Overview
Biological weapons, the threat of bioterrorism, and the best ways to meet this threat to global security are the issues addressed in this book. Included are case studies of possible bioweapons incidents, including an outbreak of the plague in India and the anthrax cases in the United States. The importance of giving credit to the serious threat biological weapons present and not overlooking them in concerns of nuclear weapons of mass destruction is argued.
About the Author:
P. R. Chari is the director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India. He is a former member of the Indian Administrative Service who has served in the Ministry of Defense, the former director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, and a former professor at Harvard University. He is the coauthor of Brasstacks and Beyond, Nuclear Non-Proliferation in India and Pakistan, and The Simla Agreement. He is the editor of India: Towards Millennium, Perspectives on National Security in South Asia, and Working Towards a Verification Protocol for Biological Weapons. Arpit Rajain is a research officer in the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. He is the coeditor of Working Towards a Verification Protocol for Biological Weapons.
Synopsis
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BTWC) has no provisions for verification similar for those of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Recently state parties to the convention have been negotiating a Verification Protocol for the BTWC, but significant challenges remain, including the need to weigh the requirements of international security against national sovereignty and the need for transparency to be weighed against secrecy for commercial reasons (both issues that have been raised by the United States. Chari (director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, India) and Rajain (research fellow, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies) present seven chapters that address these and other issues, largely from the perspective of India. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR