Impact of Proliferation of WMD on Security

There is almost no international scientific, expert, political or economical meeting in which new threats of world and national security are not discussed. For all that, the threat posed by terrorism is of special concern and receives special attention, particularly when we talk about terrorism with radiological, chemical and biological warfare agents and weapons. After 11 September 2001, when the world could not avoid understanding that terrorism can cause mass casualties, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that had been marginalized as a threat in the post-cold war period rapidly became significant. Politicians, security services, scientists and experts began to be concerned with WMD again, but in a different context. Nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological and toxin weapons are now considered weapons that terrorist will use if they want to cause mass destruction, disruption and casualties. Except possible nuclear weapons use in Asia (North Korea, India and Pakistan), there are almost no wars or armies mentioned as possible users of nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC), or also known as chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) or even CBR and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. For the remainder of this article we will use CBR instead of NBC and CBR unless referring to WMD policies. It is a fact that terrorism, along with other new kinds of threats, threatens international security and environment, prosperity and human existence. Increasing possibilities of CBR agents purchase and production, and their use by terrorists, necessitate decreasing these possibilities and probabilities; this is the main role of the WMD nonproliferation policies. Developing and implementing a project on nonproliferation of WMD in this contemporary era necessitates a consideration of all social, political, economic, scientific and technological realities that enable the proliferation of WMD. Meetings of professionals may offer the best hope to surface, highlight and bring pressure to bear on governments to develop a political will to mandate dynamic attention to the problem, to provide adequate numbers of knowledgeable professionals to work the problems and to provide the necessary equipment and other resources to assist these professionals in preventing WMD proliferation.