Controlling the Proliferation of Biological Weapons

Brad Roberts is a Research Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., where he also serves as Editor of The Washington Quarterly. His recent publications include Biological Weapons: Weapons of the Future? and Ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention. An earlier version of this article was presented to a symposium of the American Bar Association's Committee on National Security. In the panoply of global security interests as they have emerged after the Cold War, biological weapons are nearly an afterthought. It is common to hear such weapons lumped together with nuclear and chemical weapons—and their delivery systems—in descriptions of the emerging proliferation challenge, but with little or no differentiation of the biological aspect from the larger context. Why, in fact, do biological weapons (BW) merit any specific concern? After all, despite the high potential lethality of such weapons, their use in modern warfare has been virtually unknown. Moreover, there has been a global arms control regime in place in the biological domain for over two decades—the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC)—with more than 100 states parties. The answer is straightforward: the biological warfare problem appears to be growing worse. There are four reasons for thinking so.