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The world community has long striven for the liquidation of chemical weapons of mass destruction. The 1925 Geneva treaty “On the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacterial Methods of Warfare” was the first international accord on chemical weapons prohibition. Signed by 125 countries, the USSR ratified the treaty in December 1927. The later development of the “Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and their Destruction” (henceforth “the Convention”) followed this early step and was undertaken with Russia's active participation. The Convention was signed by the Russian Federation in January 1993 and ratified by the State Duma in November 1997 with the decision to end chemical weapons stockpiling by 2007. As a signatory, Russia accepted international responsibilities for solving many interrelated problems, paramount among them was the protection of people and the environment (The Convention…, 1994, item 4).

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.

Over the years, political scientists have dominated academic analysis of issues concerning national and international security. Operating mainly within a paradigm of power, political scientists of the so-called “realist” school have tended to view force and the threat of force as the most effective means for achieving security. If power is the ultimate arbiter in the international arena and military force its most compelling manifestation, it follows that the weapons that can do the most frightful damage will become the most potent symbols of international standing. Looking at the world through these eyes, it is easy to understand the grotesque romance so many security analysts and policy makers have had with nuclear weapons since the birth of the atomic age in the deserts of New Mexico two-thirds of a century ago. And so we continue to live, two decades after the Cold War passed into history, with a profusion of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction spread among a growing number of nations.

The paradigms of economists have much more to do with choice and incentive than with force and coercion. Considering the growing support for the idea of nuclear disarmament, there may be a great opportunity, in this moment of history, to help bring about the kind of paradigmatic shift that can encourage the removal of the nuclear sword of Damocles with which we have all lived for so long. Perhaps, the tools of economics can help point the way to a world that is not only more productive but also more secure.

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.

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.

When modeling environmental jolts from terrorist attacks, various aspects should be analyzed in order to properly present an accurate configuration. The following article discusses how asymmetrical warfare has an impact on the outcomes of a terrorist attack. The several dimensions of terrorist attacks can be extracted to deduce the ways that asymmetrical warfare can damage the health care system. The article will relate real life terrorist attacks and hypothetical scenarios to better inform the reader about the weak attacking the strong, and then explain how this relates to health care providers.

Terrorists’ threats pose a grave danger to the health care environment in which we live. In the following paper, we look at how bioterrorist plots can effect a given population and show ways to dissect terrorist actions. We look at variables that use various cause and effect relationships, and lead the reader down a path of being able to use information presented in a real life or fictitious bioterrorist attacks. We seek to inform the reader reasons why preparedness is essential in dealing with the likelihood of the following scenarios.

The quest for national security through the expansion of military force has been a dominant feature of international relations for the past three decades. Since the Second World War this quest has given rise to an arms race which has seen the development, production and deployment of weapons of mass destruction in numbers great enough to threaten the termination of human society. It is thus only reasonable to try to understand the forces which have propelled this process forward and to ask whether the process has, in fact, resulted in the achievement of its alleged primary objective — the improvement, or at least the maintenance of the military security of the participants.

The threat posed by nuclear weapons to world peace need not be exaggerated. Advancement in science and technology has enabled us to go for a complete annihilation of not only the Homo sapiens but all the species on earth. Should we permit our idiocy entangled with the nuclear weapons to destroy us or should we, the thinking animals, permit our wisdom to outlive the demonic nuclear weapons, is a question that is being asked by sensible people all over the world today. Just public denouncement of weapons of mass destruction is un-utilitarian. Mankind has been hearing such hollow, absurd words ever since the first atomic test. We have been feeding ourselves on a diet of hypocrisy. If it is not that what else is CTBT? Should the world permit demons to chant mantra? Isn’t it time to recognize that the world is governed not by saints but by Satans? (This is because rise and fall of civilizations has taught us that might is still right.) Isn’t it time to understand that only a metamorphosis of the Satans into saints can save the world? If we know that well, we should start thinking how the nuclear Satans could be transformed into nuclear saints and it is only logical that the nuke Satans should take initiative in transforming themselves, which alone would salvage the world. The present study is premised on these assumptions.

India became a NWS (Nuclear Weapons State) most reluctantly in May 1998 despite her demonstration of nuclear weapons capability 24 years earlier in May 1974. Having assumed the new status as the sixth overt nuclear weapons state, India also declared her principled policy governing use of nuclear weapons in the event of a national security threat. The Indian Nuclear Doctrine was called “minimum deterrence” by the BJP-led NDA government, but the Congress-led UPA government in 2004 renamed it as “credible deterrence.”

But the heart of the vibrant Indian nuclear doctrine is its commitment to No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were invented by the United States (U.S.). First-ever use of atom bomb is also made by the Americans and a philosophic foundation for the discussion on NFU was also laid in the U.S. However, having put the NFU in the philosophic parlance, the U.S. in the Cold War International environment professed the doctrine for First Use (FU) of nuclear weapons. It is China that made a first public commitment to the NFU after it became the fifth nuclear weapons state.

This chapter proposes to discuss Indian commitment to NFU as a first step on the long path toward global nuclear disarmament—or No Use (NU) of nuclear weapons. India saw Partial Test Ban treaty of 1963 as a step toward NU and also saw the discussions on NPT as another step toward nuclear disarmament as much as it wanted the big powers to see the CTBT too as a device aimed at putting world into NU bind. West, led by the U.S., was however only interested in using the CTBT to deny nuclear weapons status to threshold states, particularly India.

As a self-declared nuclear weapons state, India has, in nuclear doctrine, committed itself to nuclear disarmament. Can there be an international treaty between the declared nuclear weapons states? Can India and Russia come together on the issue? Can they convince China to join? With three Asian nuclear weapons states committing themselves to NFU, U.S. can see economic sense in an international treaty on NFU. Is it possible to create a global public opinion in favor of NU of nuclear weapons? The questions will be answered based on research conduct on the subject.