@@ Double Talk & Biological Warfare @@
Arash
Volume 15 Number 2
March 2002
Double Language and Biological Warfare
by Susan Wright
The emotive value of the immorality of biological warfare has long been used
by Western nations, especially in relation to the putative intentions of
non-Western states that are seen as hostile or irresponsible. In Western
parlance, biological weapons are the "poor man's nuclear weapons." There is
some irony in this description. Biological weapons were first developed as
mass destruction weapons by industrialized countries-notably the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, the former Soviet Union, Germany, Japan,
and Canada. (1) These countries have advocated biological disarmament since
the late 1960s, but they have continued to rely on other means of mass
destruction, notably nuclear weapons, for their own defense, if not also for
advancing their geopolitical goals.
The idea of an international convention banning biological weapons was
raised with the United States in 1968 by the United Kingdom's Labour
government, which was seeking a way to respond to anti-war protests against
Britain's own chemical and biological warfare programs. (2) The British
government chose to focus on biological weapons for two reasons. First, it
knew that it could not persuade the United States to renounce chemical
weapons. In any case, the U.K. military establishment had its own interests
in developing novel incapacitating chemical weapons. Second, advisors to
Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Cabinet saw biological weapons as
"speculative" weapons, susceptible to climatic conditions and to mutation,
uncertain in their impact, and therefore disposable. The Chief Science
Advisor, Sir Solly Zuckerman, bluntly dismissed them as "a pain in the neck
and of no military value."(3)
The British argued in 1968 that the West had almost nothing to lose by
abandoning biological weapons since it could continue to rely on nuclear
weapons, and much to gain, by depriving non-nuclear states of a cheap mass
destruction option. (4) Shortly after this, the United States arrived at the
same conclusion. In November 1969, President Richard Nixon decided to
dismantle the American biological weapons program and to support the
completion of the convention proposed by the UK. As Nixon crudely told his
speechwriter, William Safire, "If someone uses germs on us, we'll nuke 'em."
(5)
Thus, a strategic asymmetry was inscribed into the international ban on germ
weapons, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which was opened for
signature in 1972. Powerful states continued to maintain their nuclear
stockpiles and to protect their allies with their nuclear deterrent while
weak states that signed on to the BWC had no such protection. Many of the
latter were also parties to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
At the end of the Cold War, the American decision to subject states
suspected of harboring biological or chemical weapons-defined as "rogues"-to
tough economic sanctions deepened this asymmetry. In the Middle East,
Western states applied a double standard. Compare the virtual silence of the
West on Israel's nuclear arsenal and its highly secret chemical and
biological warfare facility at Ness Ziona and the intense Western criticism
of neighboring states that showed signs of interest, however ambiguous, in
biological or chemical weapons.
The most punitive example of this double standard is the coercive
disarmament of Iraq. In the years after the Gulf War cease-fire in 1991,
Iraq's nuclear weapons program was closed down by the International Atomic
Energy Agency and substantial parts of its biological and chemical weapons
programs were dismantled by the UN Special Commission. But despite the
considerable success of the UNSCOM and IAEA operations, the economic
sanctions used to attempt to force Iraq to reveal the complete truth about
its weapons of mass destruction programs continued, with terrible
consequences for the Iraqi people. Those affected were not Iraq's brutal
leader, Saddam Hussein, and his supporters, but innocent civilians.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths, especially among children, have been
attributed to the effects of the sanctions against Iraq. Documents made
public last year show that the US government accurately anticipated the
consequences of denying Iraq the means to purify its water supply. The
authors of a government report predicted an increased incidence of diarrhea,
typhoid, and other water-borne diseases, with a particular impact on
children. (6) When former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked
what she thought of the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, she
responded that "it was a very hard choice" but that "we think the price was
worth it." (7)
Moreover, the United States, which insists on sanctions against "rogue
states," has shown little inclination to support the strengthening of
measures under the BWC that would apply to all the parties to the treaty,
including itself. In fact, both the Clinton and Bush administrations have
done a great deal to weaken the treaty.
The BWC bans the "development, production, and stockpiling" of biological
and toxin weapons but its fundamental prohibition has several major
loopholes. In effect, the convention allows development and production, and
even, perhaps, limited stockpiling of germ warfare agents if these
activities can be justified for developing defenses such as vaccines,
therapies, or protective clothing. Research without limits is allowed since
there is no reference to it. There is no machinery for checking compliance
or detecting cheating. Finally, except in the extreme case of stockpiling
germ weapons, the line between defense and offense drawn by the treaty is
often difficult to define except in relation to intentions-a notoriously
difficult criterion to apply in practice.
In 1995, the approximately 140 parties to the Convention agreed to negotiate
a protocol to enhance compliance-essentially an inspection regime requiring
declarations of activities relevant to biological warfare, routine
inspections, and "challenge" inspections to investigate serious charges of
non-compliance. But this attempt to achieve transparency was complicated by
some major problems, not the least of which were caused by the obstinate
diplomacy of the Clinton administration.
Former president Bill Clinton professed strong support for the BWC. However,
he also succumbed to pressure from the American biotechnology and
pharmaceutical industries for a weak regime that would not place these
industries under close scrutiny from international inspectors. (8)
Washington's negotiators badgered their international colleagues into
accepting loopholes that drastically weakened conditions for inspections and
placed control largely in the hands of the inspected states themselves.
Washington also insisted on minimizing inspections of military facilities
for states with large biological defense programs, a move that meant that
only a fraction of the sites of American biological defense activities would
be visited. Such self-serving tactics undermined commitments to
strengthening the treaty. Disillusion if not skepticism pervaded the
negotiations in Geneva.
By the late 1990s, many believed that given the US-imposed loopholes in the
draft protocol, verification of compliance could not work. Then came the
George W. Bush administration, already on a unilateralist offensive against
arms control in general. On July 25, 2001, the administration rejected the
draft protocol entirely. Besides arguing that the draft protocol would be
ineffective (which was no doubt true, given the damage achieved by the
Clinton administration), the Bush administration claimed that the protocol
would jeopardize not only confidential business information but also
national security. (9)
A week before the September 11th attacks, The New York Times revealed the
reasons for this decision: the administration wished to shroud certain
biological warfare projects in secrecy. (10) Three of these projects are
especially troubling: the testing of a mock germ warfare factory using
generally harmless organisms with characteristics similar to those of the
dangerous pathogens used as weapons; the testing of a germ warfare bomb that
lacked certain crucial components, presumably to study its dispersal
characteristics; and a plan to genetically engineer a strain of anthrax
capable of resisting the protection normally given by vaccination.
The second project--the bomb test--would seem to be a direct violation of
the BWC, which bans without qualification the development, production, and
stockpiling of equipment and means of delivery. But all of these projects
are so close to the fuzzy line between prohibited and permitted activities
that fine legal distinctions hardly matter. One can imagine the American
response if any of the "rogues" were caught doing such things, especially at
this point, when President George W. Bush has announced a concerted fight
against "rogue" regimes that seek to develop weapons of mass destruction.
(11)
All of these projects undermine the Convention and stimulate development of
novel biological weapons around the world. One of the earliest nightmare
scenarios for genetic engineering was the idea of modifying a pathogen
against which there would be no protection. Fears of such uses by military
agencies provoked a call for banning them in 1975. (12) In addition, the
claim justifying this project, that vaccines could be designed to work
against modified organisms is illusionary: nature provides too many
pathogens with too many genes that can be altered for a single vaccine to
provide an effective defense. As Richard Novick, a New York University
microbiology professor who heads a committee to study research for
biological defense, told me in December, "I cannot envision any imaginable
justification for changing the antigenicity of anthrax as a defensive
measure." (13) Why, then, the interest in pursuing this work? The September
11th attacks have apparently encouraged Washington to justify these
dangerous military projects in the name of "biological defense."
On November 1st, the administration unveiled an approach to biological
disarmament that follows the general "Bush doctrine" advocated by national
security advisor Condoleeza Rice: Hold nations responsible for violations of
international law on their own territory while rejecting cooperative
international approaches to security and arms control. (14) In the context
of the BWC, the Bush doctrine translates into opposing the BWC inspection
regime and replacing it with punitive responses to violations that can be
strongly influenced by the United States in the UN Security Council. These
policies are also backed by the huge biological defense effort, which is
likely to cost several billion dollars this year, (15) and the threat of
massive retaliation should a "rogue" state use weapons of mass destruction.
Applying the Bush doctrine to biological disarmament is precisely what the
United States attempted to achieve at the fifth BWC review conference held
in Geneva late last year. A surprise proposal made by under secretary of
state for arms control John Bolton shortly before the end of the conference
would have rejected not only the draft text of the protocol but more
fundamentally, the entire mandate for future negotiations designed the
strengthen the BWC. That outcome was avoided only by the suspension of the
proceedings by the conference chair until next November. (16)
Clearly, the Bush administration aims to switch the route to achieving
biological disarmament from prevention through international cooperation to
coercive measures applied either unilaterally or by the UN Security Council
presumably in a context of strong American pressure. At the same time, the
engineering of dangerous pathogens in the name of defense is treated as
"normal." The frightening irony is that this approach to "strengthening" the
Convention could well lead to a worldwide biological arms race.
1. Erhard Geissler and John Ellis van Courtland Moon, eds., Biological and
Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. For details, see Susan Wright, "The Geopolitical Origins of the 1972
Biological Weapons Convention," forthcoming in S. Wright, ed., The
Biological Warfare Question: A Reappraisal for the 21st Century.
3. U.K. Foreign Office, Ronald Hope-Jones to Moss, 4 July 1968, FCO 10/181,
U.K. Public Records Office.
4. U.S. Department of State, American Embassy London to State Department, 30
July 1968, telegram 11305, "UK Working Paper on Biological Weapons," 30 July
1968, classified "secret," RG 59, POL 27-10, National Archives, discussed in
Wright, "The Geopolitical Origins of the 1972 Biological Weapons
Convention," n. 2.
5. William Safire, "On Language: Weapons of Mass Destruction," New York
Times (19 April 1998), section 6, 22.
6. Thomas Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions," The Progressive
(September 2001).
7. Leslie Stahl, "Punishing Saddam," produced by Catherine Olian, CBS, 60
Minutes, 12 May 1996.
8. Susan Wright and David Wallace, "Varieties of Secrets and Secret
Varieties: The Case of Biotechnology," Politics and the Life Sciences 19(1)
(March 2000), 33-45.
9. Elizabeth Olson, "U.S. Rejects New Accord Covering Germ Warfare," New
York Times (26 July 2001), A7.
10. Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William J. Broad, "U.S. Germ
Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits," New York Times (4 September 2001),
A1, A6; Judith Miller, "Next to Old Rec Hall, A 'Germ-Making Plant'," New
York Times (4 September 2001), A6. These articles drew on research for a
book published in September 2001 by the same authors, Germs: Biological
Weapons and America's Secret War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).
11. President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address to Congress, 28
January 2002.
12. Royston C. Clowes et al., "Proposed Guidelines on Potential Biohazards
Associated with Experiments Involving Genetically Altered Microorganisms,"
24 February 1975, Recombinant DNA History Collection, MC100, Institute
Archives, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. For discussion, see
Susan Wright, Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory
Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972-1982 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994), 151.
13. Personal communication, December 2001.
14. Dana Milbank, "Bush Would Update Germ Warfare Pact," Washington Post (2
November 2001), A16.
15. John D. McKinnon, "Government Boosts Spending on Defense Against
Bioterrorism to Nearly $3 Billion," Wall Street Journal (18 October 2001),
A28.
16. For further discussion of the fifth BWC review conference, see Susan
Wright, "Dumping the Effort to Strengthen the BWC," Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists (forthcoming, March/April 2002).
* Susan Wright, a historian of science at the University of Michigan,
directs an international research project on biological warfare and
disarmament and North-South relations. She is co-author and editor of a
forthcoming book, The Biological Warfare Problem: A Reappraisal for the 21st
Century.
This article is a revised and translated version of "Double Langage et
guerre bacteriologiqué," published in Le Monde Diplomatique in November
2001. Reprinted with permission of the editors. Le Monde Diplomatique: 58b,
rue du Dessous-des-Berges 75013 Paris, France. English website:
http://www.MondeDiplo.com
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/15-2double-language.html