"Richard Preston - The Cobra Event" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

America would renounce the use of any form of biological weapons, and he was ordering the
disposal of existing stocks of the weapons. 'Mankind already carries in its own hands too many
of the seeds of its own destruction,' he said. 'By the examples that we set today, we hope to
contribute to an atmosphere of peace and understanding between all nations. Thank you.' He
walked off the podium without another word.
The next day, in an analysis of 'What Nixon Gave Up,' The New York Times noted rather
skeptically that the President was repudiating only 'a few horrible and probably unusable
weapons in the American arsenal to gain possible advantages of security for the nation and
prestige for himself.'
'Informed sources' said that the chemical weapons given up by Nixon were expensive and
unreliable. As for biological weapons, 'experts' said that the United States would have been
unable to use them. 'In the first place, the germs and toxins (the dead but poisonous products
of bacteria) stockpiled in refrigerated igloos at the Pine Bluff arsenal in Arkansas have never
been tested; it is not clear what effect they would have on enemy forces or population.'
Of course the experts had it wrong. Either that or they lied to the Times. Nevertheless,
their position prevailed. The idea that bioweapons were never fully tested, were never made
to work, or are unusable is a myth that persists to this day. The existence of the Johnston
Atoll Field Trials was not reported publicly and is unknown to most civilian scientists.
The trials, which went on steadily from 1964 to 1969, were successful far beyond the
expectations of even the scientists involved. The results were clear. Biological weapons are
strategic weapons that can be used to destroy an army or a city, or a nation. ('Tactical'
weapons, as opposed to strategic weapons, are used in a more limited way, on a battlefield.
Chemical weapons are tactical, not strategic, since it takes a large quantity of a chemical
weapon to destroy a small number of enemies. There are only two kinds of strategic weapons
in the world: nuclear and biological.)
The reasons for Richard Nixon's decision to end the American biological-weapons program
were complicated. His intelligence people were telling him that the Russians were getting
ready to embark on a crash biological program, and he hoped to encourage them not to do it.
The Vietnam War protests were going on, and some protesters had focused on chemical and
biological weapons. Not only did the protesters not want the weapons used on anyone by
their government, they also did not want them stored near where they lived, or transported
across the country. Nixon had apparently considered using biological weapons in Vietnam, but
military planners couldn't figure out how to deploy them without sickening or killing vast
numbers of civilians. Even so, the Pentagon was furious with Nixon for taking away a new
strategic weapon.
The success of the Pacific trials was also a factor in Nixon's decision, for the trials had
surprised everyone. The problem with bioweapons was not that they didn't work, it was that
they worked too well. They were remarkably powerful. They were difficult to defend against.
They were easy and cheap to make, and while they depended on weather for their
effectiveness, they were a good or even superior alternative to nuclear weapons, especially
for countries that could not afford nuclear weapons.
The meaning of the Pacific trials was not lost on the supreme leader of the Soviet Union,
Leonid Brezhnev, or on his advisers. Brezhnev was reportedly furious at his scientific people
for having fallen behind the Americans. The Soviets believed that Nixon was lying, that he
never really canceled the American bioweapons program. They thought he had hidden it away.
So Brezhnev did exactly what Nixon was trying to head off. He ordered a secret crash
acceleration of the Soviet bioweapons program in response to a perceived threat from the
United States.
In 1972, the United States signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development,
Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their