Biotechnology And International Security

Research and development in the emerging fields of biotechnology, including human enhancement and direct-effect genetic weapons, may very well change the nature of war and international politics. This biotech revolution in military affairs will offer great advantages to the United States and other technologically advanced states, but raises many new questions about just war and bioethics. Biotechnology and International Security contextualizes the militarization of biotechnology by examining its strategic uses, the nature of bioweapons, and the overall impact on warfare and security. The book looks at the many emerging military applications of biotechnology and provides a nontechnical assessment of how a wide range of technologies are influencing war fighting, international balance of power, and homeland security. It offers a thorough introduction to bioweapons and biosecurity challenges, along with the resulting ethical and policy dilemmas.

This book accessibly and expertly details the history and implications of the BWC—the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention—a controversial arms control agreement drafted in the 1970’s meant to supplement the Geneva protocol for warfare from decades earlier. That treaty banned the use of biological weapons in modern warfare, but failed to ban their development, transport or trafficking, holes the BWC aimed to fill, but are still contested to this day. Daniel M. Gerstein, a former Army Colonel and current Under Secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, traces the origins of the treaty and its many complications, past and present, while prescribing a way for the world’s military leaders to move forward with regards to (what Gerstein sees will be and already is) “the most important arms control treaty of the 21st Century.” The strength and enforcement of the treaty are at a crossroads, and it is important for both professionals and students of the military and international affairs to know exactly what a failure to honor, improve and uphold the BWC would mean for international security.

In recent years much has happened to justify an examination of biological research in light of national security concerns. The destructive application of biotechnology research includes activities such as spreading common pathogens or transforming them into even more lethal forms. Policymakers and the scientific community at large must put forth a vigorous and immediate response to this challenge. This new book by the National Research Council recommends that the government expand existing regulations and rely on self-governance by scientists rather than adopt intrusive new policies. One key recommendation of the report is that the government should not attempt to regulate scientific publishing but should trust scientists and journals to screen their papers for security risks, a task some journals have already taken up. With biological information and tools widely distributed, regulating only U.S. researchers would have little effect. A new International Forum on Biosecurity should encourage the adoption of similar measures around the world. Seven types of risky studies would require approval by the Institutional Biosafety Committees that already oversee recombinant DNA research at some 400 U.S. institutions. These "experiments of concern" include making an infectious agent more lethal and rendering vaccines powerless.

This book examines how emergent trends in innovation and its governance are raising new and old questions about how to control technology. It develops a new framework for understanding how emergent fields of science and technology emerge as security concerns; and the key challenges these fields pose from a global security perspective. The study focuses on the politics which have surrounded the emergent field of Synthetic Biology, a field which has become emblematic of both the potentials and limits of more preemptive approaches to governance. This highly accessible work will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners working on the ethical responsibilities of innovators and the assessment of emergent technology as well as the global governance of weapons.

本書是由國際關係學院主辦的《國際安全研究》的英文半年集刊，主題是國際安全理論研究，內容涉及不干涉內政學說、世界體系的發展、歷史視角中的三次世界大戰、質性和平的條件比較（當代東亞與戰後西歐）、當代國際安全的文化價值基礎、互聯網對國際政治影響機理、中國周邊安全環境指標體系及其評估、聯合陣線與美國軍事干涉等問題的研究。

International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment is a component of Encyclopedia of Institutional and Infrastructural Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment deals, in seven parts and two volumes , with a myriad of issues of great relevance to our world such as: human, social, gender and environmental security; the transition in earth history from the holocene to the anthropocene potentially causing disasters and increasing resource scarcity; limits to growth, use of na­tural resources, sustainable livelihood and productive system through technology; rise of conflicts due to scarce and polluted resources and the concentration of humans in limited spaces of big cities; the gender violence; peace education and peace teaching as mechanisms to strengthen citizenship and to improve the understanding of cultural diversity; mechanisms to strengthen the resistance against monopolist interests in the present global world and whistle blowing as a phenomenon to protect social peace and civil resistance. The presentation culminates with a discussion on the means of active nonviolence to reinforce democratic behavior and to reduce tensions and violent outcomes in a complex world. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.

International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment is a component of Encyclopedia of Institutional and Infrastructural Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment deals, in seven parts and two volumes , with a myriad of issues of great relevance to our world such as: human, social, gender and environmental security; the transition in earth history from the holocene to the anthropocene potentially causing disasters and increasing resource scarcity; limits to growth, use of na­tural resources, sustainable livelihood and productive system through technology; rise of conflicts due to scarce and polluted resources and the concentration of humans in limited spaces of big cities; the gender violence; peace education and peace teaching as mechanisms to strengthen citizenship and to improve the understanding of cultural diversity; mechanisms to strengthen the resistance against monopolist interests in the present global world and whistle blowing as a phenomenon to protect social peace and civil resistance. The presentation culminates with a discussion on the means of active nonviolence to reinforce democratic behavior and to reduce tensions and violent outcomes in a complex world. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.

As part of a study of current and future research in the life sciences that contains applications relevant to development of agents of biological origin 5 to 10 years into the future, an NRC/IOM committee held an international workshop in 2004 to examine advancing technologies from a global point of view. Experts from different fields and from around the world presented their diverse outlooks on these technologies and forces that drive technological progress; local and regional capacities for life sciences research, development, and application (both beneficial and nefarious); national perceptions of the dual-use risk of advancing technologies; and strategic measures that have been taken or could be taken to manage the use of technology for malevolent purposes. This report summarizes the formal and informal discussions held at the workshop.