Letter: Racial weapons

Racial weapons

Sir: The point about genetically engineered weapons designed to attack particular ethnic groups (Briefing, 18 August) is that they could be used in a close combat zone where one's own troops have a fair chance of also being hit. Otherwise, conventional weapons would suffice.

If in the Gulf war, for example, we had dropped gas bombs that only killed Arabs but not Caucasians, we would have done so all over the Kuwait-Iraq border, and the war would soon have been over. Of course such weapons would also have killed the Kuwaitis and half of our allies, as well as a small percentage of our own soldiers.

The truth is that most western nations are too ethnically diverse now for such weapons to be of use to any side. The main defence would be to ensure that the armed forces maintain a good ethnic mix so that in the event of attack some soldiers would survive to hold the line for reinforcements.

Non-western nations are immune to such attacks from us because there would always be small but unacceptable losses on our own side, unless we introduced ethnically pure battalions, which would be politically unacceptable.

TIM EVERSON

Kingston, Surrey