In his new book, Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security, Dr. Gregory Koblentz, a member of the Center’s Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, observes that “biological weapons are the least well understood of the WMD” and that “use of terms such as WMD and ‘chem-bio’ has hindered our understanding of the international security implications of biological weapons.”

Below are three concepts that illustrate the current challenge presented by biological weapons (BW)…

1.    “The dual use dilemma is absolute.”  – Kathryn Nixdorff in Verifying Treaty Compliance: Limiting Weapons of Mass Destruction and Monitoring Kyoto Protocol Provisions

At an AAAS panel discussion last week, Senior Bio Advisor of the U.S. National Counterproliferation Center, Dr. Lawrence Kerr, explained that all life science research is dual-use by nature. The very same technologies, techniques, and studies designed to create pharmaceuticals, for instance, can be employed nefariously to manipulate biological agents (pathogens and toxins) and identify exploitable vulnerabilities in the human body.

Dr. Koblentz takes this concept a step further, arguing that the biological dilemma is more accurately described as “multiuse”:

In [Living Weapons], the term “multiuse” is used to highlight the distinct but overlapping applications of biotechnology in civilian, defensive, and offensive domains. The old distinction between military and civilian applications of biological and biotechnology has become more blurred in recent years as more civilian institutions become engaged in defensive research and military organizations become more interested in applying biotechnology in areas of energy, materials science, logistics, medicine, and electronics.

2.    “In the life sciences, proliferation is over.”  – Dr. Lawrence Kerr at AAAS panel discussion, 8 December 2009

Techniques and technologies in the most advanced biological fields are already spread across the globe and across populations. The life sciences’ immeasurable potential for legitimate and constructive use, the culturally entrenched value placed on improving human health worldwide, the aforementioned dual-use dilemma, and decreasing costs have made most biological materials and biotechnologies largely uncontainable. And from a global public health perspective, they should not be contained.

It is possible now for amateur biologists to genetically alter or synthesize pathogens out of their own closets. These at-home “biohackers” can “tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes” for a modest price.

Striking the proper balance between reaping the benefits of the life sciences and reducing the risks of technological abuse is extraordinarily tricky. Professor Barry Kellman of the International Security and Biopolicy Institute has called biothreat policy “the most multifaceted, multidimensional, nuanced undertaking in the entire security domain.”

3.    “What do you mean we can’t do this? We’re doing it now.”  –Dr. Raymond Zilinskas, quoting the scientific community’s response to an assessment of biotechnological capabilities

The biotechnology industry is moving at a revolutionary pace. Dr. Raymond Zilinskas, Director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, co-authored a 2002 report detailing the threat of bioterrorism. According to the Washington Post, the report noted that “some key biotechnologies would be achievable only three to four years from then.” However, by the time the final report was sent out for review by bench scientists, the report’s expert panel learned that some of those technologies had been developed. “It shows how fast the field is moving,” noted Dr. Zilinskas.

From altering biological agents at their most fundamental building blocks to “de novo” synthesis of preexisting or new microbes, the wonders of biotechnology often seem boundless. The risks presented by advances in biotechnology will increasingly demand attention in the future.

This summer, NOH’s Madeleine “MadFo” Foley called attention to rampant U.S. alarmism concerning the relationship between two men that never fail to raise hackles: Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  

Yesterday, Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal suggested that a new document, detailing an agreement “to cooperate in the field of nuclear technology,” may shed some light on the supposedly threatening Venezuela-Iran relationship. Stephens’ editorial, though, missed some key factors in the association…

Stephens concluded that “Forty-seven years ago, Americans woke up to the fact that a distant power could threaten us much closer to home. Perhaps it’s time Camelot 2.0 take note that we are now on course for a replay.” Iran is far from its stated objective of 10 additional nuclear facilities, let alone a deliverable nuclear weapon, so a comparison to the fully capable Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis is ridiculous. Moreover, Venezuela today is economically dependent on the United States, in contrast to Cuba in 1962, which had been under a partial commercial, economic, and financial embargo.  

Stephens’ Cold War analogy is fatally flawed, as most of the threat-hyping on this issue has been. Nonetheless, there are some factors to be aware of in the Iran-Venezuela relationship.

First, after many trade and investment agreements, diplomatic visits, mutual honors, and photo ops, the relationship between Iran and Venezuela is considerably stronger today than it was ten years ago.  

Second, the strengthened relationship has sparked concern about regional and global security. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted the assets of two Hezbollah supporters living in Venezuela, one of whom was a Venezuelan diplomat. The influx of Hezbollah, increased weapons imports, and the porous borders of Central American countries have caused some observers to worry about terrorist infiltration. Furthermore, in May 2009 a secret Israeli government report obtained by the Associated Press implicated Venezuela and Bolivia in the sale of uranium to Iran. This was the first allegation that South America may be involved in the development of Iran’s nuclear program.  

Though the current relationship between Iran and Venezuela may be cause for measured (not Stephens-esque) concern, Venezuela is still dependent on the United States economically. The main destination for 53.9 percent of all of Venezuelan exports is the United States. The next highest destination, the Netherlands Antilles, receives only 8.8 percent. Venezuela still sells over half of its oil to the United States. This amounts to more than 1.5 million barrels per day. Further, a considerable portion of Venezuelan refining capacity is located in the United States, which gets less than 15 percent of its oil from Venezuela. This relationship is not likely to change in the near future. An oil embargo might hurt the United States, but it would cripple Venezuela.  

Since the United States holds this economic trump card, the relationship between Iran and Venezuela is unlikely to be more than a moderate irritation in the foreseeable future. In the effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the United States should see the “Tehran-Caracas Nuclear Axis” for what it is – a sideshow that distracts from the real security problems in the Middle East.

Last week, Politico reporter Jen DiMascio wrote about the ascension of American women into the highest ranks of arms control. The piece, superciliously titled “Arms Control: No Longer Just for Men” – a title DiMascio probably didn’t choose herself – explained how powerful women like Ellen Tauscher and Rose Gottemoeller are working to dismantle the big bad bombs the boys built. “If men have largely built the world’s nuclear arsenals,” read the article, “a small corps of women is working to dismantle them.”

This idea comports with the “more women in charge = more peace” theory of war, which is offensive, inaccurate, and retrograde. Men are rarely suggested to be genetically-predisposed warmongers; more often than not, they make decisions about conflict as rationally as they can, right? Why must women inevitably suffer the indignity of being talked about as intrinsic peacemakers?

DiMascio gives Secretary of State Hillary Clinton much of the credit for staffing her top ranks with women, but in 2009, does it really take a woman to hire a woman? When it comes to national security, it might. The most important point in the article came from Joe Cirincione. “Ever been to an arms control meeting?” he asked. “It’s all old white guys.” Joe is right…

According to NOH’s calculations, of the articles published on nuclear weapons in top-tier policy journals during 2009, only 9 percent were by women. Take a look at the links on NOH’s blogroll: there aren’t many women blogging about these issues, either.

Representation within the military and academia – key pipelines to top level policy jobs – isn’t much better. As Paula Broadwell, Deepti Choubey, and Laura Holgate wrote last year, women make up 14 percent of the armed services but only 5 percent of general officers. Only 26 percent of political science professors in the United States today are female despite the fact that women comprise more than half of all international affairs students. The highest ranks of arms control may currently be filled by women, but the jobs that lead to those ranks are still overwhelmingly dominated by men.

The gender imbalance in national security is partially due to the gravitation of women toward fields such as international development and human rights. This is not entirely surprising since honor killings, sex trafficking, and female genital mutilation arouse understandable passion and anger within most women. The belief that women are better suited to work on these “softer” security problems is pervasive, even among women themselves.

DiMascio’s piece draws on this attitude by noting that while women were not highly involved in the process of building nuclear weapons, they are now largely the driving force behind President Obama’s vision of a world without them.

Women in leadership positions make decisions about war and peace based on the same criteria as their male counterparts – national interest, perception of threat, cost-benefit analysis, legal norms, historical understanding, international and domestic politics, and much more. Those who argue that “Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution” mean to elevate women’s status, but they actually diminish it by erecting a barrier between women’s allegedly innate predilections and real-world political violence, which has a body of study (and practice) that stretches back thousands of years. If there is indeed any understanding of war that has developed over time, women are not barred from comprehending it simply because they are women.

Ellen Tauscher and Rose Gottemoeller aren’t working to reduce nuclear weapons because they are women. They are doing it because they believe it will make the United States more secure. The fact that they happen to be women is entirely beside the point.

Via Max Bergmann over at the The Wonk Room, today’s Wall Street Journal editorial on Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech predictably includes far more misinformation than truth about the “New START” negotiations…

For example, according to the Journal, U.S. ICBMs “are being fitted with conventional weapons.”  If that is the case, then apparently the editors know more about U.S. strategic forces than STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright.

The Journal also claims that with the loss of U.S. monitoring at Votkinsk, the U.S. will have no means of verifying Russian mobile missile deployments.  This would be true if monitoring at Votkinsk was our only way to count these missiles.  It is not.

First, let’s not forget that it was because of the Bush administration that Rose Gottemoeller and her team were put in such a tight spot re: Votkinsk in the first place.

Second, remember that national technical means (NTM) is the basis for most of the information we get about Russian nuclear forces.  Cooperative verification measures supplement and confirm information gleaned from NTM.   Under START I, Votkinsk was but one of many cooperative provisions used to count mobile missiles.  Other procedures included data exchanges, notifications, location restrictions, and on-site inspections.  

Though New START is still being negotiated, it will likely include an updated version of START I-style data exchanges, notifications, and inspections which will continue to allow us to monitor Russia’s mobile missiles.  And of course, we will still have NTM.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steve Pifer elaborated on this point at a briefing the Center co-hosed with the Arms Control Association earlier this week.  As Pifer put it:

I think the Votkinsk provision…perhaps at this point, we no longer need that. And so the verification provisions really need to be driven by the actual limitations that you agree to, and to the extent that you have different limitations than were in the START treaty…I think in some ways this new agreement is going to be simpler than the START treaty.  That may impose, in some ways, less demanding verification requirements.  And that gives the side the opportunity, then, to eliminate the inspections if they make no contribution to the overall understanding of the other side’s compliance with the treaty.

But you have to give it to the Journal: at least they’re consistent (well sort of).  When news broke in May 2002 that the Bush administration planned to sign a legally-binding treaty with Russia (aka the Moscow Treaty), the Journal called it a “A Gift for Mr. Putin”.  That’s right: Even the Bush administration’s largely nonexistent arms control agenda was too liberal for the Wall Street Journal!

Still, the editors couldn’t help but praise the treaty for its indifference:

At least this one does relatively little mischief. It is only three-and-one-half pages long, and a third of that is rhetorical throat-clearing. The pact does nothing to restrict defenses, and it allows either side to deploy the warheads that remain as each sees fit.

That’s right: Praise a Republican administration when it says it doesn’t care how Russia deploys its forces, yet pitch a fit when a Democratic administration attempts to negotiate an updated and adapted verification infrastructure to ensure we know what the Russians are doing, a task made all the more difficult by the previous Republican administration’s bumbling.    

Below the jump are a few responses issued by bioweapons policy experts in response to the Obama administration’s announcement on Wednesday and release of its biothreat strategy. Longer strides are being called for…

Dr. Marie Isabelle Chevrier – Professor at UT-Dallas, member of the Center’s Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Biological Weapons Prevention Project in Geneva:

Ellen Tauscher’s speech to the Meeting of the States Parties of the Biological Weapons Convention was much anticipated by delegations. Yet there was little excitement or enthusiasm by the delegation following her speech. Delegations and NGO observers welcomed the change in tone from earlier US interventions during the Bush administration, contrasting it, in particular, with the strident address by John Bolton to the 5th Review Conference in 2001. Nevertheless the lack of specificity of proposals in Tauscher’s address was notable. People wondered about the meaning of language in the statement such as “compliance diplomacy” and “robust bilateral compliance discussion.” Optimists greeted the statement with hope that the statement will be followed by real engagement absent the arrogance of the past while pessimists found little if anything in the statement that would lead to real policy changes from the Bush administration. The inclusion of CBMs on an open website was generally welcome, as a small measure of transparency but not something that would likely lead to real confidence in compliance. Many NGOs are looking forward to greater transparency among all stakeholders rather than mere “bilateral…discussions.”

Dr. Amy E. Smithson – Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies:

Tauscher tabled a modest, constructive set of proposals, but given the $49 billion in U.S. biodefense spending since 2001, the international community will want more in terms of transparency from Washington than just posting the US confidence-building declarations?already available to all member governments?on the web and inviting one person to Ft. Detrick.   New money earmarked for building international disease surveillance and reporting capacities would have more emphatically conveyed U.S. support for thorough implementation of the International Health Regulations.  If the Obama administration hopes to claim the leadership mantle in the biological nonproliferation arena, they will have to bring something much bolder to the table.  The sooner they do, the better.

Dr. Jonathan Tucker, Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies:

Although none of the elements of the U.S. strategy are new, taken together they provide a comprehensive and cooperative approach to the prevention of biological threats, both natural and deliberate. The main disappointment is the strategy’s lack of ambition with regard to strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention, both with respect to the treaty’s institutional deficit and the festering suspicions of non-compliance by a few member states. The measures proposed to address compliance concerns—increased transparency, confidence-building measures, and bilateral diplomacy—appear too weak to make much of a difference.

UPDATE: NOH’s bad – we should have acknowledged that Armchair Generalist was the first to post on this.