As a field of study international relations has always been concerned with the problem of war. Since the second world war much attention has been given to the impact of weapons of mass destruction, most commonly in the form of nuclear weapons. More recently, a wider variety of issues have been addressed by the field, notably widening its coverage of economic, welfare and social issues. Three broad approaches to international relations have emerged: political realism, pluralism, and globalism.

Biotechnology represents a major technological revolution which will have enormous impact on the world at many levels. One impact which cannot be ignored is its potential for weaponry. This paper assesses the three international relations approaches with respect to their elucidation of biotechnology and its potential for violent and aggressive applications.

Famine, a complex phenomenon with multifactorial causes, produces starvation and associated diseases resulting in unusually high mortality from a lack of food. Devastating famines in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s may have provided an impetus for scholars to find additional analytical tools for predicting famines. Two predominant theories of famines causality are (1) food availability decline (FAD), a supply failure; and (2) the entitlement approach based on a demand failure. Findings from both theories are applied to specific examples from Ethiopian famines to analyze the composition and effects of famine. The limited success of contemporary famines studies in anticipating famine suggests the need for improved analytical tools. Risk factor analysis, used successfully in the social sciences and the medical sciences to predict the occurrence of complicated phenomena, is developed to identify controllable, uncontrollable, and contributing factors to famine. Based on the experience of Ethiopia in 1983-86, categorical cutoff values for identifying a high risk of developing famine are formulated.

During this century strategy, law, and technology have worked to the distinct advantage of biological arms control over weapons proliferation. Reliable strategies for biological warfare were never formulated. Customary and treaty law severely constrained use of biological weapons. Advances in technology were inadequate to overcome moral and tactical objections to disease as an instrument of war. As the first treaty prohibiting possession of an entire category of weapons, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention signalled the apparent achievement of biological disarmament.

Subsequently, the rise of genetic engineering and renewal of superpower hostility engendered fear that biological disarmament was threatened by technological advances in biological weapons promoting their increased military utility. Neither the recent past nor the foreseeable future justify such fear. Instead, there is now the opportunity to entirely eliminate biological warfare research, to extend disarmament to chemical weapons, and to redirect resources to the global war against disease.

If the millions of words being written to define famine, identify and debate its causes, and outline complex approaches to its early identification and prevention could be eaten there would be far fewer hungry people in the world. This is particularly the case for Africa. Already an enormous number of conference papers, journal articles, institutional monographs, and commercial books have been published on topics related to food shortages and famine on that continent. Beneath this generally available strata of publications lie a vast number of internal reports, studies and evaluations done by the staff of or consultants to international agencies, major donors and non-governmental agencies. (For example, simply consult the growing output on early warning systems and drought administration systems being produced by the staff and consultants to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development located in Djibouti and created in 1986 to serve assist six drought prone countries of the Horn of Africa.)

Recent advances in the biosciences and biotechnology erode confidence in the reliability of the Biological Weapons Convention (1972). During its review conferences (1980, 1986) concerns were expressed as to the military misuse of civil research. Although some improvements were achieved at these conferences, there still exist major deficiencies related to the definition of substances and activities to be controlled, to verification and to cooperation (transfer of technology). It is suggested that in light of the positive international climate an entirely new regime should be built. This endeavor might draw on experience acquired in environmental treaty making. An institution should be entrusted with adapting the scope of the regime (controlled substances and activities) to scientific progress, with monitoring compliance, and with organizing cooperation. Thus would be matched the rigidity of international law with the flexibility required by science and politics.

Vestal's study of the Ethio-African famine process inspires comment along several lines. As a not-policy scientist writing about policy science matters I beg tolerance in what follows, consistent with my express intention to focus on famine in perspective, including alternative ones. But first, in the spirit of Science.

Arms control is not about agreements, but rather deals with creating enhanced security and international stability. Such objectives are difficult to realize in the field of biological and toxin weapons. The 1972 convention which bans them contains neither enforcement nor verification mechanisms. Rapid advancements in the fields of biochemistry and genetic engineering provide enormous potential for developing novel toxin weapons that defy virtually all conventional verfication methodologies. Moreover, it is widely assumed that the 1972 agreement has been violated by the Soviet Union and its client states in various parts of the world. This undermines the agreement's credibility as an effective international tool to prevent the exploitation of science and technology for ever more egregious weapons. Despite the troubled past and uncertain future of arms control in this area, every moral government must attempt to make arms control a viable element in the fight against the proliferation and use of biological and toxin weapons.

For all the insights reported in the preceding article by Vestal, the author leaves the impression that he is dissatisfied that our current level of understanding adequately addresses the complexity of famine. Vestal's article ranges widely across the research on famine, provoking a revisitation of some controversies and inviting further thought on the world's level of famine vulnerability and what researchers might do to reduce that vulnerability.

This article analyses the accomplishments and shortcomings of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and recent attempts to strengthen it. It examines why developing countries show little interest in these efforts. Neither do they seem intent on acquiring this weapons system. Might this situation change? To find out, the article examines past thrid world conflicts, focusing especially on those where chemical weapons have seen use. The lessons from the past are applied to assess the possibility of a country acquiring, then employing biological weapons in future conflicts as an adjunct to, or instead of, chemical arms. Finally, suggestions are made as to possible steps that the international community can take to lessen the threat of biological warfare generally and to involve third world countries in the on-going attempts to strengthen the Convention.

In recent decades, development economists have devoted much of their analysis to understanding a number of microeconomic issues, facing the less developed countries. Those issues range from straightforward poverty analysis to a more sophisticated exercise of optimal economic planning. By and large the body of research which has been done can be grouped into two broad categories: (1) exercises devoted to spelling out the various nuances and shades of poverty, which explain either the dimensions or the causes of poverty and related phenomena, and (2) those attempts aimed at developing solutions to the issues of poverty from the perspective of planners. Obviously, famine studies in general, belong to the first category. There has been substantial literature devoted to explaining “What is meant by famine?” Of course, one's position in this regard determines one's policy perspectives as well. The article under review purports to analyze “Risk Factors and Predictability of Famine in Ethiopia.” The discussion by the author of “what famines are and the theories of famine causality,” provides perspective only for the issue under focus, that is the risk factors and predictability.

I thank the respondents for their thoughtful insights from such exotic places as Kenya, India, Southern California, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The geographical origins of the replies brought in by the broadly cast net of this journal underscore the global concern with the phenomenon of famine and its study. The objective of my article was to stimulate discussion about risk factor analysis that takes into account both FAD and entitlement approaches to famine. The four reviews represent an extensive and helpful array of responses that suggest further refinements of research possibilities utilizing the risk factor concept. All offered abundant food for thought about how to address the riddle of what to do about famine, and in their references, the respondents have included first-rate additions to a bibliography of recent famine studies.

The U.S. Army conducts the Biological Defense Research Program to provide medical protection for U.S. military personnel against the threat of biological weapons. The unclassified medical research program is consistent with the Biological Weapons Convention, which prohibits the production and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons, and encourages the international exchange of scientific and medical information on the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. The program is the source of secondary benefits to civilian public health in the form of vaccine and drug development, diagnostic capability, and contributions to the world body of knowledge on infectious diseases. As the executive agent for the program, the Army submits descriptions of the work conducted under the program to Congress as part of its budget request, and provides numerous other responses to Congressional scrutiny of the program. Internal monitoring of the program is conducted from the perspectives of safety, compliance with regulatory agencies, quality assurance, and close administrative and technical oversight of contracts.

In recent years policymakers in a number of American states have chosen biotechnology as a key element in their economic development efforts. With visions of business growth and new jobs, state officials have targeted biotechnology as an important industry of the future. In this paper we focus on the political dynamics that underlay the choice of biotechnology in eleven states. With those states providing examples, we identify three major models of policy choice. The first involves an interest-based process in which state policymakers respond to explicit or implicit pressures from different parties. The second involves a strategic planning exercise in which state officials analyze the economic structure of the state and seek to develop a comparative advantage in the field of biotechnology. And the third starts with a strategic analysis but then relies upon a competitive, interest-based process to determine the allocation of state funds. We conclude by briefly discussing major issues for science policymaking at the state level.

The biological defense research program maintained by the Department of Defense as a deterrent to the potential use of biological warfare against United States forces or national interests has been subjected to intense criticism. Concerns center on developments in the protective programs and the potential for new offensive developments through the application of biotechnology. The arms control activities intended to preclude any offensive developments are reviewed which point out the relative ineffectiveness of these control mechanisms. The nature, scope and direction of the biological defense research program and the openness of the program are noted. The proliferation of biological warfare capabilities adds to the urgency of an adequate defense program. The political nature of the problem and its relationship to control of biological warfare is examined and the interplay between the technical and the political roles leads to a potential solution. Key attributes of a control program should be enhanced efforts to develop the political framework to achieve effective control mechanisms while maintaining a complementary biological defense research program as the only effective deterrent at this time.

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is widely regarded as a treaty whose provisions are difficult to verify because of the paucity of measures to verify compliance within the treaty framework and the nature of the weapons themselves. Advances in biotechnology and their effect on the perceived military utility of biological weapons have focused international attention on this issue. This article examines the concepts of “adequate” and “effective” verification and argues that the treaty falls under the definition of adequate verification in the United States. For other countries, however, the lack of verification measures is of greater concern. The article describes measures that should be added to the BWC to detect violations and promote compliance with the treaty. These include improved methods of resolving allegations of noncompliance, increased reporting requirements for activities permitted under the treaty, greater openness in biological research, and inspections of laboratories and other facilities.

John Portz and Peter Eisinger have provided a valuable conceptual overview of state government initiatives for economic development through biotechnology. Their three major models of policy choice - - based on interest-group processes, strategic planning, and competing interest groups in the allocation of planned development initiatives — seem to be sound theoretically and are convincingly examined empirically. Further, Portz and Eisinger provide a wealth of information regarding comparative state efforts at stimulating economic innovation, the differing state political dynamics underlying alternative development strategies, and differences in how such strategies have been implemented. Their analysis represents an important contribution to the current literature on comparative state economic development policy.

When finally U.S. political archives are reviewed comprehensively and definitively, one confusing point will still linger unresolved: were the artisans of politics crafting policy in response to visions of a public or a private interest? Portz and Eisinger's comparative analysis of state economic development efforts, with hopes pegged on biotechnology, grapples with that distinction at least by implication. Their instructive article needs revisiting - - and their useful findings and conclusions need follow-up research — because there is logical reason to fear that the strategic planning process is no more or less directed toward the public interest than is private interest advocacy.

The articles by Alan Russell and Winfried Lang make an excellent but somewhat frightening combination. The former deals with the emerging international challenges of biotechnology and the latter with institutional or regime responses. This combination is sobering because the potential challenges to international stability outlined by Russell give the appearance of easily overwhelming the regulatory regimes suggested by Lang. Growth in biotechnology is part of a more general acceleration of scientific discovery and technological innovation which threatens to overwhelm existing regulatory mechanisms. Developments in biotechnology, however, are much more challenging than in other fields because of both the threat they pose to established values and because of the relative cheapness with which “designer weapons” could potentially be produced.

On November 25, 1969 Richard Nixon announced that because of the “massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences” of biological weapons, the United States would never use these weapons, would destroy all existing stocks, and would confine its research to strictly defined measures of defense (Harris, 1987:193). This unilateral renunciation followed an extensive review by the National Security Council of U.S. chemical and biological warfare policy, which lasted six months and involved every relevant agency in the U.S. government and which concluded that U.S. biological warfare capabilities provided no compelling military advantages (Tucker, 1984-85:61). Three years later the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) was signed; it was the first postwar arms control agreement to elminate an entire class of weapons from the arsenals of states (U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1982:122). The treaty was ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 1974, and over 100 nations have acceded to it. This arms control achievement has been attributed in part to the serious doubts which many countries, including the United States, shared about the military value of biological weapons (Harris, 1987:205-6). Within a decade of the signing of this treaty, however, the development of recombinant-DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) technology had raised the possibility of a new and more effective form of biological warfare.

In their respective commentaries Browne and Shelley raise a number of important questions and issues. While each critique has a different perspective and orientation, there is also significant common ground. Our response is organized around four points common in each critique.