Accusations of developing biological weapons may be a pretext for starting a war

On July 22, China's National Health Commission rejected a proposal by the World Health Organization to re-test the laboratories and markets in Wuhan to test the hypothesis that Covid-19 had been released into the environment from a Chinese laboratory.

Zeng Yixin, an official of the National Health Commission of the PRC, said that such a proposal shows disrespect for common sense and called on the World Health Organization not to succumb to political influence and to "truly treat the origin tracing of the Covid-19 virus as a scientific matter". In its turn, the National Health Commission of the PRC called for testing the hypotheses about the possible leakage of viruses from laboratories in other countries.

The mention of political influence is likely related to US President Joe Biden's order for US intelligence to test several hypotheses about the origin of Covid-19, with particular emphasis on the possible leakage of the virus from a laboratory in China.

In addition, on March 30 this year, the World Health Organization published a scientific report entitled "WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part", which summarized the results of the work of the World Health Organization and Chinese experts in Wuhan from January 14 to February 10, 2021. The report analyzed a number of hypotheses of Covid-19 origin, including the possibility of accidental leakage from the laboratory.

So, the Chinese logic is understandable. What new things could foreign experts find when visiting the Wuhan market again? It has been a year and a half since the pandemic began. In addition, the Chinese government has legitimate concerns that allegations of the spread of the virus are needed as tools of pressure to persuade Beijing to make concessions to the already serious escalation of US-China relations, both on economic relations and on the South China Sea and Taiwan disputes.

In addition, the most scandalous example of the beginning of the 21st century is still quite fresh in our memories, when the war against Iraq was launched in 2003 on the basis of false information provided by US intelligence.

In 2003, US President George W. Bush decided to complete the unfinished work of the US government after the 1991 Iraq war - to invade Iraq to overthrow its dictator Saddam Hussein. In order to attract allies to a new Iraq war and gain international support, it was necessary to convincingly prove that Saddam Hussein had violated UN resolutions and that Iraq had accumulated large numbers of weapons of mass destruction, which it intended to hand over to international Islamic terrorists (Al-Qaeda). In turn, Al-Qaeda will immediately use these weapons against democracies, but especially against the United States. The US intelligence agencies complied with the President's order, and the prepared material was presented to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, by Colin Powell, the first African-American Secretary of State (2001-2004).

As is now known, the main allegation - Iraq has mobile production facilities for biological weapons - was based on the fantasies of one fugitive, which the intelligence agencies included in a report to the government without examination. As these biological weapon facilities are not stationary, they cannot be checked by inspection or direct observation. The imaginary facilities were supposedly housed in vans that were constantly driving back and forth while producing pathogens. The fact that such a story does not meet the foundations of elementary biotechnology was not taken into account by anyone. If the President of the United States wants to start a war, then the intelligence agencies must do the job, and if there is no evidence, it must be created. The only evidence was a computer-generated illustration of the hypothetical mobile weapon production facilities, which was also submitted to the UN Security Council (see image). That's it. There was no other evidence from Colin Powell (this speech profoundly damaged Colin Powell's reputation). Of course, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, not only China and Russia, but even France, did not consider such a justification sufficient to start a war. Unsupported by the UN Security Council, George W. Bush, along with allies who pretended to believe in all these fantasies about mobile biological weapon factories, began bombing Iraq on March 19, and the Second Iraq War, in which Latvia also took part, began. As it is now known, Saddam Hussein complied with UN resolutions and no longer produced or stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. But that only came to light after Iraq was destroyed, when the Islamic State conquered much of Iraq, and the allied occupation of Iraq was replaced by civil war.

In these circumstances, the caution of any country is understandable if any of its opponents intend to seek a possible biological agent or, even worse, a biological weapons spill in their territory.