Global Security Concerns - Project Gutenberg Consortia Center

weapons, to protect themselves. In this precarious, competitive environment, states and
nonstate actors with a national identity that want to survive must acquire power and use it
as they deem necessary to protect themselves. Terrorists wishing to boldly push their
unique agenda into the world arena to establish their legitimacy, or to simply take
revenge upon an uncaring global society, will revert to weapons which they might easily
acquire and employ. Chemical and biological weapons ideally fit that description. They
are, however, not terror weapons to be found only in the future. “The threat is real, and it
is upon us today. It is not in the future, it is here now,” stated former Secretary of
Defense Les Aspin to the National Academy of Sciences in December 1993.
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) defines chemical weapons as toxic
chemicals and their precursors, munitions and devices specifically designed to cause
death or otherwise harm through its chemical action on life processes. Toxic chemicals
include any chemicals which can kill, temporarily incapacitate, or permanently harm
humans or animals. Precursor means any chemical reactant which takes part by whatever
method at any stage in the production process of a toxic chemical. 2 Chemical weapons
are quite distinct from biological warfare agents (such as bacteria, viruses, and rickettsia).
The United Nations defines these agents as living organisms—whatever their nature—or
infective material derivatives which cause disease or death in man, animals, or plants.
The destructive nature of these derivatives emanates from their ability to multiply in the
person, animal, or plant attacked. 3
Authorities classify chemical agents by their physiological effects as either
incapacitating or lethal. Incapacitating agents temporarily impair a person from
functioning effectively. These agents are further subdivided into physical agents that
cause irritation and abnormal bodily behavior, or psychochemical agents that cause
mental disorientation. Lethal agents vary considerably by effects. Lung agents irritate the
eyes, throat, and lungs, eventually leading to death from the lack of oxygen. Blood gases
act faster and attack the blood’s circulation of oxygen. Vesicants, like mustard gases,
damage bodily tissues through burns, blisters, and temporary blindness. In large doses,
they can be deadly by causing respiratory complications.
In contrast to chemical agents, biological agents can be divided into peptides,
genetically mutated amino acids used to affect mental processes, or toxins, which are
chemical substances produced by living organisms. The most deadly forms though, are
the genetically altered bacteria or viruses which can defeat immunity. Biological warfare
agents are more potent on a weight-for-weight basis than their chemical agent
counterparts. 4 Both chemical and biological weapons, however, can inflict considerable
disruptive and indiscriminate damage on civilians and military forces.
Both sovereign states and terrorist organizations see many advantages to the
acquisition and ownership of these types of weapons. First, compared to the huge
multimillion dollar expense to develop and field nuclear weapons, CW/BW are far more
inexpensive to develop, manufacture, store, and deliver—the reason they are often
referred to as the “poor man’s nuclear weapon.” For example, one can manufacture a
Type-A botulinal toxin, which is more deadly than some nerve gases, for approximately
$400 per kilogram. In fact, a blue-ribbon panel of chemical and biological experts
testified in 1969 before a United Nations panel that “for large scale operations against a
civilian population, the cost for casualties over a square kilometer using conventional
weapons would be $2,000, using nuclear weapons the cost narrows to $800, chemical
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