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Inhibiting Reliance on Biological Weaponry: The Role and Relevance of International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Richard Falk
Richard Falk
Affiliation:
RICHARD FALK is the Albert C. Milbank Professor of International Law at the Center for International Studies, Princeton University.
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Abstract

This article describes the restraints on biological weapons, as dictated in the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the Biological Weapons Convention, and the weaknesses of these instruments. Falk clearly argues for nonpossession as a requirement of international stability. He points out that their commitment to unconditional renunciation has been disregarded by the United States and the Soviet Union. The author concludes that the failure of major powers to comply with the rules they themselves set has encouraged emulation by the rest of the world. It is the duty of those with extensive knowledge of this weaponry to eliminate the pressure for its development.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 3 , March 1989 , pp. 183 - 204
Copyright
© Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1989

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References

1 For discussion of this reluctance, especially relating to the United States government's refusal to respect the decision of the International Court of Justice in the setting of its policies toward Nicaragua during the Reagan presidency, see Franck, Thomas M., Judging the World Court (New York: Priority Press Publications, 1986)Google Scholar; for a different view see Falk, , “Strengthening the Rule of Law in Foreign Policy,” in Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the 1990s, eds. Hartman, Chester and Raskin, Marcus (Boston and Washington, B.C.: South End Press, 1988) pp. 317–25Google Scholar.

2 See the inconclusive report of the secretary general investigating these charges (A/37/259), U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 1, 1982, and the gradual abandonment of allegations by the United States governmentGoogle Scholar.

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4 For an alarmist treatment of these issues embodying an extreme cold war worldview, See Douglass, Joseph D. Jr. and Livingstone, Neil C., America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical/Biological Warfare: The New Shape of Terrorism and Conflict (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1987)Google Scholar.

5 The wider context that is delimited by Iraqi reliance on chemical weapons is well explored in an editorial, “That Hellish Poison: Still Intolerable,”The New York Times, August 8, 1988, p. A16Google Scholar.

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8 For analysis in a parallel setting Falk, see, The Promise of World Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987) pp. 196–219 and 299–318Google Scholar.

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17 For a contrary view that the U.S. was not legally inhibited with respect to BW prior to the 1975 adherence to the Geneva Protocol, see Major William H. Neinast, “United States Use of Biological Warfare,”Military Law Review (April 1964) pp. 1–46Google Scholar.

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21 Roberts, Adam and Guelff, Richard, eds., Documents on the Laws of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) p. 138Google Scholar; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Vol. I (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1971) pp. 294–335Google Scholar.

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24 Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents, Hearings on Intelligence Activities, before the Select Committee of the U.S. Senate to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., September 16–18, 1975, p. 71. Mr. Gordon also questioned the characterization of shellfish toxin as a biological rather than as a chemical agent, pp. 64–73Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 11Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 10Google Scholar.

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28 Ibid., p. 27Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 2; see also Mondale statement, ibid., p. 20Google Scholar.

30 See Pillar, Charles and Yamamoto, Keith R., Gene Wars: Military Control Over the New Genetic Technologies (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988)Google Scholar.

31 For useful discussion of means to strengthen the BWC, See McFadden, Eric J., “The Second Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention: One Step Forward, Many More to Go,” Stanford Journal of International Law, Vol. 23 (Fall 1987) pp. 85–110Google Scholar.

32 This article wil] appear as a chapter in Preventing a Biolological Arms Race (forthcoming, 1990)Google Scholar.