Are Germs the New Deterrent?

President Trump has already signed the TAIPEI Act which recognizes Taiwan’s international presence. All these developments therefore need to be understood in a larger perspective – something historically rooted, yet more futuristic. It is common knowledge that a war happens with weapons, but a trade war happens through instruments – economic and diplomatic. The present context of the Covid-19 pandemic however points out that even a trade war cannot end without weapons. Perhaps, the weapon has to be “biological” and the parties in dispute must be “great powers”.

The trade war stalemate between the United States and China could somehow yield its first deliverable – the U.S.-China trade deal, Phase-I. This deal gave some popular, if not political, mileage to President Trump. It, however, failed to develop a specific road map to satisfy his geo-economic expectations. China did promise to buy an additional $200 billion of American goods and services by 2021, but without a commitment till 2025 as the United States expected. President Trump knows it well - the deal was just a face saving exercise for him. Despite the trade war, China’s global economic clout did not suffer drastically, and its supply and value chains were not hampered disproportionately as the United States would have desired. So, is it not highly likely that the United States which believed that China sought to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, has tried to contain China again? But it cannot always happen through a policy of containment. It had to be something else – perhaps a biological weapon assault – which China claims the United States did!

There are enough evidences to believe in the theory of biological warfare, because even Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton pointed to this in his tweet on January 30 this year. He mentioned about Wuhan’s high-end biological laboratory and about its experiments with deadly pathogens including coronavirus. Also, Francis Boyle, an international law professor who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 in the United States – has claimed Covid-19 to be an offensive bio-weapon developed through genetic engineering. He blames it on China. Though most of the conspiracy theories and social media discourse today is targeted against China, but it in no way rejects the ability of the United States to outperform China in this sphere. There are several reasons to believe it.

During October 18-27, 2019, the 7^th Military World Games were held in Wuhan. These games are organised by the Brussels based Conseil International du Sport Militaire or International Military Sports Council which organises competitions among its 140 member countries. The event incorporates almost thirty sports including aeronautical and naval pentathlon, skiing, wrestling, orienteering, and volleyball. The American soldiers too participated in it. These military-athletes stayed near the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was the epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak. There is a popular theorisation in China that the American military-athletes underperformed in the games, and instead devoted their effort in deploying the virus in Wuhan.

China has a Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory located in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan. Level-4 implies that such laboratories maintain the highest level of precaution and are adept at handling aerosol-transmitted agents that can cause new or rare fatal diseases. There have been conspiracy theories emanating from the United States that this laboratory could be the breeding ground of Covid-19, and that it could have been a case of biological experimentation gone wrong. Meanwhile, scientific studies reveal that Covid-19 virus has 96 per cent commonality in its genetic sequence with the bat virus. There is, however, no scientific study yet to prove that Covid-19 in “not” a laboratory-made virus. China, Russia and Iran trace its origin to the United States which hosts thirteen or more such BSL-4 laboratories. The United States, however, rejects it and labels it as a disinformation being spread by its three adversaries. President Trump in his own characteristic style called it a “Chinese Virus”.

Well, there are historical contexts too. Biological weapon programs have been pursued by both the United States as well as China. It is nothing new. A biological weapon constitutes of a bio-agent i.e. the weapon, along with its delivery mechanism. It is capable of spreading fatal micro-organisms and toxins that can spread infections in humans and other living things. They are different from chemical weapons, and can be widely used in military applications, and for creating livestock infections, human diseases and pandemics. As per the United Nations Office at Geneva, historically the biological weapon programs have included efforts to produce some of the most lethal weapons such as aflatoxin, anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, small pox, and, plague, among others.

The United States had developed biological weapons during World War II as well as in the Korean War. It abandoned its bio-warfare program in 1969, as it felt that its nuclear capabilities were most robust to ensure global security. President Richard Nixon questioned the biological warfare capability as a deterrent and argued that “if somebody uses germs on us, we'll nuke 'em." In 1951, China had also established the Academy of Military Medical Sciences to boost its bio-defence capabilities. Russia and Japan too had developed bio-weapons. In 1972, Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), a multilateral agreement to prohibit production and stockpiling of biological weapons was signed. It came into force in 1975 and China joined the BWC in 1984. The bio-weapon research however continued in both the United States and China, with the former developing technically larger research facilities. For instance, the American army runs a facility named Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick that works on pathogens to strengthen their bio-defence capabilities.

The geopolitical narratives and arguments around Covid-19 as a bio-weapon is deemed to continue. This is because despite its nuclear capabilities, the United States may have never compromised on its ability to win a biological war.

(Picture courtesy-CDC on Unsplash )

(Faisal Ahmed teaches trade and geopolitics at FORE School of Management, New Delhi. Views are personal)