Biological Warfare

An Emerging Threat of the Future

Abstract

We are living in a geo-politically transforming world, forcing nations to persistently engage in cooperation, competition, cooperation, and even conflict. While the potential global threat and disastrous consequences of biological warfare were known to the domain and few security experts, this threat has come to the forefront and greater scrutiny ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mind-boggling numbers of human fatalities and casualties, it's spiraling and continuing destructive potential (evolving mutations), along with consequences to the global economy and way of life has clearly illustrated that the biological threat can be even more
devastating than nuclear, because they can persist, propagate, and spread through a population globally. Unfortunately, the existing agreements/
conventions specially the Biological Warfare Convention (BWC), signed
and ratified almost universally (183 nations), is widely acknowledged, but
lacks compliance monitoring and verification mechanisms- making it far
from effective in controlling biological weapons (BW). In this perspective,
the paper examines the emerging threat of biological warfare and the
implications it holds for the world at large and India in particular.