Understanding global security - Peter Hough

HEALTH THREATS TO SECURITY
The recent ‘securitization’ of infectious disease has, like the securitization of
the environment in mainstream politics, been simply a case of considering the
implications of this threat for military security rather than the general security of
individual people. The term microbialpolitik was coined by Fidler to describe this
phenomenon (Fidler 1999). The Security Council Resolution refers to the dangers
posed by UN peacekeepers being infected with HIV, and US State Department
interest has focused on the potential for disease to ‘exacerbate social and political
instability in key countries in which the United States has significant interests’
(National Intelligence Council 2000 : 2). Southern Africa is most frequently cited in
this context. In Zambia three government ministers have died of AIDS and it has
been estimated that half of the police and armed forces are HIV positive (Price-Smith
2001: 14) In particular, the threat of diseases being deliberately unleashed in acts
of warfare has, since the 2001 anthrax attacks in the USA, elevated questions on the
availability of antidotes and the preparedness of emergency forces for combating
epidemics to matters of high politics. Horrific though the spectre of biological warfare
is, however, it is pertinent to remember that only a handful of people have ever died
in this manner, whereas millions every year perish as a result of diseases which,
although naturally occurring, are nonetheless preventable by human endeavour.
The state securitization of health has had some positive benefits for enhancing
human security. The USA was better able to deal with recurrence of West Nile virus
in 2002, which had been an annual summer event since 1999, because of a strengthening
of information links between hospitals motivated by fear of biological terrorism
(The Economist 2002c). Essentially self-motivated policy can contribute to the global
common good. President Bush (Jr), as clear an exponent of the ‘national’ interest as
you could find, in his 2003 ‘State of the Union’ address announced a major increase
in the US contribution to the global campaign against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
Political stability in Africa may have been the chief aim of the initiative but human
security was additionally enhanced as a result.
The human securitization of health
The impact infectious epidemics can have on one’s own or another state’s power
capabilities is certainly something governments should factor in to their foreign policy
decision-making, but the security most threatened by disease is that of ordinary
people rather than states. The inappropriateness of the high politics–low politics
distinction in international relations is most clearly apparent when considering health
issues. Recognition of this can be dated back to the 1940s, when the discipline of
International Relations was still in its infancy. David Mitrany took on the mantle
of internationalism from Kant, Bentham and the Idealist statesmen of the 1920s and
1930s and developed the theory of Functionalism, prescribing and predicting a future
post-Westphalian world order in which people’s needs would be met by functional
INGOs rather than by states. Functionalism is both normative and descriptive.
Mitrany considered the growth of functional international organizations (organizations
with a specific function such as the OIHP) in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century to have been a boon to ordinary people’s lives and something
around which to build a new, better post-war world. The international system of states
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