Although they caused widespread terror and temporarily paralyzed the U.S. Postal Service in 2001, biological weapons are poorly understood by most. Political scientist and author Gregory Koblentz attempts to rectify this reality in his book Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security. Koblentz explores the scientific basis of biological weapons and examines why they are so difficult to properly manage. His work uses scientific expertise to illuminate why bioweapons are so uniquely threatening to international security.
One of the biggest misconceptions held by the general public involves just what constitutes a biological weapon. Bioweapons are either composed of or derived from living organisms.
Such agents include: pathogens, such as b. anthracis, which are disease-causing microorganisms; toxins, such as botulinum toxin (also known as Botox, when administered in small, highly regulated doses); and bioregulators, such as insulin or epinephrine, which are chemicals that control functional aspects of the human body.The author walks his readers through the history of biological warfare, which has been divided into four distinct time periods, defined by the degree to which microbiology was understood.
The first is governed by pre-germ theory. During this period, attackers were forced to rely on fomites, physical objects used to transmit disease, or vectors, living organisms that spread disease. For example, enemies would often catapult corpses into fortified areas, hoping to spread sickness and infect the besieged troops.
The next period saw the use of applied microbiology. With the advent of germ theory, microorganisms were understood as the causative agent of disease. Within this period, the most significant use of bioweapons came from the Japanese, who employed agents leading to anthrax and cholera against the Soviet Union and China. Although these indeed caused epidemics, the rudimentary nature of the biotechnology provided no significant advantage.
In the age of industrial microbiology, aerobiology led to the advent of large-scale distribution and implementation of bioweapons. In the way of dissemination, Koblentz discusses two types of munitions: point source, which would involve explosives or gas releasing agents from a stationary location, and line source, which would involve the release of biological agents from a moving source - usually perpendicular to the wind.
As the U.S. developed nuclear weapons, however, the desire to employ biological agents as weapons of mass destruction decreased significantly.
Finally, biotechnology has affected the use of bioweapons. Genetic engineering has enabled the creation of more virulent pathogens and toxins. Fortunately, there is some hope for using biotechnology defensively. For example, new breakthroughs will allow a greater variety of vaccines to be created and distributed.
Koblentz proceeds to discuss why bioweapons are uniquely challenging to security. He points out that biological weapons favor the attacker in a number of ways. They are extremely potent and, for a low cost, they have a large destructive capability. For example, the cost of the 2001 anthrax scare was approximately $2,500. The total cost of the state's response, though, was upwards of $6 billion. Additionally, bioweapons are easy to secretly develop and difficult to defend against.
For these reasons, controlling bioweapons is a very difficult task. Verification of the existence of weapons, one of the key principles of international arms control, is uniquely hard when dealing with biological weapons, because biotechnology is mutliuse in nature meaning that it can be applied to both civilian and military programs. Additionally, since civilian programs have an incentive to hide their technology - for national security or to protect proprietary information - it is difficult to determine malevolent activity.
Difficulties in verification, combined with intense secrecy, can lead to intelligence failures. The author examines Operation Iraqi Freedom, which was justified under the assumption that Iraq was pursuing offensive biological weapons capability. As it turns out, this was grossly inaccurate.
Analytical problems are often to blame; for example, Koblentz shows how intelligence officials interpreted ambiguous information about dual-use sites as threatening, simply because they believed it to be true.
As the author unpacks his argument, though, several contradictions emerge. He spends a great deal of time discussing the immediacy of the threat of bioweapons. When he turns to bioterrorism, though, he attempts to prove that the high thresholds for attaining technological expertise will make attacks unlikely.
He essentially shoots his argument in the foot, trying to prove that legitimate action needs to be taken but simultaneously belittling the danger posed by bioweapons.
Overall, this work offers an acceptable history of biological warfare and a sound argument concerning the threat of bioweapons. While the last few sections of the book reduced the salience of the argument as a whole, the scientific and analytical aspects of the majority of the book make for a fascinating read.
