Biological Weapon

From e-Reserved Readings, read, Kellman, B.  (2011).  The biological weapons convention and the democratization of mass violence.  Global Policy 2(2), 210-216.  doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00083.x

Kellman suggests that there has always been an undisputable relationship with politico-economic power and technology to commit mass violence.  His thesis asserts that individuals, organizations or governments that lacked technology for mass violence simply lack power; conversely, technologically strong entities hold power.

• Why does Kellman believe there is a paradigm shift concerning his above-identified thesis, a shift that he calls the democratization of mass violence? 
• What steps can be taken to promote technology progress that protects against the commission and spreading of mass violence capacities?
• There is no global authority—rule of law if you will—to enforce policies relating to the democratization of mass violence.
• What plan would you implement to address governance of the BWC?  
• Should the treaty apply exclusively to state signatories or should it apply to civil society, terrorists and criminals?  Explain with details.

APA format, in-text citation, reference include, 1 1/2 pages

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The Biological Weapons Convention
and the Democratization of Mass
Violence

Barry Kellman

International Security & Biopolicy Institute

Abstract
The global governance regime to address the vast dangers of intentionally inflicted disease is ineffectively adaptive to
meet emerging challenges. Scientific advances pertaining to manipulation of disease offer profound benefits but also
open ominous new capacities for violence. Weaponized disease can transform a few malevolent actors wholly lacking
in power from purveyors of localized death into architects of existential crises endangering international security. The
historically inexorable relationship between political-economic power and technology for mass violence is shifting – a
paradigm shift called the democratization of mass violence. The 7th Review Conference of the Biological Weapons
Convention in December could set markers for how the world should address this paradigm shift. Three sets of global
policies could reduce dangers of intentionally inflicted disease and promote bioscience’s advance while elevating
global attention to public health: (1) worldwide implementation of harmonized measures to secure and account f

or

especially dangerous pathogens and to enable interruption of intentional biothreats; (2) strengthened national
reporting obligations and international investigations of suspicious behavior in order to build mutual confidence
about national biodefense programs; and (3) implementation of harmonized measures to improve disease surveillance,
strengthen resilience to bio-

attacks and stanch an attack’s transnational spread.

The following question is important for global gover-

nance: how should the world address dangers of inten-

tionally inflicted disease? It is important because the

potential for catastrophic harm due to intentionally

inflicted disease is enormous. Yet, there are scant

answers to the question. Despite the vast consequences

of someone actually inflicting disease, the governance

regime to address such dangers is disaggregated – a

potpourri of conventions and programs without coher-

ent legal order and therefore ineffectively adaptive to

meet emerging challenges.

In December 2011, the United Nations will convene

the 7th Review Conference of the Biological Weapons

Convention

1

in Geneva. If it passes into history as an

unevent – as something that happened to little effect –

it would be a wasted opportunity for strengthening

international peace and security. There could be a better

outcome. At best, the 7th RevCon could be an imminent

occasion to set markers for how the world addresses

dangers of intention

ally inflicted disease.

I begin this article by asserting that there is an evolv-

ing paradigm shift of considerable significance to global

security. For all of human history, an inexorable relation-

ship has existed between political-economic power and

technology for mass violence. Entities possessing power

also had technology for mass violence; entities that

lacked technology for mass violence did not have power.

Over centuries, the concentration of technological capac-

ity in a few states has increasingly become central to the

projection of capacities for mass violence. Nuclear weap-

ons are the epitome of this phenomenon. Controlling

those states’ capacities for violence – international weap-

ons control – is thus pivotal to international security.

I assert that scientific advances pertaining to manipu-

lation of disease are severing the exclusive link between

power and technology for mass violence. These

advances in genomics, nanotechnology and other micro-

sciences offer profound benefits for combating disease,

environmental remediation and economic growth, but

they also open ominous new capacities to intentionally

inflict disease.

Disease agents do not destroy buildings; they do not

necessarily destroy flesh. They do not blast. These agents

interfere with life processes and are, therefore, generally

referred to as bioweapons. It matters less whether the

agent is animate; most scientists would suggest that dis-

tinguishing agents that are biological from chemical from

nano is decreasingly clear. What matters is that weapons

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agents in this category typically: (1) are mutable such

that there are always new agents that can be weapon-

ized; (2) must be produced (particalized) in specialized

laboratories; and (3) must be disseminated widely

through populations in order to inflict mass violence.

I assert that all of these conditions are becoming more

available to actors that in every meaningful sense are

wholly lacking in power. Laboratories with specialized

equipment are increasingly ubiquitous – proliferating to

the point that the term ‘specialized’ has almost lost

meaning. Moreover, there are increasing vulnerabilities

of broad populations who would be victims of intention-

ally inflicted disease.

Bioweapons agents can be made resistant to vaccines

or antibiotics or altered to increase their lethality or to

evade treatment. Diseases once thought to be eradicated

can now be resynthesized, enabling them to spread where

there is limited immunity. Smallpox, the deadliest scourge

in our species’ history, has been eradicated from nature,

but most scientists agree that it can soon (if not now) be

created de novo in well-equipped laboratories. Altogether,

techniques that were on the frontiers of science only a

decade or two ago are rapidly mutating as scientific pro-

gress enables new ways to produce lethal catastrophe

(see, generally, Tucker, 2010). Today, these techniques are

on the horizon. Within a decade, they will be pedestrian.

According to the National Academies of Science, ‘The

threat spectrum is broad and evolving – in some ways pre-

dictably, in other ways unexpectedly. In the future, genetic

engineering and other technologies may lead to the

development of pathogenic organisms with unique,

unpredictable characteristics’.

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In all, advances pertaining to manipulation of disease

are spreading mass violence capacities to any small

group that is malevolent enough to want to inflict intol-

erably grievous harm on masses of humanity with con-

comitant ramifications for the global economy and for

public confidence in governance. More than any other

instrumentality, disease wielded by malevolent actors

can transform those few actors from purveyors of local-

ized death into the architects of existential crises endan-

gering international security.

I refer to this paradigm shift as the democratization of

mass violence. This is why the Biological Weapons

Convention is important. The BWC is the best available

system of global governance for developing security

policies to address this paradigm shift.

Yet, for reasons embedded in its history, the BWC is

among the weakest of all treaty regimes, lacking institu-

tional capacity to do much of anything. At its inception,

President Richard Nixon called it a jackass treaty, and

not much has changed in the four decades since. The

global governance challenge, therefore, is to determine

how this weakling can ascend to meet emerging and

profound dangers to human security.

The Biological Weapons Convention’s
significance

The BWC’s great accomplishment is to ensconce into

international law the absolute prohibition against the

intentional infliction of disease – among the strongest

norms in international law. Article I outlaws the entire

class of bioweapons, broadening the Geneva Protocol’s

prohibition against bioweapons use by outlawing their

development, production, acquisition and retention. This

prohibition applies to all states as a matter of customary

international law.
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Humanity has fought disease forever, and we know that

its intentional infliction has consequences too catastrophic

to tolerate. It is the ultimate indiscriminate weapon in

terms of failing to distinguish between combatants and

civilians. It is violence unbounded in every sense: available

to unidentifiable groups; capable of causing enormously

acute damage to victims anywhere in the world; requiring

diverse and sundry capabilities to reduce its impact.

It matters not whether the Biological Weapons Con-

vention imposes a prohibition against intentional inflic-

tion of disease or is merely the most recent iteration of

that prohibition. What matters is that intentionally

inflicted disease is not normal crime. The potential for

tens of thousands of casualties, perhaps far more, makes

this a crime of the very highest order. In view of the role

of disease in human history and the universal fear of its

spread, for someone to inflict disease intentionally is to

undertake not a crime against one or a few persons but

to undertake a crime against the human species, literally

a crime against humanity.

In this regard, one issue can be conclusively resolved:

to whom does the Biological Weapons Convention’s

binding obligation against the intentional infliction of

disease apply? Does it apply exclusively to states parties

that have agreed to that obligation, or does it also apply

to everyone including terrorists and other criminals?

These questions continue to be debated, manifesting an

untenable misunderstanding of why international law

dictates that the BWC’s normative avowal must apply to

everyone: both states and non-state actors.

Declaring the intentional infliction of disease a crime

against humanity means, by definition, that it cannot be

any less a crime, regardless of who commits it. Indeed,

BWC Article IV requires states parties to enact legal mea-

sures to ensure the extension of Article I’s prohibition to

private persons, and United Nations Security Council

Resolution 1540 obligates all states to enact legal mea-

sures against the proliferation and use of weapons of

mass destruction, including biological weapons. Alto-

gether, if there is any doubt over whether the BWC’s

normative prohibition applies to criminal or other non-

state conduct, then such doubt should be clarified. But

there should be no doubt.

Barry Kellman
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The BWC’s enforcement quandary

The BWC was the second of the triad of treaties about

weapons of mass destruction, following the Nuclear

Nonproliferation Treaty. The two treaties had one con-

spicuous difference: the prohibition against nuclear

weapons proliferation carried an intricately empowered

enforcement system in the International Atomic Energy

Agency, but the prohibition against bioweapons prolifer-

ation carried no comparable system whatsoever. The

deficiency of the BWC became more pronounced when

the Chemical Weapons Convention – the third treaty

about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – entered

into force in 1997. The CWC built the most complex veri-

fication system of any multilateral treaty, leaving the

BWC the sole WMD nonproliferation regime bereft of an

enforcement system.

This inadequacy had serious consequences. In the

early 1990s came the near simultaneous revelation of

the Soviet Union’s two decades of violating the BWC

and of Iraq’s development of bioweapons stockpiles.

These programs, as well as later discovery of the South

African bioweapons program and growing suspicions of

other nations’ bioweapons programs, prompted vigorous

assertions that having an unenforceable norm against

bioweapons was insufficient: there are bad states that

have violated and will violate that norm if they can do

so without risk of discovery.

One school emerged to argue for a BWC enforcement

scheme modeled on that of the CWC. Another school

emerged to argue for negotiated arrangements among

like-minded nations to take joint actions to achieve the

norm. Both schools emerged from the same diagnosis of

the BWC’s enforcement infirmity; they diverged on

whether the solution should be a global structure or a

web of politically aligned commitments.

Throughout the 1990s, formal negotiations on a BWC

enforcement scheme saw proponents of a global struc-

ture in the ascendance. The result was the Biological

Weapons Convention Protocol, calling for a scheme of

confidence-enhancing visits to facilities having capabili-

ties associated with bioweapons and for an international

bureaucracy to undertake these visits and related func-

tions. The Protocol became something of a cause célèbre

to proponents of neoliberalism and a bête noire to pro-

ponents of neoconservatism – not a comfortable place

to be in the late 1990s.

The election of President George Bush settled the

issue. Within months after inauguration, President Bush

announced that the United States would not join the

Protocol because the scheme of confidence-enhancing

visits would jeopardize the intellectual property of US

biotechnology sectors and would do little to reduce the

potential for violent infliction of disease whether from

states or non-states.

The first claim about private sectors losing confidential

business information was something of a distraction –

the CWC had implemented rigorous methods for pro-

tecting such intellectual property, and those methods

had been grafted strongly into the Protocol. The claim

supported a perception that the Bush administration

cared more about preserving US technological superior-

ity than about international arms control. It also fed sus-

picions that the US rejected the Protocol in order to

protect information relating to US biodefense

programs.

The second claim about the scant potential for reduc-

ing biothreats was more substantive. Amid proliferating

applications of bioscience that enable unidentifiable

groups to inflict a disease catastrophe, the critical chal-

lenge is how to prevent wrongful behavior from any

source. A question in the context of the BWC is: does

the Protocol offer the right answer to the right question –

is a system for monitoring activities in selected labora-

tories effective for detecting hostile uses of the life

sciences?

Many observers doubt the utility of such monitoring

of activities. If a state intends to violate the treaty, it can

readily do so at a near-infinite number of undeclared

biological laboratory facilities lacking distinctive features.

In sum, verification modalities are a very expensive way

to gain information about sites where bioweapons risks

are negligible; such modalities would provide scant

information about where bioweapons are in fact being

prepared and would not meaningfully address threats

associated with subnational groups.

Ultimately, the Protocol seems to make less and less

sense with recognition of technological proliferation. If

anyone can intentionally inflict disease, attention should

be devoted to stopping them wherever they might be.

By focusing on specific sites recognized as sophisticated

in the life sciences, the Protocol looks where it can shine

a light, not on where problems might be found.

Yet, from a diplomatic perspective, the Protocol was

the product of a decade-long process that manifested

the legitimacy of international law in the making. BWC

states parties had negotiated in good faith; the US had

been engaged throughout. A decade is a long time

to waste. Here in direct counterpoise was a staunch

commitment to strengthening international institutions

vis-à-vis increasing recognition of the Protocol’s misdirec-

tedness for sustaining international peace and security.

The Biological Weapons Convention’s crucible:
October–December 2001

In the midst of debates about the value of onsite inspec-

tions at bioscience facilities as called for by the Protocol,

about the implications of proliferating scientific progress

that might enable hostile infliction of disease, about

whether the BWC should focus on prohibited conduct

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committed by non-state actors – amidst all these

debates came the anthrax attacks in October 2001.

The attacks proved that intentional infliction of disease

is not a myth; it has happened and could recur. Further-

more, the attacks demonstrated bioweapons’ capacity to

cause enormous disruption, with huge financial implica-

tions and raising questions about whether governments

should have been better prepared. Ultimately, the

attacks were contained with five fatalities. Seven years

later, the FBI identified the perpetrator (Dr Ivens, who

committed suicide).

For the community that focuses on bioweapons

threats, the anthrax attacks heightened attention to the

BWC 5th Review Conference in December 2001. The US

rejection of the Protocol was the top agenda item, but

now the US had been victimized; certainly, everyone

associated with the BWC should reconsider their views

and be open to new strategies. The supervening ques-

tion going into the 5th RevCon was about process. The

substantive objections to the Protocol had been noted

and the attacks had happened; now the mission was to

advance a process that could be both substantively pro-

ductive and multilaterally engaging.

Instead, the 5th RevCon was an unprecedented diplo-

matic disaster. For nearly three weeks, states parties

engaged in sculpting a consensus final declaration to be

approved on the final Friday. As of the final Thursday

evening, a favorable outcome on how to advance the

world’s objective against intentionally inflicted disease

seemed in sight. Too much was at stake to forsake

consensus.

Then, on Friday at 4:30 p.m., the US undersecretary of

state, John Bolton, rose to call for discontinuation of the

process for strengthening the BWC. Thus, in a tense con-

ference that had focused for weeks on how to advance

the BWC process despite the Protocol’s rejection, the US

at the last minute proposed disbanding the only extant

forum for strengthening the convention. Bolton’s pro-

posal provoked an eruption. In the ensuing chaos, the

states parties agreed to the unprecedented tactic of

suspending the Review Conference for one year.

In 2002, after a year of intense diplomatic wrangling,

the resumed RevCon adopted an intersessional workplan

of yearly meetings to consider: national legislation to

implement treaty obligations; biosecurity measures for

protecting pathogens; response measures for disease

outbreaks, natural or manmade; and a bioscience code

of conduct. This workplan was renewed at the 6th

Review Conference in 2006 with modified topics. Impor-

tantly, the 6th Review Conference fortified the three-

person Implementation Support Unit with responsibilities

for managing the intersessional process and promoting

the convention’s universality.

The years since the initiation of the intersessional

workplans have been good for the BWC in terms of rais-

ing awareness of global obligations to improve patho-

gen containment practices that complicate wrongful

access to particularly dangerous pathogens. The meet-

ings have highlighted the importance of criminal law

enforcement both for preventing biothreats and for

responding to bio-attacks. They have explored the utility

of bioscience codes of ethics. For these and many other

accomplishments, the BWC since the 5th RevCon may be

seen as a modest success of international deliberation in

this domain.

From the perspective of addressing current challenges

to international peace and security, however, the BWC’s

record might be differently graded. No binding obliga-

tions and no international authoritative structures have

emerged from the BWC. From the perspective of any

actual governance change, initiation of a program or

reduction of any specific biothreat, the BWC has done

remarkably little. The intersessional workplans have called

for states parties to discuss a few crucial topics – discuss

but not take action. Nearly everyone remotely associated

with the BWC agrees that the magnitude of threats is

rising far more rapidly than are global mechanisms

to counter those threats.

Optimizing the Biological Weapons Convention

Nothing is off-limits for the 7th RevCon. Having

devoted the 1990s to discussing how to strengthen the

Convention’s enforcement scheme and the last decade

to heightening awareness about issues of pathogen

containment, public health and law enforcement, the

BWC process now has no definitive agenda in place,

no ongoing initiatives that dominate its attention.

Today, the BWC is a tabula rasa and therefore can look

forward unencumbered by passé doctrines or vain

requirements.

In this regard, the 7th Review Conference is a thresh-

old of opportunity to confront formally the paradigm

shift that I earlier referred to as the democratization of

mass violence. As the dangers associated with malevolent

infliction of disease change, and as the likely perpetra-

tors of those dangers expand beyond states, efforts to

empower the treaty should change accordingly. To do

that, there must be a recognition that arms control is

not what it used to be. Traditional mechanisms for limit-

ing state development of lethal capacities must be

broadly supplemented with new techniques for early

detection of malevolent schemes and effective prepared-

ness against attacks. Equally as important, there must be

institutional capacity to implement these techniques by

working with international and regional organizations

and with the private sector.

In brief, there are global policies that could substan-

tially reduce dangers of intentionally inflicted disease

while simultaneously promoting bioscience’s advance

Barry Kellman
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and elevating global attention to public health. The fol-

lowing three recommended policy directions are offered

as a useful guide for action at the upcoming 7th

RevCon.

1. Worldwide implementation of harmonized measures

to secure and account for especially dangerous patho-

gens and to enable interruption of intentional

biothreats.

Improving information integration and analysis is critical

to enabling law enforcement, public health, scientific

and intelligence communities to prevent bio-attacks by

early identification of bio-offenders. Today, too much is

unknown about the location of particularly dangerous

pathogen strains, and there is inadequate capability to

track movement of such strains globally. Well-accepted

techniques exist for denying unauthorized access to dan-

gerous materials such as requiring registration of labs

that work with dangerous pathogens – registration

depends upon adoption of security techniques. Yet,

these techniques remain insufficiently implemented and

monitored in too many places. Comparable gaps would

not be tolerated with regard to nuclear materials.

The BWC can promote globally accepted pathogen

security measures that make it more difficult for poten-

tial perpetrators of intentionally inflicted disease to pur-

sue their plans. Systems should be strengthened to

improve collaborative information sharing about high-

risk bioscience activities. The BWC can forge linkages

with relevant standard-setting organizations to develop

guidelines about which pathogens present the most

acute threats and how best to contain them securely. A

compliance monitoring process, analogous to an Interna-

tional Organization for Standardization (ISO) process,

could certify facilities that meet harmonized security

standards and, as appropriate, help build capacity and

promote training in developing nations.

Moreover, the BWC should advocate comprehensive

national criminal legislation that enables transnational

law enforcement cooperation by sharing information,

conducting investigations and accountability for use of

bioweapons, whether by states or non-state actors. Use-

ful microbial forensic techniques for diagnosing attack

agents are gaining scientific credence, but substantial

legal problems impede multilateral use of these tech-

niques. The BWC should identify how emerging princi-

ples of international criminal legal assistance can be

harmonized to enhance attribution capabilities for

wrongful use ⁄ release of disease agents and ensure that

investigations proceed expeditiously.

2. Strengthened national reporting obligations and inter-

national investigations of suspicious behavior in order

to build mutual confidence about national biodefense

programs.

Some biodefense research is difficult to distinguish from

conducting a bioweapons program. To avoid misconcep-

tions that foment suspicions, states should have informa-

tion that sustains confidence about other states’

disinterest in developing bioweapons. Expending vast

resources on superfluous verification systems is not the

point. This is an argument for updated confidence-build-

ing measures that reveal enough about national biosci-

ence activities to deflate suspicions of other states’

biodefense initiatives.

The BWC could usefully initiate a process for identify-

ing and implementing confidence-building measures

that explicitly target concerns about national biowea-

pons programs. That process should respect the fact

that national biodefense programs may look like bio-

weapons programs; the difference has to do with the

degree of transparency: covert biodefense facilities are

suspicious.

Altogether, this process should have two pillars. First,

the BWC should have an independent capacity to gather

open-source or freely proffered information that might

pertain to suspicious bioweapons programs. This is not

about obligatory onsite verification inspections. It is

about delegating a research capacity for: (1) identifying

data streams and other indicators that might discern

prohibited bioweapons activities; and (2) proposing use-

ful techniques for optimizing how these streams and

indicators could ensure confidence in multilateral com-

pliance with the BWC.

Second, the BWC should resolve that the United

Nations Mechanism for Investigations of Alleged Use of

Biological Weapons (under the Secretary General’s

authority) be expanded to include alleged production.

The term production refers to activities that are not inci-

dental to bioscientific research or technological develop-

ment but which are very difficult to justify otherwise

than for building weapons to inflict disease. The criteria

for invoking the mechanism must disregard most biosci-

ence. Only in extreme cases should the Secretary General

utilize his or her discretion in invoking such an investiga-

tion. If invoked, however, the investigation should be

capable of resolving the doubts that provoked it initially.

Ultimately, the expanded mechanism should serve as a

deterrent.

3. Implementation of harmonized measures to improve

disease surveillance, strengthen resilience to bio-

attacks and stanch an attack’s transnational spread.

Strengthening public health preparedness to cope with

disease outbreaks can reduce vulnerabilities to intention-

ally inflicted disease. A perpetrator is unlikely to inflict a

disease against an effectively immunized population or

try to spread it in a secured site. If the attack occurs,

more lives can be saved and damage contained in pre-

pared communities.

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Yet, no one can claim that the world is well prepared

to minimize the suffering that would ensue from inten-

tionally inflicted disease. There is no adequate global

preparedness strategy, whether inside the BWC or other-

wise; nor is it clear who should be responsible for this

strategy.

An initial element of this strategy is sharpened disease

surveillance and detection techniques to optimize accu-

rate identification of what has happened and what

should be done. Global response coordination among

key sectors – health, law enforcement, environment,

agriculture protection and military – should be

improved. Such coordination faces multiple challenges:

strengthening food defense, promoting cross-border

cooperation and developing rapid response plans that

include quarantine to limit the spread of contagion.

Preparedness of medical countermeasures for curing

victims is pivotal. Realistically, such medical countermea-

sures must be produced and stockpiled before the

attack; surge production to meet bio-attacks will leave

far too many people dead. However, advance planning

is complicated by the distinctiveness of agents – each

requiring its own countermeasures – and by the logisti-

cal complexities of delivering medical countermeasures

to victims in time. These complications are magnified by

an array of legal barriers and gaps that render well-

intentioned efforts to promote biopreparedness substan-

tially ineffective.

The BWC could usefully establish a biopreparedness

working group to focus on the following. (1) What are

the unique characteristics of preparedness for intention-

ally inflicted disease that are atypical for naturally occur-

ring disease and therefore are within the domain of the

BWC? (2) What options could improve global biopre-

paredness against bio-attacks? (3) What obstacles exist

to those options, including legal obstacles? (4) How can

international organizations and other governance sys-

tems promote biopreparedness by reducing obstacles

and incentivizing progress?

Optimizing engagement through the Biological
Weapons Convention process

The BWC process should usefully engage entities and

ideas that will advance the BWC’s mission, whether from

public, private or social entities. Just as emerging threats

to international peace and security are not limited to

states, the stakeholder communities that must devote

capacities and expertise to countering those threats are

not at all limited to states. The democratization of mass

violence must call, in turn, for the democratization of

global security.

The ironic good fortune in this context is that there

are very real and substantial benefits that should be wel-

come to health professionals, scientists, pharmaceuticals,

development proponents and law enforcers. But these

benefits are available only to those who participate. Yet,

the BWC process for developing any initiative is remark-

ably vague, and there are no easy ways to engage

similar-thinking persons. It is imperative to reward pro-

active contributions, but little has been done to define

relevant contributions or to incentivize the various

contributors.

From the perspective of global governance, perhaps the

most important outcome of the 7th RevCon would be to

establish a process whereby working groups of experts

could address, on a continuing and progressive basis,

some of the substantive challenges identified above.

Conclusions

The first priority for the BWC 7th RevCon is for some

(any?) world leaders to highlight the paradigm shift asso-

ciated with the democratization of mass violence. In

announcing the United States National Strategy for

Countering Biological Threats at the 2009 BWC States

Parties Meeting, Undersecretary of State Tauscher auspi-

ciously highlighted the Convention’s significance.
4
How-

ever, as of writing, not a single national chief executive

or leader of an international organization has articulated

a commitment to implementing the above-discussed

proposals within the BWC process or specified how that

process can undertake a reconstruction of international

peace and security to meet emerging threats associated

with intentionally inflicted disease. Absent devotion of

some political capital, prospects for progress in building

security against tomorrow’s dangers are dim indeed.

Altogether, dangers of intentionally inflicted disease

shrink the planet into an interdependent neighborhood,

posing unprecedented dangers and opportunities for

global governance. Achieving security entails adoption

of policies that focus on humanity as a species entity

and that are implemented everywhere with centralized

governance. However imperfect the extant global

regimes for peace and security may be, it is imperative

that they be ardently engaged. The Biological Weapons

Convention 7th Review Conference is a moment for

leadership that should not be ignored.

Notes

1. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Produc-

tion and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin

Weapons and on their Destruction, United States Treaties, Vol. 26,

p. 583; Treaties and Other International Acts Series, No. 8062; Uni-

ted Nations Treaty Series, Vol. 1015, p. 163 (signed 10 April 1972;

entered into force 26 March 1976).

2. Committee on Advances in Technology and the Prevention of

Their Application to Next Generation Biowarfare Threats, National

Research Council of the National Academies, Globalization, Biose-

curity, and the Future of the Life Science (2006), p. 49.

Barry Kellman
6

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D

3. This has long been the position of the United States government.

See United States Department of State, Bureau of Verification,

Compliance and Implementation, Case Study: Yellow Rain. Fact

Sheet (1 October 1 2005). Available from: http://www.state.gov/

documents/organization/57428 [Accessed 11 September 2007].

4. United States National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats.

Available from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/

National_Strategy_for_Countering_BioThreats [Accessed 17

February 2011].

Reference

Tucker, J. (2010) ‘Preventing the Misuse of Gene Synthesis, Issues in

Science and Technology, 26 (3), pp. 23–27.

Selected Readings

Beard, J. M. (2007) ‘The Shortcomings of Indeterminacy in Arms

Control Regimes: The Case of the Biological Weapons Conven-

tion’, American Journal of International Law, 101 (271).

Cole, L. A. (1997) The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and

Chemical Warfare. New York: W. J. Freeman and Company.

Furukawa, K., Revill, J., Dando, M. and van der Bruggen, K. (2009)

Biosecurity: Origins, Transformations and Practices (New Security

Challenges). Palgrave Macmillan.

GAO Report (2002) ‘Arms Control: Efforts to Strengthen the Biologi-

cal Weapons Convention’, for the Chairman, Subcommittee on

National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations,

Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives

(September).

Kellman, B. (2007) Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime.

New York: Cambridge University Press.

Littlewood, J. (2005) The Biological Weapons Convention: A Failed

Revolution. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Ouagrham-Gormley, S. B. and Vogel, K. M. (2010) ‘The Social

Context Shaping Bioweapons (Non)proliferation’, Biosecurity and

Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science’, 8 (1),

pp. 9–24.

Rapper, B. and McLeish, C. (2007) A Web of Prevention: Biological

Weapons, Life Sciences and the Future Governance of Research.

Earthscan.

Roberts, G. B. (2003) ‘Arms Control without Arms Control: The

Failure of the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol and

a New Paradigm for Fighting the Threat of Biological Weap-

ons’. Institute for National Security Studies, NSS Occasional

Paper 49.

Tucker, J. B. and Koblentz, G. D. (2009) ‘The Four Faces of Microbial

Forensics, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Prac-

tice, and Science, 7 (4), pp. 389–397.

Author Information

Barry Kellman, President, International Security & Biopolicy Insti-

tute, and Professor, DePaul University College of Law.

The BWC and Democratization of Mass Violence
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