Proliferation: Threat and Response

Lugar, Richard, The Lugar Survey on Proliferation Threats and Responses, June 2005, United States Senator For Indiana, Chairman Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

United States Department of Defense, Proliferation Threat and Response, Washington DC United States Government Printing Office (1997). 

DOD has identified Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, and Russia as countries of concern with respect to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons capability. See Office of the Secretary of Defense. 2001. Proliferation Threat and Response, 3rd ed., Washington, D.C., January. Available online at . 

Cohen, William S., Secretary of Defense. 1997. Proliferation Threat and Response 1997, Washington, D.C. Available online at . 

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), 2001. Proliferation threat and response. Report from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, January 2001. available at http //www.dod.mil/ pubs/ptr20010110.pdf (accessed September 17, 2007). 

These official documents were not widely known about at the time, but one US official document did receive widespread coverage. This Department of Defense document was titled Proliferation Threat and Response.32 In part, it gave much more detail on how genetic engineering might be misused to improve biological agents for hostile... 

US Office of the Secretary of Defense," Proliferation Threat and Response (Washington, DC GPO 1996), http //www.defenselink.mil/pubs/prolif/toc.html. 

Responsible states have endeavored to stem proliferation of WMD through international agreements and export controls. Such tools, while imperfect, remain the basis for increasingly comprehensive steps to address the broad WMD threat. 

Chemical and biological proliferation accelerated rapidly during the course of the Second World War (until vast stockpiles of unused agents and chemical munitions were accumulated), but the process ebbed almost as quickly as it had erupted. This recession almost certainly reflected the defeat and occupation of many possessor states - not merely the Axis powers, but also many of the European chemical states other than Britain, the Soviet Union and some of the wartime neutrals. It also underscored that major wars could be fought and won without recourse to chemical and biological weapons, and that nuclear weapons had become the indisputably dominant form of strategic bombardment. Deterrence, based on the threat of retaliation-in-kind, had moved beyond a projected response to a particular form of warfare, since the nuclear threat deterred... 

Affirming its resolve to take appropriate and effective actions against any threat to international peace and security caused by the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery, in conformity with its primary responsibilities, as provided for in the United Nations Charter,... 

PROLIFERATION SECURITY INITIATIVE (PSI). An initiative established in 2003 as a response to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). PSI helps to implement the United Nations Security Council Presidential Statement of January 1992, which states that the proliferation of aU WMD constitutes a threat to international peace and security. PSI involves a group of like-minded states that have agreed upon a set of interdiction principles with the objective to prevent the shipment of WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials. 

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