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Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense

During the 1990s, the threat ofproliferation and possible use of biological weapons of mass destruction became of much greater concern to the strategic studies community than it had been for the previous two decades. Unfortunately, given that prolonged lack ofattention, there has been a consequent paucity of good information in the open literature on what the problem is and what should be done about it. Thus, collections ofarticles by people who know the subject, such as Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense, edited by Raymond Zilinskas, are much to be welcomed. In his introduction, Zilinskas states that the main purpose ofthe book is to assess the impact ofthe ongoing biotechnology revolution on biological warfare and defense against it. Specifically, he suggests that this requires answers to complex questions, such as the following (p. 5): "( 1) Will the use of molecular biology techniques allow the development and deployment ofa militarily potent new generation ofbiological weaponry?" and "(2) Has our ability to detect BW agents been significantly enhanced through applications of molecular biology techniques?" He argues that the required approach to current efforts to strengthen the 1975 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC}-by adding effective verification measures to it-will depend on the answers to such questions. In order to approach these questions, the eleven contributions by specialist authors are divided into three groups: biological weapons and warfare; defense and prophylaxis; and international control. Zilinskas answers his first question in this way (p. 248): "it will be at least five years before scientists working for proliferant governments or subnational groups will be able to apply the new biotechnologies so as to qualitatively change biological weapons development and usage.... " However, "after approximately five years we can expect Inajor advances in two weapons-related developments: (1) 'improving' wild microbial species for weapons use and (2) enabling better 'targeting. '" Worse, the answer to his second question is that