The pathogens in biological agents are known as bugs: they multiply geometrically and, like oysters in Alice in Wonderland, are plentiful and cheap. If there is one reason why the US, at the end of the American century, is less mighty than it looks, it is that these genies of biological warfare are half out of the bottle.
Commentators frighten us with dreary "facts" about how Saddam Hussein has enough anthrax or other deadly toxins to wipe out the population of the world six times over. And he is not alone: at least a dozen countries possess offensive biological weapons. Many more have the potential capability. But can they be delivered? It is true that delivery systems are difficult to master, but ordinary sprays are not.
In any case, the simple power of uncertainty in relation to biological weapons gives small "rogue" states a huge advantage. This uncertainty principle helps to explain a number of things about the Gulf war: the restraint that Israel exercised during Saddam's skud missile attack in 1991; possibly, even that hotly debated decision of the allied army not to advance on Baghdad. Both may have been directly related to fears of biological weapons.
Easy availability of the biological bits of these weapons is not in doubt. The US Office of Technological Assessment, which used to explain such matters to the US Congress, made an assessment in 1993 of the "Technical Hurdles for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons Programs." The conclusions on biological weapons are: potential biological warfare agents are readily available locally or internationally from natural sources or commercial suppliers; sophisticated R&D is unnecessary to produce commonly known agents; personnel are widely available; equipment is widely available for commercial uses; with the advent of biotechnology, small-scale facilities are now capable of large-scale production; a large arsenal may cost less than $10m (the comparable figure to build one nuclear bomb per year is about $200m-and that assumes you have spent billions developing the nuclear capability).
In short, users of biological weapons need only the skills of an undergraduate biologist and the physical facility of a small brewery. The Isle of Man-even Sark-could achieve the same biological capacity as Saddam if it set its mind to it. Furthermore, the capacity to produce biological weapons can be easily and quickly reconstituted-within a matter of months rather than years.
What about the delivery weapons? Pathogens are difficult to keep alive when delivered by bombs, shells, missiles and so on. Explosions kill a high proportion of them (up to 95 per cent in primitive technology), although the US had achieved a much higher rate of survival before closing down its programme (under Richard Nixon).
Would the anthrax spores survive in Saddam's missiles? "Some would, some wouldn't," say the experts helpfully. Maybe they know, maybe they don't. Dr John Pike, missile specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, estimates their efficacy as somewhere between "annoyance and catastrophe." Rolf Ekeus, the Swedish ambassador recently in charge of the dismantling of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, believes that Iraq's technology is at the developed end of the spectrum.
The best biological killing machine is the aerosol, such as operated by the small agricultural sprayer plane chasing Cary Grant in North by Northwest. In optimum conditions, a small plane could wipe out as much of Washington DC and London as a nuclear bomb. Who will keep an eye on all those small planes for us?
Power in the post cold war world is indeed fragmenting, as small states can acquire the blackmail capacity once associated with nuclear weapons. At the sophisticated end of military technology, costs have risen exponentially so that a single high technology plane gobbles up large chunks of a military budget. Meanwhile, back at the duckpond, with the wind in the right direction, biological weapons can kill as many people as nuclear weapons. This poses a problem for the US military, with its current strategic policy of "full spectrum dominance"-and not merely in the middle east.
Seven years after the Gulf war, with no air defences to speak of, Saddam remains a sitting scorpion with a potentially dangerous sting. And he retains one special power: US policy is to maintain the status quo both in relation to Israel and to the Gulf sheikhdoms. Yet local opposition is growing, both among Palestinians and in the sheikhdoms. Saddam's biological-and other-arsenals could be critical in such hands. A pity then that the US administration chose to back a weakened Saddam rather than a real opposition.
The other bad news is that despite all the huffing and puffing about inspections, biological weapons cannot be effectively monitored. The little the UN inspectors do know about Saddam's biological stocks, they have discovered by having been led to them. "Iraq is a big country," said one former UN inspector. It would be just like Saddam to be busily bargaining over his old stock, while building up a new one in the hills.
