Weapons of Mass Destruction

Abstract

Nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons have been elevated as a major issue of international concern in the post-Cold War era. As early as 9 February 1989, President George Bush claimed that the spread and ‘even use of sophisticated weaponry threatens global security as never before. Chemical weapons must be banned from the face of the earth, never to be used again.…And, the spread of nuclear weapons must be stopped.’1 US Intelligence and Pentagon officials amplified these concerns in their Congressional testimony; Judge William Webster, then Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), warned that ‘the odds on use [of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles] are growing as more countries develop the technologies to settle old scores’.2 These anxieties were compounded by the Gulf War (1991), the belated admission by President Boris Yeltsin of the covert biological warfare programme of the former Soviet Union (February 1992), and the subsequent revelations about the extent of the Iraqi NBC programmes.3 The Clinton administration sustained this concern. It described nonproliferation as ‘one of our nation’s highest priorities’,4 and a succession of CIA directors – Robert Gates, R. James Woolsey and Dr John Deutch – testified to ‘a steady and worrisome growth in the proliferation of advanced weapons’; to the ‘recent’ emergence of the proliferation issue with its ‘serious and far-reaching implications for global and regional security’; and to ‘the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional weapon systems’ as posing ‘the gravest threat to national security and to world stability’.5