WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has developed a strategy designed to boost the goals of the Biological Weapons Convention but stopped short of endorsing the creation of an international monitoring system to verify compliance with the pact, a senior State Department official said today (see GSN, Dec. 4).
(Dec. 9) -
A Pentagon security officer passes through a decontamination shower following a simulated anthrax attack in 2006. The White House today released a new strategy on countering biological threats (Jim Watson/Getty Images).
The White House's National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats -- released today -- concluded that there is no comprehensive strategy to deal with "gaps" in efforts to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons and the abuse of science, Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher said at an annual meeting of the international agreement's member states in Geneva, Switzerland.
"President Obama fully recognizes that a major biological weapons attack on one of the world's major cities could cause as much death and economic and psychological damage as a nuclear attack," she said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks made available to Global Security Newswire.
The Biological Weapons Convention prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of weaponized disease agents such as anthrax, smallpox or plague.
In 2001, the Bush administration withdrew from extended negotiations intended to create an inspections protocol for the 1975 compact. Officials claimed then that such a system would not increase confidence in the convention and would unduly burden U.S. biodefense research efforts and the biotechnology industry with increased inspection costs and bureaucratic hurdles.
"The Obama administration will not seek to revive negotiations on a verification protocol to the convention," Tauscher said today. "We have carefully reviewed previous efforts to develop a verification protocol and have determined that a legally binding protocol would not achieve meaningful verification or greater security."
She said ensuring compliance is "extraordinarily difficult" because of the ease with which biological weapons programs could be disguised as legitimate activities. In addition, rapid advances in biological research make it harder to detect violations.
"We believe that a protocol would not be able to keep pace with the rapidly changing nature of the biological weapons threat," Tauscher said. She did not elaborate.
The United States does not want to return to the negotiation of an inspection protocol because doing so would enable other nations, such as Russia and Iran, to revive demands that could undermine the convention, an expert on biological weapons warned last week.
Russia has long sought to define the "types and quantities" of pathogens and toxins banned by the agreement, thereby limiting its scope, said Jonathan Tucker, a senior fellow with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Iran has pursued dismantling the Australia Group controls on exports of dual-use technologies and materials relevant to biological weapons.
Today's announcement "did not come as a surprise," Tucker told GSN in a telephone interview. "There has been a growing awareness of the difficulty of the challenges posed by biological verification because of the globalization of biotechnology."
The White House will seek compliance with the compact through "enhanced transparency" about activities and by pursuing "compliance diplomacy" to address concerns, according to Tauscher.
Noting that some might disagree with the administration's decision, the undersecretary said the United States wants to develop a rigorous program of information exchange that builds on and modifies as necessary the existing "work program" approach. She was referring to the "intercessional process," in which separate annual meetings of experts and member nations consider issues related to the convention.
To that end, the administration intends to promote universal membership in the compact, according to Tauscher. Greater emphasis should be placed on "voluntary" measures to provide increased confidence that states are meeting their obligations under the convention; there must also be more participation in existing confidence-building measures, she said.
For example, the administration will work toward posting future confidence building measure submissions publicly through the Web site of the agreement's Implementation Support Unit and encourage other parties to follow suit.
The United States also will work to enhance cooperation with the World Health Organization and other international bodies to help countries deal with outbreaks of natural diseases, such as the H1N1 flu. Such preparedness activities would help those nations deal with bioterrorism threats, she said.
The final prong of the administration's BWC strategy will aim to make the agreement "the premier forum" for dialogue of the full range of biological threats, including bioterrorism.
The United States is making a "welcome contribution" to the global biodefense effort, said Swedish Ambassador Magnus Hellgren, who represented the 27-nation European Union and was one of about 100 diplomats who saw Tauscher's presentation, the Associated Press reported. He said he would withhold final judgment on the U.S. effort until the next BWC review conference in 2011.
The extended goal remains "to develop mechanisms to verify compliance with this convention," Hellgren said.
Tucker said member nations could pursue a "challenge only" inspection regime -- similar to a never-used provision of the Chemical Weapons Convention -- that would allow states to demand checks on other BWC member nations. However, there is a no "political will" to push for such a system right now, Tucker said.
"It's unfortunate but that's the nature of the beast. Biological weapons are different from chemical and nuclear weapons and need to be addressed in a different manner," he said.
Domestically, the administration's approach highlights improving intelligence regarding biological threats, enhancing policies to secure high-risk toxins, and establishing better data-sharing among law enforcement and health professionals.
Tauscher said the newly minted strategy strikes a balance between "supporting scientific progress and curbing and stopping the potential for abuse."