THE CBW CONVENTIONS BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Weapons Issues ISSUE NO. 80 SEPTEMBER 2008 Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation BRINGING THE CBW CONVENTIONS CLOSER TOGETHER Julian Perry Robinson, Harvard Sussex Program In 1968, for reasons that are still not entirely clear, the United – people, other animals and plants – on a giant scale. The Kingdom proposed that biological weapons (BW) and Shady Grove field trials conducted by the United States off chemical weapons (CW) should in future be treated separately Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean during February and at the Geneva disarmament conference, and that the talks March 1964 are said to have demonstrated that, against caged should first concentrate on BW. That is what happened, rhesus monkeys, one single-seat aircraft could establish gradually. The international agreement that already existed disease-causing dosages of bacterial aerosol at sea level over in the field, the 1925 Geneva Protocol, had taken chemical nearly five thousand square kilometres. That was a biological and biological weapons (CBW) together. Their new separation weapon, but, as is described below, similar areas of led to the 1972 Biological & Toxin Weapons Convention (the effectiveness were anticipated for future chemical weapons BWC) and then the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention as well. Urban areas of like size – the habitat of maybe (CWC), so in fact both types of weapon became outlawed, millions of people — might be no less vulnerable. So, as and it is possible that neither would have been without that casualty agents, there may in principle be some comparability parting of the ways. Yet the divergence led to two very between CBW and nuclear weapons. unequal agreements that have what look increasingly like Yet, dreadful though that is, it is not the primary risk serious gaps in their combined structure. The remedy may inherent in CBW. Their main danger is precisely that they require that we appreciate once again the features that BW need not be weapons of mass destruction, for what is unique and CW have in common. It is heartening, therefore, that about them is that they could in principle serve to subjugate ‘convergence’ is appearing as often as it is now doing on or coerce people, even very large numbers of people, without international conference agendas. True, the reference is to necessarily threatening their lives. A capability for exerting the convergence of chemistry and biology as, for example, that form of force could become attractive in circles where in ‘synthetic biology’, but that obliges us to wonder for how capability for mass destruction is unattractive. long it will be prudent to keep the CWC and the BWC as far What is it about CBW that could hold out this allure? apart from one another as they are today. Answer: the mechanisms of toxicity and infectivity that So it is unhelpful that quite so many people should regard characterize CBW are the mechanisms through which we BW and CW as too different to be treated in any way other can, if we are so minded, exploit for weapons purposes that than separately. We need to understand why that view should most impressive feature of today’s science — its accelerating be as prevalent as it is and listen attentively to the explanations understanding of the processes of life. As we comprehend we are given – thus far political ones, chiefly, but also military more and more of how life works at the molecular level, so and technological, though rarely legal. A supposedly clinching too may we be able to learn to manipulate life at the argument that has become popular is that BW but not CW are molecular level. That has been conceivable since the early real weapons of mass destruction (WMD), comparable with days of CW. The blood gases, for example, target cellular nuclear weapons. The present paper offers for attention two respiration mediated through the blood; the nerve gases target countervailing considerations. The first is about the real nature nerve-signal transmission. So it was, back in the 1950s, that of the danger that CBW present for security, whether that be the idea started to take hold that other physiological systems international, national or human security. The second is about might be disrupted, perhaps including those that define the the so-called ‘Type C’ mode of CW attack that has, in effect, psyche or the will or govern the ability to function properly. fallen into a gulf that now separates the CWC and the BWC. That way could lie potent disabling chemical weapons, CBW as existential risk Some CBW are covered by the established UN definition of Invited article by Julian Perry Robinson ................. 1-4 WMD, which is as follows: atomic explosive weapons, radio active material weapons, lethal chemical and Obituary: Ian Kenyon .............................................. 4 biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the Report from Geneva ........................................... 5-21 future which have characteristics comparable in News Chronology February-April 2008 ................ 22-42 destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb or other weapons mentioned above. There are indeed some CBW Recent Publications ......................................... 43-44 that seem capable of causing casualties among living beings September 2008 page 1 CBWCB 80 perhaps in great variety. international CBW control procedures that, thanks to the However, beyond ‘tear gas’, the disabling skin burns that OPCW, we currently have. Most obviously these families mustard gas can cause, the uncertain promise of the early comprise certain bioregulators and other bioactive chemicals psychotropic ‘incapacitating agents’ such as Agent BZ, and of biological origin, as well as their synthetic analogues and one or two other minor novelties, this way forward did not also certain conceivable products of biotechnological begin to become a serious option until the pace of progress in processes. Yet in fact they are not beyond control. They are applicable knowledge had accelerated during the latter part all caught by the ‘general purpose criterion’ of the CWC. of the last century, around the time of negotiation of the 1972 And most if not all of them fall within the category BWC and its CW follow-on. It was becoming increasingly corresponding to what the BWC means by ‘toxins’.1 In other plain to those who followed such things then that advances in words, these most dangerous of CBW are situated within the the life sciences, coupled with technologies that allow the area where the CWC and the BWC overlap with one another. analysis and construction of complex biologically active Such overlap ought to mean, one might think, that the molecules, would eventually make it possible to design a weapons are well controlled, being subject not just to one but chemical that would interfere with any life process that could to two international disarmament treaties. In the real world, be understood in molecular terms. And thoughts could also however, that is not the way it is. That overlap seems simply turn to the idea of modifying the genes of factory or vector to have given people involved in implementing one of the two organisms so as to obtain such chemicals as gene products. treaties opportunity to relinquish, even deny, responsibility for Because of this convergence of chemistry and biology, we anything also covered by the other treaty. The area of overlap may eventually be able to manipulate at will the processes of thus risks becoming a gulf into which things disappear. It looks development, inheritance, reproduction, locomotion, sensation, like this has been happening to toxins.2 cognition and any other process that keeps us working as Closer scrutiny points to that failure of overlap not being normal human beings. Some of the weapons providing such just a happenstance of history but a consequence of deliberate power could carry the identities of both CW (toxic) and BW policy. Back in 1960, the Military Committee of NATO tasked (infective). For example, as just suggested otherwise harmless what became known as the Von Kármán Committee to viruses might perhaps be modified so as to produce as gene “develop an estimate of the possible and probable scientific products during the process of infection particular molecules progress to be expected in the next decade”.3 The task was that could initiate such interference. It is the potential for subdivided among 14 working groups of scientific and changing human beings and doing so in pursuit of who-knows- operational experts that met in March 1961. One of the groups what strategy of aggression that makes CBW uniquely menacing: addressed Chemical, Biological and Radiological Defence. weapons, in the extreme, of dehumanization – a risk, therefore, Asked to forecast scientific trends to the 1970-75 period and to the whole human species; an existential risk. to predict their practical effect on CBR defence, this working It seems short-sighted, then, to assess the risks of CBW group envisaged different categories of possible CBR attack by reference to their capacities as WMD. Indeed, to think of against which defence was required, the forecasting exercise CBW primarily as weapons of mass destruction may actually then proceeding through the following eight areas of defence be to increase the risk they pose, for it offers legitimacy to those requirement: (1) detection, (2) active neutralization of attack, toxic or infective weapons that do not kill on a massive scale: (3) protective equipments and materials, (4) palliatives, (5) those very biological/chemical weapons that may open the door remedial measures, (6) surveillance, (7) large scale to the dehumanizing possibilities that now press upon us. decontamination, and (8) means of agent identification. Each More pernicious even than that: the WMD concept itself area was considered for each of the different categories of is being applied in such a way as to erode one of those central attack.