posted by Carrie Reiling
When the United States sent army advisors to Liberia to construct clinics in the fight against Ebola in the region, some worried that the deployment was a military overreach for an event that was essentially not a security threat. Others pointed out, however, that the military is the best-resourced organization the United States has to rapidly deploy and operate in response to humanitarian needs globally and that the quickly spreading virus necessitated the military’s involvement.
Alex de Waal, in a Boston Review article titled “Militarizing Global Health,” brings together these two arguments in a critique of how and why the U.S. military developed the country’s best capacity to handle what are essentially non-security events like global health crises. He notes that not only is the military not as effective at addressing public health needs as are civilian programs, but also that using “the language of warfare risks turning infected people and their caretakers into objects of fear and stigma.”