Produced by the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Updated February 2007

Counterproliferation refers to the use of military measures to address WMD threats to the international community. Today, the nuclear weapon programs in North Korea, the possibility of Iran producing nuclear weapons, and large amounts of unsecured fissile material in Russia pose the most serious WMD threats to global security interests.

To meet WMD threats from other countries, the international community must be able to identify and assess the dangers. For example, the United States gathers intelligence about these threats by using spy satellites, human agents, and other means. Such intelligence collection provides information about what kinds of WMD potential enemies may be developing and how much progress they are making. In wartime, military forces must be able to detect the use of chemical weapons (CW) or biological weapons (BW) by the enemy. These forces must also be able to tell what kind of CW or BW agents are being used in order to take appropriate protective measures. States spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on these various detection activities.