David A. Andelman, visiting scholar at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, wrote an op-ed for CNN about North Korea’s bioweapons threat to the United States.
More than half a millennium ago, the bubonic plague wiped out half the population of Europe. But it has not disappeared from the Earth: an epidemic appeared suddenly earlier this year in Madagascar.
And this without any effort at weaponizing such a deadly threat.
Now, Kim Jong Un is said to be adding biological weapons to his arsenal of death and destruction, threatening to spread a pandemic far beyond the borders of any country he might be targeting. The White House’s new national security strategy says North Korea “is pursuing” biological weapons, a claim Kim Jong Un’s regime denies.
Is the United States or the world prepared? Not remotely.
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Since biological threats are potentially easier to mount and more difficult to monitor than the delivery of nuclear weapons to their targets, the United States appears already to be far behind any possible response to such a potential threat.