STRATEGIC

66 Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity
preconceptions, zeal at the cost of rationality, suppression of debate,
punishment of dissent, and other failures, fallacies, and fantasies. 59
During the post–Cold War period, the United States, Russia, and,
to a lesser extent, China engaged in extensive lower-level bureaucratic
engagement aimed at building deep ties, reducing the risk of misunderstanding,
and building trust. Military exchanges, so-called “Track
II” unofficial consultations among senior figures, academic intercourse,
civil society engagement, and personal friendships flourished. To the
extent that worsening U.S. relations with Russia and China inhibit
these rich and diverse sources of communication and mutual reassurance
and leave national leaders more isolated, the risk of blundering
into war increases. Needless to say, avoiding nuclear war outweighs
almost all other U.S. interests.
Emerging Biological Threats
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which entered into force
in 1975, was one of the major accomplishments of the postwar liberal
order. It was the first multilateral treaty to ban the development,
production, and stockpiling of an entire category of weapons and the
means to deliver them. 60 It cemented and expanded the international
norm, which had been developing since the 1925 Geneva Conventions,
that the use of biological weapons can never be justifiable. As
UN Representative Angela Kane put it on the 40th anniversary of the
Conventions:
How many States today boast that they are “biological weapon
States”? Who argues now that the bubonic plague and smallpox
59 David C. Gompert et al., Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can
Learn, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-768-RC, 2014, p. iv.
60 United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific,
“Biological Weapons Convention Meeting of Experts to Convene in Geneva from 10 to 14
August 2015,” web page, August 7, 2015.