A Secret Weapon to Stop the Ebola Crisis: The United States Military

A Secret Weapon to Stop the Ebola Crisis: The United States Military

10/09/14

Janine Davidson

Ebola, United States

This is a mission for which the U.S. military is uniquely qualified. Despite the false adage that the military’s role is only to “fight and win the nation’s wars,” it has carried out a myriad of humanitarian and stabilization operations.

Reaction was mixed following President Obama’s announcement that he was sending 3,000 troops to Liberia to help contain the spiraling Ebola epidemic. Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel Prize-winning, normally pacifist NGO has been on the front lines of this fight begging for military support. Meanwhile, a couple of retired generals have blasted the president for the decision, asserting that it is a “misuse” of the military, whose job is to “fight wars, not medical battles.”

They couldn’t be more wrong.

The threat beyond Africa is real—the clock is ticking. Although the immediate threat from cases in Texas and Spain may be overblown, experts warn that the virus is mutating and if not stopped, will spread well beyond Africa, stressing the capacity of even more developed nations like our own to contain it.

Moreover, Ebola represents a significant security issue. As the disease spreads, so does panic—and panic leads to violence. CFR’s own Laurie Garrett observes, “Lawlessness will rise as Ebola claims the lives of police and law enforcement personnel, and terrified cops quit their jobs.”

As health workers die or quit—or as people stay away from hospitals for fear of contracting Ebola—they will begin to die of other, normally treatable health problems. According to Garrett, “Women will die in delivery, auto accident victims will bleed out for lack of emergency care, old vaccine-preventable epidemics will resurge as health workers fear administering them to potentially Ebola-carrying children, and child malnutrition will set in.”

Thus, as governments fail to cope with the outbreak and associated panic, the epidemic’s spillover effects will serve to cripple government infrastructure and societal structures, creating major security issues. This spiral into chaos, in turn, will only accelerate the spread of the virus and confound efforts to control it.

Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/secret-weapon-stop-the-ebola-crisis-the-united-states-11439