This article by the Inter Press Service starts off by asking an interesting question: “will overwhelming fire power and WMDs become obsolete if biological weapons, currently banned by a UN convention, are used in wars in a distant future?” The answer a yes, according to Dr Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Basically the article points out how the whole world has been under “siege” by the virus. Over 58 million people have contracted the virus and almost 1.5 million have died of it. It also draws our attention on how the pandemic has also destabilized the global economy with world poverty and hunger skyrocketing to new highs. And all this, without “a single shot being fired” in an eight-month long war against a spreading virus.
Furthermore, the article is showing that “if a terrorist group were able to carry out the complex tasks of creating and using biological weapons, an intentional release of a biological weapon could be even more deadly than COVID-19”. That is why, it is important that countries with vetoes at the UN must prevent the development of this type of weapon and also assist the rest of the world in increasing their capacity to respond to infectious diseases.
But there is another aspect the article is addressing. It states that, “Countries with large military forces often threaten to use those forces to achieve foreign policy and other goals.” And therefore, by continuing to develop and deploy these weapons, States increase the risk of nuclear theft and give other countries incentives to develop nuclear weapons in response. So, it is imperative that those in the circle of power find an equilibrium in the “talking and doing” of what they stand for.
Marcus,
The fear of a highly infectious biological agent be purposely unleashed has been a long-standing security concern. Fortunately, up until recently at least, governments knew the agents that potentially could be used–or at least, they thought they did. COVID-19 presents a new and frightening reality–namely, an entirely novel agent never seen before, one that human beings have no immunity against. The experience with the COVID pandemic has been a nightmare, and there is NO evidence that it was purposely engineered and released to spread almost unchecked. But if such an agent were to be designed in a laboratory using genetic engineering by scientists working for a terrorist organization, the loss of human life could be even worse than COVID, because it would be a while before the nature of the illness was identified and a vaccine developed.
–Professor Wallerstein