Biological Weapons Convention effectiveness

The Biological Weapons Convention has been signed by around 150 countries. However, there have been a number of allegations that the convention has been breached. Recent years have seen increasing suspicion in the West about the USSR s BW capability and the direction of its research, while a number of commentators have been critical of BW research in the United States. These factors inevitably lead to questions about the effectiveness of the Biological Weapons Convention and also reflect on the prospects for CW arms control - if compliance with a BW Convention cannot be satisfactorily guaranteed, how can there be confidence that a ban on chemical weapons... 

Nevertheless, it was events in Kurdistan in particular which fully illustrated both the ambiguity of what was banned and the absence of verification measures under the Geneva Protocol. Only use of chemical weapons was banned, not possession. In 1972 the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the Convention of the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological Weapons. Chemical weapons fell outside this convention and by 1988 it became clear that a chemical weapons treaty was urgently needed to place effective constraints on the proliferation of these weapons worldwide. 

Chapter 3 is concerned with the period between the two world wars. It describes the ways in which public opinion in the field of chemical warfare was aroused after the experience of the First World War, and to some extent how public opinion was then exploited. The chapter considers some of the effects of this including how it stimulated the negotiation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, one of the most important pieces of conventional international law prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons. The chapter also considers the national policies and programmes relating to chemical warfare in the inter-war period and examines important chemical warfare discoveries in these decades. 

This chapter examines the prohibitions in the relevant treaties - the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention - and concludes that chemical weapons are totally prohibited. Consideration is given to the risk of use of chemical weapons posed in the 21st Century, both by states and by other organizations and individuals, such as terrorists, and to how these risks can be countered by the effective implementation of the treaties. 

The international strategic and economic-political implications of these varying strategies are many. To the extent that we emphasize the use of nuclear or chemical and biological weapons, the more we are likely to place ourselves in the position of having to use them or back down at the next crisis, and the less well prepared we may be to fight a limited war. On the other hand, to emphasize conventional weapons in the face of the enemy s effective development of her capacity to deliver nuclear attacks on our homeland invites destruction in war and nuclear blackmail in peace. 

J. Rissanen, Chair releases his "composite text" for verification protocol, in Disarmament Diplomacy, 55, London Acronym Institute, March 2001. See also the assessment given by G. S. Pearson, M. R. Dando and N. A. Sims, The Composite Protocol Text an Effective Strengthening of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, Evaluation Paper No.21 (Bradford University of Bradford, July 2001). 

Combined Injuries. Combined injuries occur when a casualty is affected by conventional weaponry and also by the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The situation in which a casualty is contaminated with a chemical agent, but not suffering from such an agent s effects is dealt with in AMedP-7 (B). Wounds that are not contaminated should be dressed in the usual way. They should then be covered with agent proof material (either impervious material or... 

The term weapons of mass destruction was defined in 1948 by the Commission on Conventional Armaments as atomic explosive weapons, radioactive material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the future which have characteristics comparable in destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb or other weapons mentioned above (Resolution of the Commission for Conventional Armaments, August 12, 1948). This commission was established by the Security Council in 1947 (Resolution 18) to consider the regulation and reduction of conventional armaments and armed forces. 

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