Analysis and Implications - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 373

support for enhancing the BWC will be required. The BWC—for so long
the orphaned negotiation in the shadows—will have to be brought into
the public spotlight.
The crucial question therefore is: How are this exposure and conse-
quent action to be effectively brought about? It is all very well for a group
of specialists to provide an account of biological warfare and its control
from 1945 to the present day and to elucidate the relevant policy les-
sons—but how is effective political action to be generated? Certainly in
order for the BWC to move up the political agenda the public must be
better informed and concerned. However, whatever else is needed, one
crucial ingredient is clear: people with scientific and medical expertise
surely have a special responsibility to alert policymakers in governments
around the world to the very real dangers of inaction in regard to the
BWC. The World Health Organization report on CBW in the middle of
the Cold War helped in the achievement of the BWC, and its recent up-
dated second edition will help in giving credence to the escalating dan-
gers. Furthermore, the International Committee of the Red Cross has
clearly seen the dangers arising from the production of new biological
weaponry and, referring back to its appeals against CW in the lead-up to
agreement of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, has issued a new appeal, Biotech-
nology, Weapons and Humanity, which calls on states, specialists, and indus-
try to work to control the dangers. 12
March 2005 marked the 30th anniversary of the BWC's entry into
force. Its Sixth Review Conference is scheduled for late 2006. The CWC
will have its second five-yearly Review Conference in 2008. Thus in
the first decade of the 21st century there are multiple opportunities to
strengthen the norm against the hostile use of biological and chemical
weapons before the outbreak of an arms race that could change the na-
ture of warfare as profoundly as nuclear weapons did in the last cen-
tury—and with unpredictable consequences.
Whether the lessons of history, as set out here, will lead to such pro-
gressive action remains to be seen.