The tsunami that produced so much devastation and suffering in South Asia last month, with a loss of life that could extend well into the hundreds of thousands, should give us pause to think about disasters of all kinds, both natural and manmade and what we should be doing about them that we are not. Otherwise, after the outpouring of sympathy and aid, little will be learned and little will be done in anticipation of the “next one.”
We all understand that natural disasters are part of the human
condition. Earthquakes, for example, killed many tens of
thousands two years ago in Iran and Turkey and typhoons have devastated
Japan in past years as well. Seventy years ago, a massive flood
in China reportedly claimed more than three million lives. The
point is that every few years, nature turns against us. No matter how
sophisticated and advanced societies become, there is an inherent human
vulnerability and fragility to the more powerful forces of nature
A Few Observations: First, an obvious point: no matter how far
technology and science progress, like King Canute trying to stop the
tides, humankind’s ability to prevent natural disasters is limited at
best. Early warning of tsunamis and other quickly developing
storms can be improved. However, as the first President Bush
learned following a sluggish government response to Hurricane Hugo that
ravaged America’s southeast, the international community must have
better structures and procedures in place to generate more immediate
action to catastrophic disasters even at holiday time and no matter how
infrequently they occur. The fact is that catastrophic disasters
outstrip responses by a large measure.
As happened after Hurricane Hugo, the apparent failure to have timely responses in place this time around is inexcusable. This is one area where even the nearly two hundred members of the United Nations should agree unanimously and take effective remedial action. But will they? Without someone taking the lead at UN headquarters in New York, this catastrophe will soon be consigned to the history books.
Second, most natural and manmade disasters in which many
innocent human beings perish too often receive a “blind eye” treatment.
It is only disasters and direct threats to sovereignty or nationhood
that freely open national treasuries irrespective of the level of
carnage or destruction. Nations will always maintain the right to
defend themselves regardless of the size of loss.
At Pearl Harbor in December 1941, less than two thousand
Americans died in the attack that stunned a passive nation into sparing
few resources to win a world war. In 1982, Britain sent its forces
10,000 miles to retake the tiny and strategically irrelevant Falkland
Islands after Argentina’s surprise invasion at huge relative cost
(although in fairness, that demonstration convinced the Soviet
leadership to take Britain’s modest nuclear deterrent more seriously).
And current American military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq
continue to show this inversion between actual loss and magnitude of
response.
By further comparison, somewhere between fifty and a hundred
times more people will perish in the tsunami’s wake than the 3000 who
were killed in the disaster of September 11th, 2001 and the terrorist
attacks that brought down New York’s Twin Trade Centers and a part of
the Pentagon. Yet, as an extension of the importance of national
security, it will come as no surprise that the United States will spend
possibly a hundred times more money on the global war on terror than
will go to coping with the carnage in South Asia. Human
suffering, however severe, lacks a political constituency, another
harsh fact of life.
At the time this piece was written, about $2 billion in aid had
been promised from government and private sources. UN and NGO officials
were skeptical, based on the record, that all of these promises would
be met. The United States pledged $350 million, a seemingly large
amount until compared with the retirement packages of American CEO’s
and other corporate executives and the nearly $16 billion Wall Street
paid in bonuses in 2004. And Japan quickly stepped in to
contribute $150 million more than the United States, a generosity that
was not missed around much of the world. People and states can be
generous--- but to a point when compared to the real world of business
and finance.
Third, beyond the fury of nature there are manmade
disasters. Consider genocide. Hitler’s extermination of millions
of Jews and East Europeans was no secret. The allies could have taken
some form of action to save lives. They did not. In the 1970’s,
the international community stood idly by while the Khmer Rouge
slaughtered a million or so Cambodians in the infamous “killing
fields.” Rwanda in the 1990’s and Sudan today are grim evidence
of human cruelty and the reluctance and inability of the global
community and individual nations to take decisive action to prevent
mass murder.
Last, it is easy to argue that comparisons between different
categories of disasters, made by man or by nature, and levels of
response are simplistic. The likelihood of sending a total of
half a million Americans or troops from other nations to Africa to
prevent genocide is probably as close to zero as possible. But,
during much of the Cold War, more than half a million Americans were
stationed around the world to contain the Soviet Union. Since war was
deterred between the two blocs, virtually no one died in combat against
the Russians. At the peak of the war, half a million Americans
did fight in Vietnam and a similar number served in the first Gulf war
to liberate Kuwait in 1991. So what does this mean?
A Critical Strategic Shift: During the Cold War, the chief
danger to both sides was the threat of massive destruction in a
thermonuclear war that could have destroyed much of society in Eurasia
and North America and killed hundreds of millions of people. To
understand that magnitude of devastation, one needed to understand that
thermonuclear weapons possessed between a hundred and a thousand times
more explosive power than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in which about 90,000 perished in each city. Although
Washington and the Kremlin did not realize at the time, neither East
nor West had irreconcilably competing vital interests that made war
inevitable. Today, with the Cold War long over, is different.
The main threat is the massive disruption to society. This
is what happened on September 11th in America and the March 11th, 2004
attacks in Madrid. The former probably cost American and world
economies hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars, and imposed
costs for security and protection that have no end in sight. The
Madrid bombings cost the Aznar government the election---a disruption
that will be attempted again in Iraq to prevent those elections from
taking place on January 30th.
Just over a year ago, two snipers armed with a single rifle
terrorized the Washington-Baltimore corridor. The point is that
anyone with intent and a cell phone has the means to disrupt
society. Just call in a bomb threat and note the reaction. Of
course, there is the larger potential danger, probably overstated, that
terrorists could launch attacks with biological and nuclear
agents. They could. But these will not destroy society as
we know and as thermonuclear war would have. It would surely
disrupt society and impose huge economic and psychological
penalties. Until nations and publics understand this new reality
and the differences between the threats of massive destruction and
massive disruption,, protecting against them will be difficult
especially as many citizens of the world, comfortable in their lives,
are increasingly risk averse and unwilling to give up many of the
privileges that come with economic growth and prosperity that may be
required to bring greater safety and security.
Two Lessons: The tsunami and the human catastrophe that followed
should be a further and possibly final warning to look more seriously
at other possible natural calamities about which greater or more
immediate attention is needed now. Dramatic climate change
popularly expressed in the debate over global warming and HIV/AIDS and
other diseases such as malaria are among the likely candidates for
consideration. However, once the water and television crews
recede and the dead are buried, almost certainly the urgency of
thinking about disasters will dissipate until the next one
strikes. The international community cannot afford to let that
happen. Yet almost certainly it will.
There is however one form of disaster where we can and should
act preemptively. That pertains to genocide. It is about time to
take seriously the laws and declarations made to oppose mass murder.
Conventions will not prevent future tsunamis and hurricanes from
wreaking great damage as coastal residents understand. When it comes to
humans killing other humans in significant numbers, blind eyes are no
longer conscionable. We can only grieve and offer aid and succor to the
victims of this latest disaster. We can however do something
about Sudan and other places where death and violence are preventable.
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