‘Will It Be So Again?’

Abstract

The ‘problem of chemical and biological weapons’, as it is termed by SIPRI, is a compound of historical events, political and military perceptions, technical issues and public concerns. In the past century chemical and biological warfare have been rehearsed, waged, and renounced. Now, 70 years after the end of the First World War, we are struggling to regain the position that obtained at the end of the nineteenth century — the absence of chemical and biological weapons from the world’s arsenals. As the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass remarked, ‘Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’