More About Dr. Preston
Talking about the threat of nuclear weapons, Albert Einstein once said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
Thomas Preston, an associate professor of political science, does indeed believe everything has changed and we are drifting toward catastrophe, but the most fearsome weapon is no longer nuclear; it’s biological.
In his forthcoming book From Lambs to Lions: Future Security Relationships in a World of Biological and Nuclear Weapons, Dr. Preston argues that from time immemorial, justice has been in the interest of the stronger. He quotes Thucydides’ description of the Peloponnesian War explaining that “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept….”
Now, however, countries such as Iraq, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have developed nuclear weapons that provide them a measure of security against stronger neighbors that they didn’t have before. They are relatively small countries without tremendous resources, but WMD have transformed them from lambs to lions and they no longer need to fear superpower intrusion in their internal affairs.
Despite the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Dr. Preston argues that fundamental power relationships are still in place. In fact, he says nuclear proliferation could be a stabilizing effect on global relations because only resource-rich countries can afford to develop a nuclear weapons program and those countries have much to lose in the event of a counterattack.
But biological weapons, which can be created relatively easily from readily available materials, are another matter entirely. For the first time in history, weak, loosely organized groups outside the political mainstream have the ability to bring a strong adversary to its knees.
“It is not a question of if such capabilities will come into the hands of terror groups,” Dr. Preston says, “only a matter of when—with the consequence of this being a high probability such weapons will be used to cause the greatest number of civilian deaths possible.”
Defending against every possible threat to US security is impossible, Dr. Preston says, but there is much the U.S. could do to both lessen the likelihood of attack and to prepare crisis responses in the event of an attack.
While the government is putting some effort into closing vulnerabilities to attacks that have already happened, nearly no one is working to fortify the vulnerabilities that exist but have not yet been exploited. For instance, only one percent of the approximately 600,000 cargo containers brought into the nation's ports each day are inspected, making Seattle and other seaports particularly vulnerable to attacks.
In addition, the government is currently spending $10 billion per year on Nation Missile Defense, the least likely WMD threat, and only $2 billion on the successful Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program which attempts to identify, guard, and/or destroy discarded WMD materials before they are obtained by terrorist groups.
According to Dr. Preston, “The most effective counterproliferation control measures deal directly with a state’s motivations for developing WMDs, not solely upon efforts to eliminate capabilities or control the spread of technology.”
Lecture Details
Download Dr. Preston's powerpoint presentation (36 MB)
More About Dr. Preston
News Releases
The President and His Inner Circle
Perspective: WSU Experts Offer Insights Into Attack
Other Resources
Heading using the h3tag
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.