Jack Beard

• University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Unmanned aerial vehicles and other remotely controlled or "virtual" military technologies are refashioning the conduct of military operations, the functioning of military institutions, and even the objectives of war itself. Virtual technologies are unexpectedly and ironically giving unprecedented traction, transparency, and relevance to venerable j...

I. BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, INDETERMINACY, AND DESIGN ELEMENTS FOR ARMS CONTROL REGIMES In 1972 a historic attempt to create the world's first international legal regime banning the development and possession of an entire class of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) culminated in the conclusion of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).1 Crippled by key...

On January 11, 2007, the People’s Republic of China conducted a successful test of an anti-satellite weapon against one of its own aging weather satellites that produced a massive cloud of long-lasting orbital debris in space. The test highlighted both the growing possibility that orbital debris may ultimately render space unusable for all activiti...

Reports of state-sponsored harmful cyber intrusions abound. The prevailing view among academics holds that if the effects or consequences of such intrusions are sufficiently damaging, international humanitarian law (IHL) should generally govern them-and recourse to armed force may also be justified against states responsible for these actions under...

Although remote-controlled robots flying over the Middle East and Central Asia now dominate reports on new military technologies, robots that are capable of detecting, identifying, and killing enemies on their own are quietly but steadily movingfrom the theoretical to the practical. The enormous difficulty in assigning responsibilities to humans an...

This chapter explores the application of a key principle of the law of armed conflict—proportionality—in the context of new and emerging weapons systems and methods of warfare. The relentless pursuit of new military technologies by States continues to yield expanding lists of technology-related issues for lawyers to consider in applying the law of...

Over five years have passed since President George W. Bush issued the much-criticized order making an obscure device, military commissions, the primary tool for the United States to bring accused Qaeda terrorists to justice.1 Some legal scholars suggested in the wake of the issuance of that order that military commissions were the only practicable...

Many observers in 1963 might have viewed the proposition that only nine nations would have nuclear weapons in the year 2007 as highly unlikely.1 What prevented the cascade of new nuclear weapons states that was anticipated forty years ago, and how could the answer benefit modem attempts to limit nuclear proliferation? Even though the pillar of the...

The threat of biological weapons, once an obscure topic to most Americans, achieved new prominence and urgency in the United States with the anthrax letter attacks that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A number of infections traced to a handful of anthrax-laced letters focused unprecedented attention in America on the danger of...

When representatives of fifty countries assembled in San Francisco in 1945 to draw up the United Nations Charter, modem threats of terrorism such as those posed by the Al Qaeda terrorist network were not yet known. The devastation caused by the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States would not, however, have been an unfamiliar spectacle...

COUNTERING THE THREAT POSED BY NON-STATE ACTORS IN THE PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION The collapse of the Soviet Union created unprecedented opportunities for non-state actors to obtain access to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and their delivery means, often referred to as weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In particular, ac...

Countering the Threat Posed by Non-State Actors in the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction - Volume 92 - Jack Beard

On December 12, 1991, President George Bush signed into law an unprecedented piece of legislation popularly referred to as the "Nunn-Lugar Act" in honor of the Act's principal sponsors, Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar.1 The Act, which Congress has enlarged with subsequent legislation2 and funded with authorization and appropriations acts provid...