Should rogue states shift focus onto biological weaponry?

Great Debates
1

It seems to me biological weaponry would be a much more rational choice for rogue states such as NK and Iran, for so many reasons.

  1. Research is cheaper.
    Bio-weapon research is usually much cheaper than nuclear research. Rogue states are already greatly impoverished by trade sanctions. Bio-weaponry are much more cost-effective. Why devote so much resources to nuclear weaponry research when the rogue state can use a fraction of it towards bio-research and create an array of various infectious agents that can wreak havoc to the whole world?

  2. Easier to obtain the revelant resources under embargo/sanctions
    Nuclear materials and equipments are tightly controllled, for rogue states under sanctions especially so. On the other hand, biological equipments are much easier to obtain.

For virus and other infectious agents, they can be obtained by sending some medical teams as foreign aid/humantarian operation, or special agents, whatever is convenient. Soviet Union obtained viruses such as Ebola that way, the rogue states can too if they want to.

For equipments for the labs, they can be obtained via the civilian market. Moreover, given the nature of medical equipments, many of them can be obtained as humantarian aid (which are permitted even under strict sanctions).

  1. Easier to disguise, and to “blend-in” with civilians (human shield effect)
    You can basically set up a bio-weaponry lab under a large civilian hospital, making the Israeli-style air strike practically impossible unless the oppossing country is willing to face fierce international outrage for attacking a civilian hospital.

For those don’t know about the Israeli-style air strike I’m talking about, well, Iraq had its nuclear ambition thwarted by Israel with its co-ordinated air strike, destroying their nuclear facility. Israel is threatening to do so again to Iran as well. Fact is, you can’t as easily hide a nuclear facility as a bio-weapon lab.

  1. Delivery is “economical” and much harder to intercept
    For rogue states to deliver nuclear weaponry to, let’s say, America, they will have to either do it via
    a. conventional means, such as airplane, missiles. However, they are expensive to research and manufact, and prone to failures (NK failed many missile/rocket tests), and they can be intercepted.

b. Special means, such as transfering a small nuke, could be even suit-case sized, via cargo ships. However, nukes are easily detected because of its radiation, smuggling a nuke to a western country is no easy task.

Bio-weapon on the other hand, can be very easily deployed on enemy land. They can be delivered during peace-time to western countries via the airport, cargo ships etc. Much harder to detect than nuclear weaponry. Heck, you can put them in a water bottle and the custom officers won’t have any second look, or you can put some capsules containing the infectious agents mixed in with vitamin capsules, who the heck would know the difference?

  1. Spreading is easy and fast
    So we covered the delivery, what about performing the actual attack? Easy, just deploy some sleeper cells awaiting orders. The sleeper cells would intentionally spread the infectious agent when the order is given. Places with high population density and acting as transportation hubs can be given high priority. Deployment in a major airport such as JFK airport would ensure the entire western world to suffer in just a few days.

  2. Effect is way more long-lasting
    A well-made infectious agent or a group of infectious agents can paralyze an entire country and even the whole world. A nuclear explosion in New York may sound terrible, but it’s just the NYC. If a virus gets spread, its the entire world at stake. If the virus is made to infect both humans and certain animals, it would be practically immortal. If NK made a virus that can infect both humans and bats, the world would be tormented by the virus virtually forever. The bats would act as hosts and even after initial containment, the virus would still spread to humans periodically, like Ebola.

  3. Nuclear attack solidify a country, a bio-attack creates distrusts
    A nuclear attack will just be another Pearl Habor, or Sept 11 attack, albeit an “enhanced” version. A bio attack however, would create mass distrust among the populace. Everyone would be afraid to be infected, everyone would be paranoid of other people, the very culture we are living in would collapse. No more parties, no more shooling, no more meetings, no more night-clubs etc. In short, it changes the very world we are living in rapidly.

Anyone who has watched some zombie apocalypse movies/shows know how much distrust an infectious agent can create. Keep in mind the incubation period is only a few hours for a typical zombie virus commonly depicted in popular media. What happens with a real virus with a much longer incubation period? It can be assumed the paranoia and distrust would be even greater because you never know if the person sitting next to you is infected or not. Everyone is at stake, and therefore everyone would be paranoid.

Given these factors I listed (you are welcome to add more), I think from the perspective of rogue states, it is in their best interest to shift focus from nuclear weaponry onto bio-weaponry . Bio-weaponry is ideal for a rogue state.

2

But there’s sort of a hierarchy of world states: nuclear and non-nuclear. Being a nuclear state has that sense of legitimacy and power that–even if you’re right and it isn’t as effective as biological weapons–doesn’t come with any other sort of WMD. These states aren’t trying to acquire nuclear weapons simply so they can have the most powerful WMDs. They’re also doing for the associated, well, “cool” factor.

3

Because can come back and bite you on the ass!

Seriously, it can enter your own population/agricultural system.
Bio-weapons aren’t really controllable. Once unleashed, they make the decisions.
Plus, they mutate.

4

Besides that, biological weapons are also not enough to scare off an enemy from attacking, while likely to provoke them into doing so. Nor are they going to do enough damage to keep an enemy from destroying you, especially if they have nuclear weapons. They are also not as controllable at the present state of the art; you risk killing your own people, and yourself. It’s also much harder to find capable biologists who will cooperate with such research, especially for fanatical religious regimes which often have difficulty finding capable biologists for any purpose.

5

The thing is, they are rogue states, they are supposed to be rogues. It’s also a valid strategy, a type of MAD (mutually-assured destruction), something like “you America invade me and ovethrow my rule and kill me like you killed Saddam and Kaddafil, then I promise I will ruin your whole country even at the expense of my own citizens” (which the dictators don’t really care in the first place).

6

I may be misremembering, but from back in the days of the anthrax scare I thought that bio-weapons have a pretty abysmal shelf life, so you couldn’t really send sleeper agents all over the world with their stainless-steel canisters hidden in their luggage, then live as moles for a few years before the order comes to release the hounds: once you’ve bred enough nasties to make a deliverable package, it needs to be used or refreshed from time to time, and refreshing it is not something you do lightly in the field.

7

Moved from General Question to Great Debates.

samclem, moderator

8

It’s a weapon that might work in the short term, if the enemy’s response is wildly disproportionate and self-damaging, i.e. a germ attack at an airport causes them to shut down all airports, but all you really do is give them perpetual justification to broadly strike back with conventional weapons, and conceivably nuclear ones.

As far as I know, bioweapons are not at the stage where they can inflict strategic damage, as in killing an entire city, nor are they likely to do so anytime soon. As soon as the outbreak occurs, information about it can spread faster than the disease.

9

You guys do know most of the world considers the US to be the rougest (sic) of rouges…

10

Er…no, we don’t know that, and, besides, it has nothing to do with the topic. The U.S. has nuclear weapons, plus such a plethora of conventional weapons that, if we were to go rogue, what would anybody do? We really aren’t the monster in the closet here, although, certainly, we could be.

11

Well, this theory certainly worked out well for Sadaam Hussein.:wink:
You do realize the purpose of nuclear weapons is not to use them, right? It’s to demonstrate that your country is a first-rate technological powerhouse with the ability to evaporate a city. It is that threat that can be used as a deterrent and as a bargaining chip at the big table.

First rate countries don’t drop a vial of weaponized smallpox into a reservoir like some sort of Bond villain.
Also, bio-weapons tend to be relatively ineffective against military forces who are largely equipped with countermeasures against them.
Plus I have to ask where the OP is getting his information on the costs of developing reliable bio-weapons. Are there any real world examples of decent bio-weapons out there?

That’s not really true.

12

I don’t think it is a question of either/or, where rogue states only try to get nukes and ignore bioweapons, or vice versa. Sometimes they try to get both.

Regards,
Shodan

13

Does anyone have a list of countries known or suspected to have biological weapons?

14

If you have chem or bio weapons than using them is a bad idea. Chemical weapons especially are fairly easy for a state to make with a smallish industrial base. You invite retaliation or if your enemy has nukes and you don’t… well lets say the enemies generals will finally gt ti use their shiny toys.

15

What other nation has drones flying over allied states, executing ‘terrorists’ plus anyone else unlucky to be in the vicinity?

not to mention the constant terrorisation of those knowing they are living under the gaze of remote controlled killers who can strike at any time.

Imagine if you and your family lived in a city where another state could and would strike from the sky without warning. That you dare not go to any gathering in case someone ten thousand miles away decided they didn’t like the look of things or some politician decided some pissant Bad Guy was worth the deaths of you and your family?

Reprieve Report

The whole drone program is an act of ongoing terrorism and only the USA could get away with it. I can just hear the screams of outrage if China decided to go after the ‘rebels’ in Taiwan like this.
The Stanford/NY University report summary

Iran and NK are rank amateurs.

16

That really is correct. If you live in the non-US, urban multicultural, multi-nationality world for longer than a day it’s pretty evident who pretty much ‘the world’ considers the biggest problem at any given time.

That might not chime with how things look from within the most provincial, parochial of first world societies.

17

This. Waving a nuke around is a Grand Gesture and also helps distract the locals from their 32-year life expectancy. It also might help avert an invasion by Choose One: {jingoist imperial hegemonic state; saintly democratic protector of international law}.

For that matter, nukes and bio-weapons aren’t mutually exclusive (as every great power has both, whether they admit it or not).

18

I’d say most of the world has some local thing just over the next hill they consider the biggest problem. When I travel I am not taken by surprise so much by anti-Americanism and American-irrelevantism. The vast majority of the world doesn’t see the US as good or bad, but just as a sort of environmental operating condition, like weather. I’m sure it has been forever thus with empires.

The great affront to an ideologue is not public opposition, which just ratifies his own sense of importance, but public indifference.

19

Perhaps BrokenBriton and/or tagos could supply a definition of ‘rogue state’.

20

The big problem from a simple mechanical point is dispersion - cooking up some anthrax is easy - infecting people is difficult.
Remember the sarin attack in Japanese subway years ago?

Getting the stuff on target is easy.

Getting it into an aerosol is a problem.

Plus, I have an in-law who was a Major in USMC. According to him (Reagan days), the US “Rules of Engagement” were that a chemical or bio attack on US civilians would bring a nuclear response.
Have no independent confirmation of that statement, and don’t count on him to know fact from established “truisms” in the military.