An Exceptional Window of Opportunity: Comments on “Vaccines for Peace”

Extract

Military Vaccination Programs undoubtedly arouse suspicions about potential threats from biological weapons (BW). Those countries that still vaccinate their armed forces against smallpox signal that they suspect their potential enemies might plan to use smallpox against them, whilst the other side suspects them of planning a preemptive smallpox strike. The same applies to military vaccination against any other dual-threat agent (unless the vaccination involves only troops being deployed in endemic areas, in which case the interpretation is less clear).