Enjoy the weekend!
The New Rules: Keeping Disasters in Perspective
Between Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano and the oil slick in the Gulf, everybody seems to have disasters on the brain lately. Some of it stems from the nonstop global media coverage, while a good portion relates to our growing awareness of climate change. But a lot of this heightened anxiety is simply misplaced. We don’t live in an increasingly dangerous world, whether you’re talking wars, terrorism, disasters — or just the weather. In fact, we live in the safest times yet known to humanity. We just choose not to see it that way for a variety of reasons.
The hospital ship of the future
Although Navy, Military Sealift Command and civilian officials have raved about the hospital ships Comfort and Mercy, they’re 25 years old and can be difficult to manage — their size (70,000 tons) and deep draft (about 30 feet) means they often must anchor in deep water and accept patients by air or boat. So we took the chance Tuesday to ask Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Adam Robinson and Rear Adm. Mark “Buz” Buzby, head of Military Sealift Command, what they would incorporate into a new generation of hospital ships, if they could start with a clean sheet of paper.
Eight U.S. Troops Will Remain in Haiti, Down From 20,000+
And it looked like they might be there to stay. “Haiti, for all intents and purposes, became the 51st state at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday in the wake of its deadly earthquake,” noted Time magazine. “The U.S. military effort alone will soon have 33,000 troops ashore or in direct support of the relief operations,” predicted the Weekly Standard. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said he was watching to see if there might be an impact on operations in Central Asia and the Middle East.
That didn’t happen. In a bloggers roundtable this week, Army Maj. Gen. Simeon Trombitas, the head of Joint Task Force Haiti, said that only 850 servicemembers were left on the ground in Haiti. And the military task force there, he added, will dissolve at the end of this month.
Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship Between Aid and Security in Kenya
This case study on Kenya, researched and written by Mark Bradbury and Michael Kleinman, is the first in a series of publications presenting the findings of a two-year FIC comparative study on the relationship between aid and security in northeastern Kenya and in five provinces of Afghanistan. The overall study has focused in particular on trying to determine the effectiveness of aid in promoting stabilization and security objectives, including by helping to “win hearts and minds” of local populations. (For more information and links to publications related to the study see the Aid and Security project page.)
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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