US should step up to plate on bio compliance: China Daily editorial

The sizable biological military cooperation projects carried out by the United States in Ukraine, that have been exposed by Russia, are just the tip of the US military's iceberg of biological research.

Its acceding to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1975 has seemingly not affected its research and development of biological weapons at all.

Over the past decades, the US' "biological military empire" has expanded continually. According to its own published data, the US Department of Defense conducts biological research programs in more than 30 countries around the world.

It is an international consensus that it will require multilateral supervision and inspections to ensure all parties strictly comply with the Biological Weapons Convention. But the US regards its global bio-military activities as nobody's business but its own, and refuses international supervision and inspection.

Although the international community had already reached a consensus on the establishment of a verification mechanism in 2001, the US unilaterally withdrew from the negotiations, citing that the verification would harm its security and economic interests. Since then, the US has opposed the setting up of any such mechanism.

The US has also become more aggressive on the issue, claiming that only it has the say on whether it would adhere to the convention or not. It does not allow any other country to cast doubts on the "benign nature" of its biological research projects. Anyone doing so is abused for ill-intent and accused of fabricating rumors.

The US often contradicts itself on the issue. For instance, in November last year, it said that it had 26 biological research laboratories and other cooperation facilities in Ukraine. But on March 11 this year, it said it had 46 biolabs in the country. Now it denies it has any at all even though its cooperation with Ukraine in these labs is clearly stated in black and white in an agreement that stipulates that the dangerous pathogens that are stored in the labs in Ukraine should be handed over to the US should it request them.

That "cooperation" model also applies to the US' biolab projects with countries in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

It is time the US gave a clear account of its biological research activities in Ukraine and beyond, and stopped blocking the establishment of a verification mechanism for compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention.

It is the US that is the biggest risk to global bio-security. As their geostrategic calculations that have caused the Ukraine conflict show, perceiving threats to the US everywhere, US policymakers are willing to seize on every means to secure the country from the dangers which they believe surround it. In doing so, they grow all the more daring and less scrupulous in the means they are willing to employ.