Obama Continues Bush Policy on Bioweapons

An op-ed in the LA Times sees that as a bad thing, when it is actually a sign that at least in this area, Obama has elected not to engage in his usual brand of wishful thinking and foolish internationalism. The Times is upset that the Obama administration has declined to "strengthen" the Biological Weapons Convention. Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. undersecretary of State for arms control, explained that,

monitoring doesn't work. "The ease with which a biological weapons program could be disguised within legitimate activities, and the rapid advances in biological research, make it very difficult to detect violations

This is pretty obvious, but the Times thinks it's the thought that counts.

A dedicated team of U.N. inspectors could stay abreast of technological advances and provide that threat. It wouldn't be 100% effective, but no monitoring program is.

Yeah, because UN inspectors are just so reliable. It won't actually be effective, but we should waste money funding another UN program in order to create the false impression that we are actually doing something about the proliferation of bioweapons.

there is no existing team of U.N. investigators nor funding to create one. With the United States ducking the issue, there won't be one any time soon, either.

And that's a good thing.

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in part because of his strong efforts to combat nuclear proliferation -- yet biological weapons are potentially as serious a danger. He should put his prize-winning brain to use developing a smarter strategy.

Except that President Obama hasn't done a single thing to effectively combat nuclear proliferation, other than talk about it. In fact, by "engaging" with rogue regimes such as those in Iran & North Korea, and pretending that any agreement with such states would be worth anything, the president is, if anything, facilitating nuclear proliferation. We already have a naive strategy based on wishful thinking for nuclear weapons. We don't need one for bioweapons too.