Publication

This report is the product of a series of meetings that the Stimson Center’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project convened to explore the technical prospects for monitoring the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BWC). It emphasizes the need for more technical research and field trials of inspection techniques before conclusion of a BWC verification protocol, and cautions that premature conclusion of a BWC monitoring protocol without assurances that monitoring techniques would work reliably could ultimately weaken the biological weapons ban. In closing, it calls on the US government and the US pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to fully test assorted BWC monitoring technologies and strategies.