NATO, WMD and Terrorism

I attended an interesting lecture today by E.C. Whiteside, Head, NATO Weapons of Mass Destruction Centre. His theme was NATO's role in combatting the proliferation of WMD, especially to terrorists. He stressed NATO's growing expertise in collective security especially in situations involving non-state aligned groups, such as Al-Qaeda. As evidence of the recognition of such expertise, he noted the recent visits to Brussels of the President of Pakistan and the Prime Minister of Japan. NATO also is playing a role in Iraq by providing mentoring and training of its security forces.

He reviewed the growth and decline in the numbers worldwide of nuclear weapons, but noted that as other nations acquire such weapons their numbers may again begin to rise. Facilitating such a development is the ease of access to technical information over the Internet and the enhanced opportunities for collaboration.

If the 20th century witnessed the triumph of physics in achieving the hydrogen bomb, then the 21st century may see a similar rise to dominance of biotechnology. A key feature of this new technology, which makes detection especially difficult, is the small-scale of the laboratories in which research and development can take place.

One aspect of WMD which was not addressed was the vulnerability of the target. During WWII targets acquired some measure of invulnerability by "hardening" (increasing the physical ability to withstand blast), being placed underground or inside mountains and by spatial dispersion and duplication, especially of factories producing war matériel. The problem with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons (CBRN) of mass destruction is that, as essentially area weapons, the scale of spatial dispersion may be so vast, as to be totally impracticable. However, following the dictum of Herman Kahn, there may come a time when "thinking the unthinkable" may be simply the prudent thing to do! In any event advances in science and technology, motivated by the need to combat this new threat to our collective security, may enable countermeasures, such as laser and particle beam weapons, which may alter the whole context of WMD.