The economic, political, and social impacts of bioterrorism

Abstract

Introduction One of the greatest threats to the world today is the potential for terrorists, especially their modern variant in the current globalized world, transnational terrorists, such as al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Such weapons are usually identified as including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, but there are important differences among these weapons, so they probably should not be treated together as a group but rather individually. There is a literature on the military, economic, and political impacts of nuclear weapons1 while chemical weapons should belong to another category altogether, being largely tactical battlefield weapons. Neither political and military leaders nor government and academic analysts have paid adequate attention to transnational terrorist use of biological weapons, the subject of this chapter as well as this book. Biological weapons should have become of growing concern in recent years as to their implications for national security for several reasons. First was the discovery, between 1989 and 1992, that the Soviet Union had violated the Biological Weapons Convention that it had ratified in 1975 by building a major covert biological weapons program in its massive Biopreparat complex.2 Second was the UN Special Commission report in 1995 that noted that Iraq had maintained a covert biological weapons program since 1974 and had produced and stockpiled large quantities of biological agents and delivery systems between 1988 and 1991. Third, also in 1995, was the discovery that the Japanese extremist group Aum Shinrikyo, which had carried out the attack on the Tokyo subway system using sarin gas that same year, had also spent some four years and considerable funds attempting to produce and disperse two pathogenic biological agents, an attempt that was unsuccessful. Fourth was the mailing through the U.S. postal system of professionally prepared anthrax spores following the September 11, 2001 (9/11) al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, further discussed below. Fifth, it was discovered in December 2002, after U.S. forces had retaliated for these 9/11 attacks by invading Afghanistan, that the al Qaeda terrorist group had also spent several years trying to produce biological agents. Even earlier, in the United States in 1984 cult followers of theBhagwan Shree Rajneesh attempted to influence a local election in Oregon by incapacitating the local population. They infected salad bars in 11 restaurants, produce in grocery stores, doorknobs, and other public domains with salmonella bacteria in the city of The Dalles, Oregon. The attack infected 751 people with severe food poisoning, but there were no fatalities. This was a relatively minor incident but it was the first known bioterrorist attack in the United States in the twentieth century. The second such attack in the United States, as already noted, was a relatively small biological terrorism attack in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when letters laced with infectious anthrax were delivered to news media offices and the U.S. Congress, killing only five people but having major economic, political, and social effects. These new factors shifted the context in which biological weapons were initially considered almost entirely a threat to other nations to one in which they were also seen as a potential threat to the United States. Within four years of 2001, almost $60 billion in federal expenditure were appropriated to counter this potential threat, and such funding continues today at a level of some $9 billion per year. A major act of bioterrorism with a weaponized agent would have enormous economic, political, psychological, and social impacts that could in some instances be comparable to those of a nuclear terrorist strike. Such an outcome would depend on what agent was used, in what formulation, and the conditions under which it was released. If the agent was contagious and was prepared and released in a highly technical manner, a major biological attack could have devastating results that could have significant and long-lasting effects. The psychological effects of a terrorist attack with biological weapons would compound its direct effects with added economic and social impacts. Some people would be affected directly and others indirectly through the psychological impacts of such a terrorist attack. A possible objective of the terrorists beyond killing people would be to cripple the economy by various means, including their psychological effects. The psychological effects would compound the direct effects with added economic and social impacts. In terms of its strictly economic impact, an “agroterrorist” attack against the U.S. livestock industry with an agent such as foot-and-mouth disease virus would probably be most cost-effective from the terrorists’ perspective.3