Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1977). black Death also had a devastating impact on the fortunes of the city-state of
venice, reducing it from a regional power to a 'museum city' (watts 1999, 20-21).
In a somewhat more recent case, infectious disease contributed to the collapse of an
entire imperial holding. when napoleon bonaparte attempted to regain control of
Haiti in 1802, the French army was struck by a combination of Haitian resistance
and yellow fever, so that by the following year he had abandoned the French claim
altogether (Hays 1998, 205). epidemics nonetheless have had little or no effect upon
institutions when they were on the rise, as in the roman empire (bray 1996, 11).
Given this line of reasoning, it is likely that a truly global pandemic would accelerate
the global shift of balance of power in the favour of china or India, at the expense
of the United States.
Policy Recommendations
Predicting the impact of an impending pandemic influenza is a risky business for
two reasons. First, a prophecy itself can be self-fulfilling. In the words of thomas
Schelling (1960, 91), 'what is most directly perceived as inevitable is not the final
result but the
expectation
of it, which, in turn, makes the result inevitable'. In this
sense, the publication of alarmist reports would only reinforce the widespread
expectation of a catastrophe and this expectation can create a vicious downward
cycle between pandemic and international stability as predicted by scaremongers.
As the Nobel Prize-winning virologist David baltimore (2003) observed during the
SarS epidemic, the 'media-transmitted epidemic of concern for personal safety'
could outpace the risk to public health from the actual virus.
this chapter provides a balanced, history-related, and science-based analysis of
the security implications of the pandemic. It suggests that the upcoming pandemic
threatens to set in motion a series of developments that will slow economic growth,
endanger social stability, hurt political legitimacy, and compromise military readiness.
But it also conveys the message that the relationship between pandemic influenza
and international stability and security is a very complex one. First, the immediate
impact of the pandemic on economy, society, polity, and security can be mixed even
within an affected country. Second, the impact can vary across countries, economies,
and societies due to a confluence of factors, including the nature of the disease and
the context in which it exists. third, a distinction should be made between its impact
during the pandemic and that in its immediate aftermath, between short-term and
long-term impacts, and between its direct consequences and its secondary effects.
another problem is the stakes involved in predicting the impact of the pandemic.
there will be a pandemic, but no one knows when it will come, what its origin
will be, and where the first outbreak will occur—indeed, even today there is no
clear idea about the origin of the Spanish influenza. Policy makers preparing for the
pandemic therefore face a constant political dilemma: how can governments justify
committing already scarce public health and other resources to an unpredictable but
potentially catastrophic event? very often, the political and economic stakes are so
