LIFESCIENCE: Threat of "Bioterrorism" becomes strategic issues in NATO's nuclear planning

[schoefbaenker@magnet.at]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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Threat of "Bioterrorism" becomes strategic issues in NATO's nuclear
planning and targeting

by Georg Schöfbänker

At NATO's 50's anniversary-summit end of April 1999 NATO finalized a new
strategic concept (1) which replaced the 1991 version. Amid the Kosovo-war
this new strategic concept was not very much discussed in the public.
There is a certain trend in NATO-language, if one compares the 'risks' and
'threats-sections' of the new strategic concept with the old one, that NATO
as a alliance is turning its remaining approximately 200 nuclear weapons in
Europe 'down to the South'.

NATO did not completely follow the US proposals of 'counter-proliferation',
to say that the alliance is ready to use nuclear weapons preventive against
production sites of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, but targeting
and planning for such scenarios is already under way.
The US has during the last years consistently argued that the use of
nuclear weapons against arsenals or production facilities of NBC-weapons is
feasible option.
In November 1997, President Clinton issued a highly classified Presidential
Decision Directive (PDD-60) with new guidlelines about the targeting of
nuclear weapons. Information from this classified directive and from the
unclassified documents paints a dramatically new and unique picture of
further nuclear targeting by the US.

In detail the objectives are: "belligerent response", (nuclear reprisals
against non-nuclear states who use weapons of mass destruction), "agent
defeat" (the incineration of chemical and biological agents on the ground
and in flight), the destruction of facilities and operation centers in the
hands of "non-state actors" and last, but not least, preemptive strikes
against nuclear, chemical, and biological installations and command and
control centers. These concepts go far beyond what was "deterrence" in the
Cold War or what was intended to counter attacks of perceived superior
conventional forces in an over-all block confrontation or on the battlefield---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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