Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
wrecking the economies of most nations of the world. Recovery would
require years. Nuclear weapons had been used for the first time, with
devastating effectiveness, and the major powers were pursuing their ac-
quisition. The United Nations was being formed, with grand hopes of in-
ternational organizations that might make war obsolete. The emerging
Cold War would soon transform much of international relations into a
hall of mirrors where nothing was as it appeared. The entire conceptual
fabric of arms limitation, deterrence, retaliation, and war fighting was
changing rapidly.
In this context, many of the victorious powers emerged from the war
with active BW development programs. Although these programs had
not produced usable military weapons (apart from the UK cattle cakes),
they had suggested sufficient promise to make continued pursuit of BW
attractive. Chapters 2 through 6 examine the programs in these coun-
tries: the US, the UK, Canada, the Soviet Union, and France, whose BW
program was terminated by the German occupation at the beginning of
the war but resumed shortly after the war's end. The offensive BW pro-
grams in these countries are traced from the flux of the post-World War II
period until program termination. Major themes are the tripartite coop-
erative arrangements among the US, UK, and Canada; the changing role
of BW vis-à-vis nuclear weapons; and the reasons for continuation, and
then termination, of the programs.
All the principal BW powers of the immediate postwar period eventu-
ally discontinued their programs. The UK ended its program in the 1950s
with a quiet and gradual shift from offensive to defensive work. The US
very publicly and unexpectedly renounced offensive BW in 1969. Can-
ada, which had never had an independent offensive BW program, but
which had close collaborative arrangements with the US and UK pro-
grams, pledged in 1969 to discontinue cooperative offensive research and
development. Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union's offensive pro-
gram, apparently ended it in the early 1990s, although concerns remain
about residual activities in military microbiology facilities that are still
closed to outsiders.
Several states pursued an offensive BW capability beginning well after
World War II. Two of these are discussed here (Chapters 8 and 9): Iraq
and South Africa. Iraq's program mostly pursued a battlefield military ca-
pability, whereas South Africa's was designed to develop weapons for as-
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