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Inhibiting Reliance on Biological Weaponry: The Role and Relevance of International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Richard Falk
Affiliation:
RICHARD FALK is the Albert C. Milbank Professor of International Law at the Center for International Studies, Princeton University.

Abstract

This article describes the restraints on biological weapons, as dictated in the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the Biological Weapons Convention, and the weaknesses of these instruments. Falk clearly argues for nonpossession as a requirement of international stability. He points out that their commitment to unconditional renunciation has been disregarded by the United States and the Soviet Union. The author concludes that the failure of major powers to comply with the rules they themselves set has encouraged emulation by the rest of the world. It is the duty of those with extensive knowledge of this weaponry to eliminate the pressure for its development.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1989

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References

1 For discussion of this reluctance, especially relating to the United States government's refusal to respect the decision of the International Court of Justice in the setting of its policies toward Nicaragua during the Reagan presidency, see Franck, Thomas M., Judging the World Court (New York: Priority Press Publications, 1986)Google Scholar; for a different view see Falk, , “Strengthening the Rule of Law in Foreign Policy,” in Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the 1990s, eds. Hartman, Chester and Raskin, Marcus (Boston and Washington, B.C.: South End Press, 1988) pp. 317–25Google Scholar.

2 See the inconclusive report of the secretary general investigating these charges (A/37/259), U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 1, 1982, and the gradual abandonment of allegations by the United States governmentGoogle Scholar.

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5 The wider context that is delimited by Iraqi reliance on chemical weapons is well explored in an editorial, “That Hellish Poison: Still Intolerable,”The New York Times, August 8, 1988, p. A16Google Scholar.

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8 For analysis in a parallel setting Falk, see, The Promise of World Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987) pp. 196219 and 299–318Google Scholar.

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17 For a contrary view that the U.S. was not legally inhibited with respect to BW prior to the 1975 adherence to the Geneva Protocol, see Major William H. Neinast, “United States Use of Biological Warfare,”Military Law Review (April 1964) pp. 1–46Google Scholar.

18 See United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2603A, Dec. 16, 1969Google Scholar.

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32 This article wil] appear as a chapter in Preventing a Biolological Arms Race (forthcoming, 1990)Google Scholar.