Biowarfare Lessons, Emerging Biosecurity Issues, and Ways to Monitor Dual-Use Biotechnology Trends in the Future: INSS Occasional Paper 61

The study offers policy lessons for efforts to monitor covert biological warfare programs based on recent investigations of past Iraqi and South African programs. This comparative case study approach identified commonalities in past biowarfare programs in developing countries. Both the Iraqi and South African cases showed that no single control strategy was entirely effective at stopping covert biological research and development. However, a combined approach based on import controls, sanctions, good intelligence on the ground from bilateral sources, and continuous international inspections that backed by a strong international consensus (in the case of Iraq) was remarkably effective at disrupting, slowing down the research and development process, and substantially raising the cost of conducting covert biowarfare programs.