Essay: America's Preparedness and Vulnerability to Chemical and Biological Terrorism

Counterterrorism is the prime goal of the US national security; especially deterring any form of use of WMD within the US. This is because United States is facing many threats of WMD from terrorists and rogue states. Thus, this article discusses weapons of mass destruction, the historical utilization of the WMD by terrorists within the US and across other parts in the world. The article explores the prime reasons as to why America in recent times has many enemies, and is the prime target of the terrorist group in the globe. Furthermore, within the article comprehensive use and magnitude of the WMD by terrorist and rogue states is discussed. The legislations and policy that America have effected in response to immense threats of WMD terrorist, and the efforts required for the national and state governments to take in order to deter any WMD attack is discussed within the article. Also, the future implications of WMD attacks on the America with respect to rising terrorism, and mechanism of improving response and preparedness to terrorist WMD attacks is discussed detailed in the article. This article has cited different sources relating to past WMD attacks, views of the scientists and scholars on WMD, and other experts working and worked in the intelligence units of the American national government or other governments in the countries of the world.
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have high potential of racking havoc on sea of humanity or causing mutation of DNAs of living species in the world. The havoc caused by WMD can be on the biosphere, environment, and infrastructure and depends on the impact of the attack on the specific areas. According to the general knowledge among the scientists and scholars, WMD include nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons (Aghaei et al, 2013). It can be noted historically that, research by nations, especially before World I was ongoing, and during World War I chemical weapons were extensively used. However, the WMD became more of interest to the nations of the world when United States dropped nuclear bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II, and weapons of mass destruction were understood profoundly to be deadly due to the havoc and damages inflicted within the territories of Japan.
There are about eight nations of the world, which have declared and tested WMD, nuclear weapons. These states are Paskin, India, France, US, China, Russia, UK and North Korea. Some of the nations such as Israel have been very secretive of their development of WMD however, the experts on the strongly believe that Israel have some of the strong and sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. The US government in the recent time believes that Iran have fertilized and developed some weapons of mass destruction, but the US has scanty information of their belief.
Indeed, based on the facts that many nations and states have pursued development of WMD, it was inevitable that such endeavors would not fall into the hands of terrorist.