The Politics of Biological Disarmament - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 328

nate from an assessment that BW were not particularly attractive weap-
ons to the US, and that interest in BW by smaller states should be discour-
aged.
Although internal UK and US documents show intense attention to the
BW disarmament issue at times, it was not a high priority for either gov-
ernment. Substantive aspects of the treaty, particularly the explicit ban-
ning of use and the complaints procedures for investigating use, were al-
lowed to languish or were traded away in the desire to achieve some kind
of disarmament agreement on weapons that both governments agreed
were not essential to their security.
The absence of any framework of declarations and on-site measures
to address compliance concerns has haunted the implementation of the
Convention. Suspicions of Soviet noncompliance arose early on, and rev-
elations about the extent of its massive treaty violations (see Chapter 6)
have underscored the weaknesses of the instrument. Yet the complete re-
jection of the AHG by the US and the weakness of alternative national,
bilateral, and multilateral measures proposed by the Bush administration
have left the Convention in a familiar limbo. The treaty remains a neces-
sary and profound articulation of the global norm against the possession
and use of biological and toxin weapons, with no international machin-
ery to investigate or to sanction alleged violations of that norm.
US conduct at the resumed Fifth Review Conference demonstrated
that the pattern of assigning a low priority to BW control issues persists.
Although the US government considered the AHG effectively dead, it did
not push for formal termination of its mandate, instead acquiescing in the
UK government's appeal to continue multilateral activities. Had it not
been for the US need for UK support in Iraq, according to a US govern-
ment official, the US government would have continued to press for a
formal dissolution of the AHG. 76 Thus BW control continues to take a
backseat to other international issues deemed more urgent or more im-
portant. Raising the political profile of BW control initiatives is likely to
remain an imperative for advocates of international cooperation for a
truly effective BW disarmament regime.