This year marks the
100 year anniversary of both World War I and the Spanish Flu. Most Americans don’t know that more US
soldiers died of the Spanish flu than that the war itself. There is strong evidence that the war
exacerbated the spread of the killer virus that ultimately killed more US
citizens at home than all the Americans (Soldiers and civilians) that died in the
second world.
Every virologist knows
it is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ a comparable flu pandemic will occur. Uncontested studies by DOD, CIA, CDC and
National Academy of Sciences have all agreed that ‘new and re-emerging
infectious disease’ are a fundamental national security threat to our
nation. Yet we remain lethally
unprepared. Worse yet, few Americans
(public and policy makers alike) consider this and other non-military threats as
worthy national security issues. But
global warming is increasingly exacerbating the infectious disease threats as
well as contributing to failed states and the spread of terrorism and the
proliferation of WMD.
We seriously need
to re-consider redefining the phrase “national security”. Again, because we failed to do so after a
1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission clearly warned us about the preventable
security threats unrelated to invading armies or ICBMs.
That 1980 commission
specifically warned about the future consequences if we ignored the global
injustice of poverty related hunger - stating “The most
potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor
people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair and often
hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international
order… Neither the cost to national
security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a
genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any
precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the
chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin
to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical
global threats as the growing scarcity of fossil fuels and other non-renewable
resources, environmental hazards, pollution of the seas, and international
terrorism. Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now
threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing
armies or nuclear arsenals.”
The commission
also stated “that promoting economic development in
general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to
the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe.
Since the advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to
equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The
Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed
might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military
force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only
coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”
Six months ago a
comprehensive report (Winning the Peace: Hunger and Instability) was released
by the World Food Program USA that combined data from dozens of previous
studies that repeatedly documented the connection between food insecurity
globally, global instability, and US national security. Other studies link other issues like global
warming to the spread of infectious diseases and terrorism. A recent CDC report found that over the last
12 years three times the number of Americans have been infected by insect borne
diseases -- arguably linked to climate
change. Meanwhile real world events and DOD
studies link growing global instability and other related US national security threats
to climate change and raising sea levels. It was the longest drought in Syrian modern
history that pushed hungry farmers into Syrian cities where peaceful protests
led to a brutal government response and eventually a civil war. The consequences expanding in the region and
even exacerbating tensions between superpowers.
The lethal linkages
between various issues is indisputable.
Words often repeated by respectable agency or institutional spokespeople
offering solutions is ‘the need for’ a “comprehensive”, “wholistic”, or “whole
of government approach” approach. These
words are followed by the plea for our need to build “resilience”. This last word acknowledges what we are doing
will probably fail. Our government’s worsening
political dysfunction is no secret. It
is fundamentally designed not to work fast.
But now, it is now not working at all.
And its persistent failings to invest adequate resources in preventing problems,
instead primarily responding to them cannot be sustained economically. Many economists and national security experts
believe that our nation’s debt burden itself is a greater threat to our “national
security” than any foreign enemy.
Our “government
disfunction” should not be underestimated.
Even before Trump’s election a survey of US national security experts identified
it as our nation’s second greatest threat.
Just ahead of Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia and climate change. Terrorism was number one. Today that survey might produce a different
result. But, given the trajectory of
threats, their interconnectedness and the decline in our political atmosphere
and national leadership, ‘dysfunction’ could become number one.
The wisdom and economic
value of prevention is obvious. But
worthwhile investments in prevention of are sometimes best made beyond our
shores. According to a 1997 GAO report an investment
of just $32 million US tax dollars into the global eradication of Smallpox saved
US tax payers over $17 billion since its global eradication in 1971. Back then Americans were spending $150
million annually vaccinating US children against the disease while it had been
largely eliminated from the US for decades.
The eradication of Polio was targeted for the year 2000 but because of
wars and violent extremism abroad polio remains a threat with hundreds of
millions of dollars being spent domestically each year while the virus remains sparsely
in only two war torn countries abroad.
Fortunately, there
is one campaign focused on comprehensively preventing most threats. It is a set
of 17 Sustainable Development goals the world has already agreed to meet by the
year 2030. The problem, is finding the
two trillion dollars needed annually to achieve them. It’s self-evident funding will not be coming
from taxpayers’ pockets. But if nations
agree to freeze and then seize a fraction of the estimated $32 trillion sitting
in off shore bank accounts stashed there by drug lords hiding illegal gains,
wealthy entities avoiding taxes, and kleptocrats who stole billions from their
own nations then miracles could be achieved.
Our real national
security demands that we put the protection of human rights at the top of our
priority list. The SDGs could achieve
what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights intended. The cost savings from this wise investment
would more than pay for itself as the eradication of Smallpox once did. Failng this, there is not enough money in the
world to save us from the chaotic and lethal global forces that continue to
drain our personal, state and national budgets. Things change.
Our priorities must too.
