For all their wealth and power, the United States, European Union (EU), Canada, and Japan cannot guarantee that their citizens will live free from the threat of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Nor in the age of globalization can any country—be it needy or wealthy—be completely untouched by the economic repercussions of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic. Though science tells us that the HIV pandemic is still in its early stages, young adults studying in universities today have never known lives without the presence of the deadly virus. Over the last two decades, the...
In a June 2, 2005, address to the UN General Assembly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan asserted that the pace of the AIDS epidemic was “accelerating...on every continent,” despite expenditures of about $8 billion annually on treatment, care, and prevention of the disease. In 2004, Annan said, 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 3.1 million people died of AIDS, adding, “It is clear that the epidemic continues to outrun our efforts to contain it.”²
That HIV might pose a threat to the security of nations has not been a widely shared view over the course of the pandemic. Few...
Comprehending the movements of invisible microbes and the reactions of vast swathes of humanity to those germs has proven infinitely more difficult than reading the tea leaves of classic social unrest. Indeed, until the late twentieth century, historians widely believed that plagues had little or no net impact on state security, macroeconomics, social discord, or other major features of order and stability. In 1798, England’s Thomas Malthus concluded in his Essay on the Principle of Population that epidemics and plagues were sorry, but cyclic events occurring naturally whenever humanity had reached an imbalance with its environs, causing the population and...
For about thirty years, we have been facing a protracted Black Death, creating waves of infection, followed years later by waves of acute disease, and finally, years after that, by waves of death and family disruption. Unlike the other two massive pandemics of history—the Black Death and the 1918 Influenza—the HIV pandemic is occurring in slow motion. HIV is an agonizingly drawn-out killer, generally taking ten years to produce the AIDS illness after infection, and another year or more to deal its mortal blow. The wave distance between infection, illness, death, and family disruption in the prior two...
Despite these obvious shortcomings in understanding and analysis, the HIV pandemic has, in the post-9/11 security climate, been linked to a laundry list of security threats. For example, on July 3, 2003, President George Bush created a sort of intellectual bridge between the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and HIV, saying, “And so it has been a great honor to lead our nation in not only the cause of humanitarian relief through an AIDS initiative, but also to lead our nation to free people from the clutches of what history will show was an incredibly barbaric regime.”21
Since 9/11, many...
For reasons of their own national security, few governments have disclosed the HIV infection rates in their armed forces and police. During the 1990s, many agencies, including the CIA and U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), used indirect data to conclude that infection rates in some African militaries were as high as 75 percent.28 Such speculations appear to be off target. Some critics, pointing to the wildly inflated estimates made a decade ago, now charge that in the absence of solid seroprevalence data on the world’s armed forces, it is impossible to make assertions about the impact of HIV on military...
Pursuant to UN regulations from 2001, “HIV Testing Policy for Uniformed Peacekeepers,” all military personnel stationed with UN operations must be encouraged to undergo voluntary HIV screening. In addition, the roughly 65,000 peacekeepers must receive education about HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, and appropriate behaviors with civilian personnel; are given a plastic I.D. HIV/AIDS Awareness Card for Peacekeeping Operations; and are given five or six condoms weekly during foreign deployment.66 In its new report, On the Frontline: Making a Difference, UNAIDS details an outreach program to both peacekeepers and regular uniformed services personnel that has directly trained 6.3 million men and...
Much of the security literature is saturated with claims that war spreads HIV, and perhaps all diseases. In the case of HIV, however, this does not seem to hold true as a general rule. As the legacies of many countries sadly show (Angola, Namibia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa71), it is the peace following a long period of war that poses the greatest risk for the spread of HIV. During wartime, civilians either hunker down in their homes, or they flee the war-torn region, joining the ranks of the world’s burgeoning refugee populations. Trade comes to a halt, borders...
State conflict has ensued from claims of the deliberate spread of HIV. For example, in April 2004, the Indian government charged that “promiscuous Pakistanis” were deliberately spreading HIV in Kashmir as a form of Islamic “jihad terrorism.”81 Also last year, Israeli Defense Forces arrested Rami Hafez Abdullah, charging he was a member of the Palestinian militant group Fatah Tanzim and was planning to mount a suicide attack using a bomb to scatter HIV-infected blood in a crowded area.82
Tensions have been very high between Libya and Bulgaria since 1999, when the Libyan government accused five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian...
The use of so-called DNA fingerprinting has revolutionized forensic investigations in the wealthy world, offering investigators a reliable way to trace criminals and exonerate false suspects. In a security context, verification is a vital tool that can both dissuade false accusations and identify genuine culprits. Refinements in the analysis of HIV strains, samples of which are banked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, now allow scientists to identify changes in the evolution of the virus, dating back to the earliest sample found in blood stored in the Congo in 1959.
Scientists divide all known HIV strains into three groups, with...
The discussions above already defined the uniformed services and verification issues pertinent to territorial integrity and national sovereignty, relevant to both countries with large epidemics and those less afflicted by the pandemic. Political threats to endemic states might best be characterized as questions of internal stability. Many nations have responded to HIV with this concern chiefly in mind, prompting actions that were directed not against the virus, but the people infected with HIV. Over the last two decades, this has resulted in numerous egregious violations of the personal, civil, and community rights of both the people who were living with...
The Canadian-owned Placer Dome mining corporation is finding it more costly and difficult to extract gold from the lodes of South Africa. Economic analysis shows that if the company simply continues business as usual, the cost of gold production will increase over the next five years by $10 an ounce. If, in contrast, the company spends money to put its HIV-infected workers on anti-viral drugs, the future cost of gold will rise by $3 an ounce. Overall mining costs in South Africa, alone, will increase by $250 million over the next five years due to HIV, according to the country’s...
It is in the security interests of the entire world to ensure that anti-HIV drugs are used properly, minimizing the potential emergence of highly drug resistant forms of the virus. Therefore:
Action One: All state strategies for the use of anti-HIV drugs must strive to minimize emergence of drug-resistant strains. All states have an interest in ensuring that these imperfect drugs retain utility until alternative therapies are affordably available.
Armed and uniformed forces worldwide, including UN peacekeepers, are sustaining losses due to the pandemic, and this trend will escalate both in size and geographic dispersal. Programs aimed at preventing sexual...
