Residing Weapons: Organic Warfare and Worldwide Safety (Cornell Research in Safety Affairs)

“Organic weapons are extensively feared, but not often used. Organic weapons had been the primary weapon prohibited by a world treaty, but the proliferation of those weapons elevated after they had been banned in 1972. Organic weapons are often known as ‘the poor man’s atomic bomb,’ but they can’t present the identical deterrent functionality as nuclear weapons. Certainly one of my targets on this ebook is to clarify the underlying ideas of those obvious paradoxes.”―from Residing Weapons

Organic weapons are the least properly understood of the so-called weapons of mass destruction. In contrast to nuclear and chemical weapons, organic weapons are composed of, or derived from, dwelling organisms. In Residing Weapons, Gregory D. Koblentz offers a complete evaluation of the distinctive challenges that organic weapons pose for worldwide safety.

At a time when america enjoys overwhelming typical navy superiority, organic weapons have emerged as a gorgeous means for much less highly effective states and terrorist teams to wage uneven warfare. Koblentz additionally warns that advances within the life sciences have the potential to intensify the lethality and number of organic weapons. The appreciable overlap between the tools, supplies and data required to develop organic weapons, conduct civilian biomedical analysis, and develop organic defenses creates a multiuse dilemma that limits the effectiveness of verification, hinders civilian oversight, and complicates risk assessments.

Residing Weapons attracts on the American, Soviet, Russian, South African, and Iraqi organic weapons packages to reinforce our understanding of the particular challenges posed by these weapons for arms management, deterrence, civilian-military relations, and intelligence. Koblentz additionally examines the aspirations of terrorist teams to develop these weapons and the obstacles they’ve confronted. Organic weapons, Koblentz argues, will proceed to threaten worldwide safety till defenses in opposition to such weapons are improved, governments can reliably detect organic weapon actions, the proliferation of supplies and experience is restricted, and worldwide norms in opposition to the possession and use of organic weapons are strengthened.