Happy 50th Birthday, Biological Weapons Convention!

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In three weeks, it will have been fifty years since the ratification of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), also known as the Biological Weapons Convention or BWC. I never quite understood why people left the “and Toxin” out of the title of the nonproliferation treaty, whether it was to mirror the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) or if it was just that people were confused by the addition of toxins, which technically are chemical compounds of biological origin. Maybe people are just lazy, maybe the non-technical policy people shortened the title. Not sure when that use of “BWC” instead of BTWC started. Anyway, it’s not important. What’s important is to recognize the success of this global treaty in limiting the proliferation of biological weapons.

The BWC has stood the test of time as the fundamental arms control regime for biological weapons, with nine biological weapons review conferences held since its entry into force. The last one was in December 2022, and it was particularly challenging given Russia’s allegations that the United States and Ukraine were conducting a biological weapons program through the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP). The BWC has no verification regime similar to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) does with regard to the CWC, which makes it sometimes difficult to resolve allegations of biological weapons development and/or use. In no small part, the United States is to blame for this in that the government’s position has been that a verification regime is not feasible, given the state of biotechnology research, and that the international community should rely on strengthened confidence-building measures instead.

Nonetheless, every signatory understands that prohibiting the production or use of biological weapons is a key international norm and that continued international cooperation is necessary to assure the global community that everyone is acting in good faith. To its credit, there have been no significant use of biological weapons on the battlefield. It’s just that certain nations have differing interpretations of the treaty, and that calls for more speeches and crosstalk to clarify the intent of national leaders. And everyone likes to get their points on the record.

As a basic primer, we can look at the history behind developing a biological arms control regime. The primary vehicle was the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament (1962-68), followed by the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (1969-1971). While the 1925 Geneva Protocol did outlaw the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological weapons, it had a lot of loopholes and no regulatory authorities. Following the end of World War II, there was a general concern about how the Soviet Union and United States in particular would pursue weapons of mass destruction.¹ Initially, the idea was to craft a combined chemical and biological weapons treaty, building on the 1925 Geneva Protocol, but it got too hard to cover both topics at the same time.

In 1969, the British proposed a draft convention that focused on biological weapons because they thought it would be easier to come to an agreement on a weapon system that had never been used and hopefully was not in more than a few countries’ arsenals. It would be a more significant task to take on the task of overseeing the elimination of tens of thousands of chemical weapons and the production and storage sites that existed at the time. While initially this proposal was not welcomed, both the United States and Soviet Union warmed up to the idea, and in 1971, both proposed conventions that were basically identical. The BWC was signed in April 1972 with an entry into force in March 1975. Today, 187 nations have ratified the document and four have signed but not ratified, leaving six out of the treaty (including Israel).

The United States had a significant offensive BW program, and it’s popular to pretend that the reason President Richard Nixon decided to unilaterally dismantle the U.S. program was because of moral and ethical issues. On November 25, 1969, Nixon said:

Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable consequences. They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations. I have therefore decided that:

• The United States shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare.

• The United States will confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immunization and safety measures.

• The Department of Defense has been asked to make recommendations as to the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons.

It’s a little more complicated than this, and this NDU case study does a fine job discussing the political debate within the U.S. government at that time. The U.S. military had a program to develop biological warfare agents and delivery systems (rocket artillery and aerial bombs) and had a concept for moving these weapons to Europe if a war was to break out.² The Joint Chiefs wanted to keep biological weapons as a deterrent capability, but the political appointees were more worried about the increasing possibility of other nations developing biological weapons. Long story short, the U.S. government destroyed its stocks of biological weapons by 1975, but the Soviet Union did not believe (according to Ken Alibek) that the United States would give up such a capability. The Soviets thought that the U.S. BW research program had gone underground, and they felt secure in continuing their program up to 1992 when President Boris Yeltsin acknowledged the existence of the program and ordered it to cease.

Between 1975 and today, there have been nine review conferences, which allow the parties to consult with each other and voice their concerns, mostly looking to improve how the treaty can be implemented to reduce the threat of a nation using biological weapons, with an option to escalate complaints to the UN Security Council. The ninth review conference was supposed to be in 2021, but it was canceled due to the COVID-19 conference. When these complaints involve China or Russia, who are suspected of not complying with the BWC, these nations can veto any initiatives to conduct BWC investigations. But it’s all good… So let’s look ahead. The UN put together this nice collection of articles on the past, present, and future for the Biological Weapons Convention.

The articles are short and punchy, with three sections - past history, present discussions, and future concerns. I’m not going to review the entire document, it’s a good read, but let me hit the present and future concerns here.

• Given that biological security concerns have expanded to include private entities, independent research groups, and sub-state actors accessing cutting-edge biotechnology, it becomes more important to consider verification methodologies that allow for mutual trust among nations

• States Parties ought to prioritize and properly resource technical expertise and establish a scientific review process to be confident that biological activities are only being conducted for peaceful purposes

• Botswana has created a CBRN Weapons Management Authority to oversee and implement its treaty commitments, an example which this forum can provide support to other nations

• We need an education and advocacy program to engage the next generation of young scientists who look to be champions of responsible science

• At the Ninth Review Conference in2022, the parties agreed to an Ad Hoc Working Group to discuss a compliance and verification system, which, if implemented, requires further resources to become effective

• This working group should consider incorporating key elements of the Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines, intended to strengthen biosecurity governance without hindering research

Different political administrations can argue about the value of arms control and nonproliferation regimes, and in particular, these efforts appear to be in peril today. I will say that arms control treaties have value in as much as they allow potential adversaries to talk with each other, to agree upon certain limitations on how destructive war ought to be, and in that light, potentially use defense funds on conventional warfighting systems rather than on the development of unconventional munitions. Yes, the treaties only work as long as the parties play nice, but this window of transparency is vital for an international global environment that intends to limit warfare to some degree. The Russians said “trust, but verify” first, which is probably why Ronald Reagan used the phrase at the signing of the INF treaty.

You can probably expect other articles on the BWC’s 50th anniversary to pop up over the next month. The Nuclear Threat Initiative already has one up. In all, despite the lack of a verification and compliance regime, the BWC has held up nicely. At the least, it offers a global forum to allow national spokespersons to collaborate on the need for transparency on military research and development and to discuss how to better prepare politicians to recognize and prepare for the danger of deliberate biological threats. The BWC doesn’t promise the end of biological warfare, but it’s the next best vehicle to creating an international norm that supports a biological taboo.

1. Yes, Britian, Canada, France, and a few other countries had chemical and/or biological weapons programs, but most of these arsenals were gone by the 1960s. It was only the two superpowers who were still investing significant funds in these areas.

2. The whole concept of deterring the Soviet Union from using biological weapons in an invasion of Western Europe rested in the ability to move biological weapons from the United States to Germany in a very prompt fashion. Politically speaking, Europe didn’t want U.S. biological weapons in Europe and barely tolerated chemical weapons in Europe. But the reasoning was, if the Soviets used BW against U.S. forces, NATO wanted to retaliate in kind rather than to escalate to tactical nuclear weapons.