Skip to main content

The Invisible Attacker: Pandemics as a Threat to National Security


The Invisible Attacker: Pandemics as a Threat to National Security

Pandemics are a direct threat to national, human, economic, and global security. Diseases have existed since before recorded history and are an ever-evolving part of human life. Disease and illness have no political ties or national borders. Pandemics are something that can affect anyone and everyone regardless of nationality or ethnicity. A pandemic is classified as a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area like a country or globally and affects large amount of the population. In our emerging globalized world, the spread of disease is a far more present threat than ever before. Therefore, what once might have only been a threat to small communities or individual countries and continents can now be an almost immediate threat to a global nation.
The hardest part about dealing with pandemics is that unlike other security threats there is no clear acting agent that is causing the threat. For example, with security threats like terrorism, there is almost always an actor that can be physically stopped or prevented from creating terror and threatening security. Even at a deeper level, the ideologies behind those who commit terrorist attacks can be debated and prevented from turning into a physical worldly problem. For pandemics, the threat to security is not one that we can send armies to fight or use intelligence to prevent. They often occur in undeveloped countries and spread without control until it is globally affecting others. While there are ways to stop pandemics at the core, they are often more of an idea than they are able to affect change. This is due to the fact that they originate in underdeveloped communities that are unable to take early stage preventative measures and might not have access to outside help to instigate those measures either. Pandemics often originate and spread to affect far too many people before they can be handled efficiently and therefore are a threat to global security through the extent of people and places they can affect and in the short amount of time that they spread.  In an article by the UN Chronicles, they argued that the global threat of pandemics often stem from these underdeveloped countries and their inability to offer healthcare to their subjects. It said that, “the global threat posed by pandemics required a global approach to security as the rapid transmission of disease in a globalized world means that capacity failures in any member State could place any other state or society in peril.” This meaning that any threat to any nation state is a threat to global security and a pandemic is a perfect example of how one threats to state security can directly affect national and human security.

Once a pandemic is dealt with and resolved, there are still overarching consequences that continue to distress those who were affected by the pandemic. Some of the most apparent of those consequences are the almost immediate decline in economic revenue. This indirect effect on the economic stability of the people, places, and even things involved or affected by the pandemic is a threat to the stability and security of the region affected. For example, in areas in which pandemics have originated or occurred, tourism rates drop immensely. People globally often blame the regions in which pandemics occur and avoid traveling there at least until the pandemic is no longer affecting the global community. For places struggling economically, these tourism profits could be the only thing that is truly supporting the economy so a pandemic can be entirely detrimental to a country or region’s economic security.  Without economic security, the security of those in the state is affected and long term national security is also at stake. While pandemics might not appear to be as much of a national security threat as a terrorist attack, or war, they have very detrimental effects that can eventually affect those involved. Pandemics are in fact a threat to security and one of the most insecure threats there is because of the inability to stop them before they occur and that once they do occur, treating them can take an unknown amount of time and effort to undo the pandemics outcomes.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 11, 2017 at 6:16 AM

    I really like how you highlighted how in the nations which often spawn these pandemic diseases, the global community often responds by condemning and creating hysteria around their geographic locations. Like you mentioned, I think people often forget that pandemic diseases can start anywhere and attack anyone, and making the global community afraid to travel or to do business with these often already struggling nations like Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Libera only makes conditions worse for the country and the people living there. I like how you mentioned the trickle down effect of the breakdown of economic security leading to a breakdown of national security. Pandemics truly are unique in their ability to catch the global community by surprise, but hopefully as our technology keeps advancing we will develop new ways to prevent, detect, and control future pandemics.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 11, 2017 at 11:06 AM

    I thought that your blog was well thought out and constructed. It seemed that you were alluding to some of the things that Bill Gates was talking about in his Ted Talk that we watched in class. I feel as though, because pandemics are such a global issue, and cannot be fought off by the mobilization of the military, that it might be beneficial to create an international body that works to combat diseases. Especially since, as you mentioned, most diseases begin in underdeveloped countries that don't have the capabilities and do not know how to address them. I think that creating a reporting system would also be helpful, so that other countries are aware of the problems that may be starting in one country. Working together in global unity is going to be the best and most efficient way to combat pandemics in the future and we need to figure out how to do that now to really protect our safety and security.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 17, 2017 at 8:40 AM

    I agree that pandemics are a security issue; however, unlike aspects of human security or even national security, pandemics are much harder to consolidate and combat as there are many unknown variables to illness. When one person is ill, it almost creates a domino effect where trying to decrease the spread becomes almost impossible. I also found your argument interesting in stating that even when a pandemic ends other repercussions, good or bad, can occur. The threat of pandemics deal with more of a greater issue to public health for all, especially those in third world countries. With the earthquake in Haiti, for example, diseases were more prone to civilians after the damage occurred, but because a lack of vaccines within adolescence, many became victim to uncontrollable epidemics. Public health policies becomes a major security threat especially in countries that lack the proper medications necessary in a person's childhood.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting my Security Essay

Entering this class with no previous political science experience, I had an extremely open mind about security. In my security essay, I argued that human security should be prioritized above all other types of security; using history to prove my point. I am advocating for this view of security because I see how in history and in modernity, a lack of human security can directly result in the eventual collapse of a system of rule. Two sources covered in this class which illuminate the importance of human security are Pervenia Brown’s Worldpress article “Blood Diamonds” and Christian Bueger’s article “Practice, Pirate and Coast Guards: the grand narrative of Somali piracy”. Both of these works focus on the importance of human security through examining Sierra Leone’s diamond operation and the rationale behind Somali piracy. Aside from the two sources I chose for this discussion, I believe that most if not all of the cases we examined for this class involve aspects of human security at th...
1 comment
Read more

Global Security Revision Paper, Paige Ferreira

Paige Ferreira Global Security Studies Professor Shirk 18 December 2017      In my original security essay, I argued that security is a multi-layered, complex causal concept that on one level ensures the preservation and fulfillment of nationalistic and political ideologies with the ultimate goal of achieving ontological pursuits.  On another level security should protect the citizens of a nation from forces of evil and threats.  After taking this class, I am now arguing that sometimes those forces of evil are within one’s own country and sometimes governments beset with corrupt leaders threaten the security of those they are elected to protect.  Human Security is still a major threat globally as many civilians lives become endangered by corrupt leadership, lack of education, gender inequalities, and inadequate public health policies. In essence, the social and political decisions of greedy and corrupt governments are the greatest negative r...
1 comment
Read more

The problem IS in our own backyard

When thinking about the global issue of sex trafficking, many Americans believe that the issue is not pertinent to American politics, and therefore dismiss the issue on the grounds of irrelevance. However, sex trafficking is actually a major problem in the US, with an estimated 100,000-300,000 american children affected by sex trafficking a year, not including immigrants that were brought into the U.S., or exploited upon entering the U.S.. Sex trafficking is a huge infringement on a person’s human rights, and is a major problem in the US as well as the rest of the world. It should not be ignored by the American populace, but must be addressed at home instead of just being considered ‘their problem and not ours.’             Many people associate problems with underdeveloped countries as exacerbating the sex trafficking trade, believing that sex trafficking is something that only occurs in countries in Africa, Asia, and South Amer...
3 comments
Read more