Analysis and Implications - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 370

It should be possible to make offensive programs difficult for prolif-
erators (such as Iraq in the recent past) by careful control of key exports
of equipment and materials. Eventually, however, a determined state
could overcome such obstacles. Control of BW materials and equipment
is more difficult than control of essential fissile material for nuclear weap-
ons. So although export controls are essential, they are not in themselves
sufficient.
As understanding of pathogenesis improves, it will also be possible to
improve our capabilities for biodefense—disease agent detection and dis-
ease prevention and treatment. This improved understanding, and defen-
sive actions based upon it, would reduce the effectiveness of attacks and
thus act as a deterrent. But again, while helpful, improved defense will
always be difficult, and there will be increasing options for an attacker,
too, through modification of traditional agents or the development of ad-
vanced biological agents—including new synthetic agents. 5
So international responses to use, export controls, and biodefense are
each part of the solution, but are not adequate in isolation. They indeed
have to be seen as parts of a web of deterrence. 6 Such policies have to be
bound together by the norm embodied in the Geneva Protocol, the BWC,
and the CWC. Moreover, it has to be accepted that these agreements,
which embody the norm, have significant weaknesses that will take time
and effort to rectify.
The Geneva Protocol, now recognized as being customary interna-
tional law, prohibits only use of BW (and CW). The Chemical Weapons
Convention is the strongest element in the regime, but its verification
system needs some reorientation, and the challenge of new scientific and
technological developments needs to be faced up to squarely. 7 The BWC
is in need of the greatest attention.
The deficiencies in the compliance monitoring system of the BWC
were recognized from its inception. Efforts to strengthen the Convention
through confidence-building measures (annual data exchanges), negoti-
ated in 1986 and extended in 1991, are widely viewed as not being as ef-
fective as they could be, and the decade-long effort of 1991-2001 to reach
agreement on a legally binding instrument also ended in failure. 8 Less
well known, but potentially as serious, is the lack of any international or-
ganization to care for and develop the treaty regime between its five-