clean-up teams, can play an important role. Ongoing efforts for active defenses are also essential, but need continued, careful evaluation of their realistic potential and the prospect of operational countermeasures. Sanctions, and in particular trade as well as military sanctions, can be important, although their effectiveness against indigenous terrorist groups as opposed to state actors is highly doubtful.
Export controls over critical substances and equipment are essential.
Accepted rules concerning such actions are elusive, however, and unilateral measures would need to satisfy the stringent criteria under the United Nations Charter. Nations that act preemptively will have to be prepared to balance their unilateral aims against their international policy goals, as well as to defend their conduct by revealing intelligence as a basis for action in addition to meeting the conventional requirements of proportionality and necessity for acting against a BCW threat. The economic and scientific strength of a nation and, even more, its credibility are important factors in its ability to dissuade, discourage, or even prevent a BCW attack. For this and other reasons, the United States must maintain credibility by forgoing unwarranted threats and by following through on such threats as it does make while insisting on, and subjecting itself to, strict accountability. The prospect, however, that the fifty-year norm against use of nuclear weapons would come to an end in response to the use of BCW is patently unappealing.