Critical Threats and Security Challenges in the Modern World
Question 1: Agricultural and Food Industry
America’s agricultural and food sector has several vulnerabilities to various threat agents. Most of these vulnerabilities are found in the various attributes of this sector. Firstly, one of the main characteristics of America’s agricultural and food sector is overproduction. Most livestock farms in America operate on highly crowded rearing or breeding grounds. This is largely because of the increased demand for their products, which in turn requires mass production. However, mass production of food products and the overcrowding of animals on farms make it easy to widely and rapidly spread threat agents like bioterrorism, also known as agro terrorism in this sector, or outbreak of contagious diseases much easier (Solodoukhina, 2011). In addition, due to mass production, many animals are very susceptible to diseases due to changes in husbandry practices and antibiotics, among other techniques used. As a result, infecting such animals with harmful pathogens in an effort to infect those who consume their products is easy.
The second characteristic of this sector is the dominance of production of genetically modified organisms, both plants and animals. The pressure to meet the demand in the market has led farmers to use genetic modification to grow plants that produce five times or more than normal produce and animals that mature quickly and have a lot of produce as well, i.e., milk, eggs, meat, etc. This attribute is vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups who are against this method of production (Madden & Wheelis 2003). Such groups could result in various attack methods, including bioterrorism, by contaminating the farms, GMO chemicals, fire, or other harmful techniques.
Furthermore, most farms are involved in international trade, whereby they can sell their products to other countries or buy from other countries. Such products include meat products, milk, crops, medicine, pesticides, seeds, live animals, and products for husbandry practices, among others. These products pass through many hands from their origin to their destination. In addition, any of these products can be used as a means of bioterrorism by terrorist organizations, eradicating competition and personal agendas, among other reasons (Solodoukhina, 2011). This situation creates many opportunities for a threat agent, like accidental or intentional contamination with harmful parasites or chemicals, to take place.
Each of the agricultural and food sector’s attributes mentioned above increases the risk of Americans being victims of intentional attacks every day through the consumption of these products. Many, if not all, Americans consume these farm products without questioning if they are safe. The assumption is that there are enough security guidelines to oversee the production of safe farm products. However, the truth is these guidelines are not as reassuring as we would like to think because there are many vulnerabilities in farms, and an attack could come from anywhere. Even the Homeland Department agrees on how much the agricultural and food sector is open to attacks (Wheelis et al. 2002).
Question 2: Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko was a Russian intelligence agent before he defected to the West in 2000, where he started working in association with the M16 secret service in the United Kingdom, as well as being an ebullient and fierce critic of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin (Goldfarb 2010). On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko made a decision to join two other Russian agents for a cup of tea in London. However, soon afterward, Litvinenko fell ill and was shortly admitted to the hospital. The hospital initially determined that the symptoms were consistent with thallium poisoning. However, they were still inconclusive. On the 22nd of the same month, the actual cause of the poisoning was determined to be polonium-210, and on the next day, Litvinenko passed away (Goldfarb 2010).
The investigation files of the whole case were kept confidential for almost nine years until 2015 when they were made public. On his hospital bed, Litvinenko had said that Putin was responsible for his death because he had defected from Russia and was in the process of investigating the death of a journalist that Putin had also assassinated (Goldfarb 2010). However, there was no way to confirm these accusations. The investigation, however, provided video evidence that the two men who had tea with Litvinenko were in possession of the radioactive material that killed him. Radioactive traces were found in their bathroom sinks, where they had washed their hands and emptied the remaining polonium-210 in an effort to get rid of it. In addition, Russia’s unwillingness to prove the accusations wrong also added to the evidence. Further, the poison used to kill Litvinenko could not be obtained without the help of a state entity and had come from a reactor in Russia.
Accordingly, a United Kingdom public inquiry found that the two agents whom Litvinenko met up with were responsible for his death and that they were acting under the command of Putin. In 2021, the European court of human rights (ECHR), also ruled consistently with the findings of the public inquiry, finding Putin guilty of the murder of Litvinenko (Kelemen 2021).
Question 3: The Threat of Terrorist Organizations with Nuclear Weapons
One of the main goals of President Obama when he was in office was to eradicate nuclear weapons and materials from all countries worldwide. One of the main reasons for this, as he stated at a nuclear summit, was to prevent terrorist organizations from obtaining nuclear weapons, and this posed the biggest threat to America. Obama further argued that the consequences of terrorist organizations obtaining nuclear material would be unsurmountable because they would use them to kill as many people as they could (Nas & Naseer 2018). The current national security policy in America is based on defending the country, mainly from China and Russia (“NDS Fact sheet” 2022). The national security policy is currently focused on nuclear, among other threats posed by China, and not as much on terrorist organizations. As such, currently, the statement has little meaningful impact on the national security policy.
If I were the president of America, I would uphold Obama’s goal by seeking to establish relations with the countries that have nuclear weapons and those that produce the materials for nuclear weapons like plutonium and radium. In doing so, then a chance of convincing these countries to get rid of their nuclear weapons or helping them enforce security measures that ensure that the materials do not fall into the wrong hands is created. In addition, since American troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took over, it is imperative that the US creates an allyship with the Taliban. This is crucial because the Taliban have been known to sometimes work with the terrorist organizations in the country like ISIS and Al Qaeda. If the US does not reach out to the Taliban, there is a high possibility that Afghanistan will become a breeding ground for terrorist organizations (Javaid & Nasreen 2020). Undoubtedly, such a situation will only empower these terrorist organizations with more followers, weapons, and resources while endangering the US and its global allies.
Question 4: The Iranian Deal
There are two main perspectives on the Iranian deal. One views the deal as a triumph for diplomacy, while another considers it a harmful precedent. From the former perspective, the Iranian deal was able to stop Iran from accumulating nuclear material, which could be used to make nuclear weapons. As per the deal, Iran was to reduce the amount of uranium to about 2 % for fifteen years. This amount could be well below the required amount needed to create a nuclear bomb. In return, America agreed to provide sanctions relief worth billions of dollars (Patman 2015). This agreement meant that Iran could have no nuclear weapons. Hence, no war would break out between Iran and Israel in the Middle East. In addition, Iran, which is known to support terrorist organizations, would not be able to provide these dangerous weapons to these extremist groups.
Contrastingly, the opposing side of the Iranian deal considered it a dangerous precedent that, by the end of the fifteen years agreed on, Iran would have made enough profits, which would empower the country to acquire as many nuclear weapons as they wanted (Yildiz 2016). With the uplifted sanctions, Iran benefitted fully from economic relations with global markets (Yildiz 2016). In addition, the deal did not ensure that Iran would maintain the peaceful nature of its nuclear program. Therefore, when the deal ends, between 2026 and 2030, Iran and Israel, both enemies, may go to war using nuclear weapons, and the results could be devastating. Furthermore, with Iran accumulating resources and then eventually becoming a nuclear power, there is a possibility that it will prefer to be a rogue nation like North Korea.
Using the realism perspective on the Iranian nuclear deal, then the conclusion is that the country was unfairly treated and that diplomacy failed. Iran and Israel are two conflicting countries in the Middle East. However, Israel has a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region. As such, Iran is left defenseless against Israel (Beck 2018). Prohibiting one country from making nuclear weapons while allowing the other one to have them is unfair and puts one country at a disadvantage. Furthermore, some argue that allowing Iran to make nuclear weapons does not mean that they would provide them to terrorist organizations. In fact, by having nuclear weapons, a country then understands how dangerous they can be, and cannot risk giving them to unstable elements like terrorist organizations (Beck 2018).
Question 5: Rogue Nations and Nuclear Weapon Access
Experts have conflicting perspectives on whether rogue nations pose a threat of supplying nuclear weapons to non-state actors. Non-state actors are organizations that are not funded by the government, like business organizations, NGOs, and, most significant in this debate, terrorist organizations. From my perspective, I believe that no country is willing to cross this line. Nuclear weapons are basically weapons of mass destruction, and many nations, even those that are nuclear powers, wish that they never have to use those weapons. Supplying nuclear weapons to non-state actors is also known as nuclear proliferation (Spector & Smith 2019).
The use of a nuclear weapon could bring immeasurable consequences like the beginning of another world war or mass genocide, not to mention the horrifying long-term effects. As mentioned before, non-state actors are very unstable elements that cannot be trusted with the power of such weapons (Beck 2018). If a country were to provide a non-state actor with nuclear weapons, the consequences that that weapon would bring would also be placed on that rogue nation. This risks the rogue nation being attacked by other nuclear powers in an effort to disarm its nuclear weapons to prevent it from supplying more weapons to dangerous non-state actors.
References
Beck, M. (2018). An International Relations Perspective on the Iran Nuclear Deal. International Relations. https://www. e-ir. info/2018/08/08/an-international-relations-perspective-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal/[accessed 30 November 2019].
Goldfarb, A. (2010). Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB. Simon and Schuster.
Javaid, P. D. U., & Nasreen, F. (2020). Liquidation of American Forces from Afghanistan: Its Impacts on the Region. South Asian Studies, 28(2).
Kelemen, B. K. (2021). Quo vadis ECtHR? An assessment of Carter v. Russia before the European Court of Human Rights. Chaos.
Madden, L. V., & Wheelis, M. (2003). The threat of plant pathogens as weapons against US crops. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 41(1), 155-176.
Naz, S., & Naseer, R. (2018). Nuclear Security Summit Process: Future and Impact on Pakistan’s Nuclear Security. Journal of Security and Strategic Analyses, 4(1), 69-85.
NDS Fact sheet. (2022). Retrieved 23 April 2022, from https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHEET.PDF
Patman, R. G. (2015). The upsides and downsides of the Iranian nuclear deal. New Zealand International Review, 40(6), 3-4.
Solodoukhina, D. (2011). Food safety and bioterrorism from a public health perspective. In Advances in Food Protection (pp. 17-25). Springer, Dordrecht.
Spector, L. S., & Smith, J. R. (2019). Nuclear ambitions: the spread of nuclear weapons 1989–1990. Routledge.
Wheelis, M., Casagrande, R., & Madden, L. V. (2002). Biological attack on agriculture: low-tech, high-impact bioterrorism: because bioterrorist attack requires relatively little specialized expertise and technology, it is a serious threat to US agriculture and can have very large economic repercussions. BioScience, 52(7), 569-576.
Yildiz, M., Hollins, G., Ziemba, R., & Schanzer, J. (2016). Nuclear Deal: Impact on Iran-Turkey Economic Relations. Center on Sanction & Illicit Finance.
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Question 
Critical Threats and Security Challenges in the Modern World
Please answer the following:
Pick and describe, using course material (citing as appropriate), five (5) characteristics of our agricultural and food industries and the threat agents that could impact them and how these characteristics increase our risk.
What radioactive material killed Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006? How did the investigation develop between 2007 and 2016? Do the British authorities have a theory of who ordered Litvinenko killed?
In April 2010, President Obama said, “The single biggest threat to US security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term, would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon.” How does this statement impact current U.S. National Security Policy? If you were President, what changes would you make to U.S. National Security Policy to reduce the likelihood of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon?
The video “Iran Nuclear Deal: Triumph of Diplomacy or Dangerous Precedent?” provides several different perspectives on the Iranian Nuclear Deal. Detail one perspective from each side of the argument (Triumph of Diplomacy and Dangerous Precedent), then support it with applicable references explaining the rationale for each side of the debate.
Experts disagree as to the threat from rouge nations with nuclear weapons (North Korea, Pakistan, Iran in the future, etc.) providing those weapons to non-state actors. Do you think that this is a concern, or are nation-states not willing to cross this line?