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The following article looks at the biological weapons problem from different perspectives to evaluate the international threat of biological weapons from both a legal perspective and a regulatory perspective. Biological weapons fall into a category all their own with unique characteristics as weapons of mass destruction in which suggestions for new directions should be explored with respect to historical failures. Biological weapons regulation is currently predicated on a certain legal framework, and through that a presentation is shown by a synthesized approach to biological weapons control.

This article reports on an international assessment to identify and discuss environmental issues that may affect the US Army’s transformation efforts. Many factors, such as new kinds of weapons, increasing demands on natural resources, urbanization and globalization, are making the planning of environmental viability for life support more important in the future. The article highlights eight environmental security developments and potential military requirements to address them.

The history of Vozrezdheniye Island in the Aral Sea is recounted, both to establish the related hazards and to acknowledge the underlying social process it shares with the Aral Sea Disaster, itself. A Closed City, part of the secretive world of Soviet arms manufacture and testing, carried out a hidden agenda of experimentation in the heart of the vast blue sea. Even as the Aral Sea was polluted and starved of water from without, parallel authoritarian regimes were poisoning its heart at the center. In this way, the military industrial complex became an actor with parallel duplicity to the public planned economic sector in charting the death of the Aral Sea. Ironically, the very attraction of Rebirth Island as an isolated weapons testing ground was undermined by the actions of the Soviet government to desiccate the Aral Sea, thus uniting Vozrezdheniye to the main shore and destroying its seclusion. In both instances, the case study is a further indicator that the people of Karakalpakstan were considered marginal and expendable, underscoring environmental injustices that continue long after the demise of the Aral Sea.

The conclusion of the Cold War's U.S.‐Soviet superpower rivalry may have ended the threat of a global nuclear military confrontation involving these powers. It did not, however, result in the termination of international regional conflicts or of military threats to U.S. national security. The collapse of a world political and strategic system ostensibly polarized between two ideologically contrasting superpowers has resulted in the emergence of numerous threats to regional and global order.

The United States of America is on the verge of a possible revolution in civil-military relations in an era marked by increased defensive alertness stemming from the attacks of 11 September 2001. As we anticipate the normalization of terror as a way of life, we are witnessing a paradigmatic shift from the use of violence towards some political end to the use of violence as an end in itself (Jenkins, 2001). 1 It is tempting to frame our analysis in terms of the broader notion of asymmetric warfare, since the arguments we make in this paper may be applied to a wide range of settings, including those in which vastly unequal forces are pitted against one another and one side may make use of irregular fighters employing unconventional tactics. However, this would serve only to shift the emphasis away from our central argument. Terrorism may be a form of asymmetric warfare, but what distinguishes it is the fact that it intentionally targets civilians, and that among civilians, it is indiscriminate in the devastation it wreaks. Terrorism is important because of the way in which it socializes danger, breaking down the barriers between combatant and noncombatant and subjecting all to the worst of harrowing and potentially lethal attacks. It is this socialization of danger produced by terrorism, in turn, that is critical in assessing whether and how civilian and military authorities elect to treat its use against their own societies not as a crime, but as an act of war. Bioterrorism in turn, as we argue below, has unique attributes that distinguish it from other forms of terrorism.1 And where, for most nations, homeland defense is the primary mission of the armed forces, the United States had to establish a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security due to the primarily expeditionary nature of American armed forces for the past half-century. The military has been a unique institution in modern societies. It has acted as the agent for the state’s possession of a monopoly on the means of large-scale organized violence and war-making. The establishment of a second executive agency responsible for homeland security makes the equation more complex. As a result, ever greater attention must be given to the balance of civil-military relations in American society.

The Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1968, is a treaty of three main agreements concerning both nuclear weapons states and non‐nuclear weapons states, with the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament. A number of safeguards and inspections conducted by the IAEA have been set up to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and until about the time of the Persian Gulf War, the monitoring and inspection regime had been successful. Since the beginning of the 1990s however, the system has been seriously shaken with the non‐compliance of a number of countries and the relevance and effectiveness of the NPT are greatly put into question. A number of tools, however, are at the disposal of the international community to deal with arms control; it is a question of cooperation, effective use of these tools and choice of direction.

The title of this chapter, “We're Losing the Fight against Nuclear Proliferation” is a quote from the keynote address of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Workshop on “Policy Implications of Managing or Preventing Proliferation” that was held at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University in Houston, November 9–11, 2007. Dagobert L. Brito and I helped organize this conference on the 25th anniversary of the 1982 conference on “Strategies for Managing Nuclear Proliferation: Economic and Political Issues” held at Tulane University, which we had organized and that was published in a book with that title in 1983 edited by Dagobert L. Brito, Michael D. Intriligator, and Adele E. Wick (1983). My belief is that this observation of Secretary Baker was correct in 2007 and is even more correct today, although many government officials and policy analysts have not yet appreciated the truth of his observation.

To describe anticipatory risk as a fundamental pillar for a framework of international law in relation to global terrorism.

Economic terrorism and global terrorist transactions are used as a case study to demonstrate asymmetric financial crime and vulnerabilities of financial districts, economies and populations.

The act of anticipation of risk is quantifiable and imposes a duty to manage foreseeable catastrophic consequences. Such a duty in turn creates a proportionate reaction that can be recognised in law.

Recommendations are made for international discussions by jurists, global agreements through the United Nations and the G8 and for national laws, corporate governance standards and regulatory measures to become a seamless extension of the international framework.

Commercial law, criminal law and the international laws and conventions of war require a framework that defines foreseeability, catastrophic risk, uncertainty, adequacy and proportionality.