Medical Tourism

In a country where 62% of all bankruptcies are the result of skyrocketing healthcare bills, it’s clear that the U.S. has a healthcare expenses problem [1]. Combine that with some of the worst mortality rates in the developed world, and you start to understand how Americans are in a lose-lose situation when it comes to healthcare options. In contrast, countries like India, China and Thailand offer healthcare procedures of the same caliber of the United States at up to one tenth of the cost. With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that medical tourism is on the rise.

Medical tourism is the process of traveling to another country for medical procedures that may not be offered in one’s home country or are too expensive in the country an individual resides in. The concept of traveling for healthcare initially began as a way for people from less developed countries to receive medical treatment that was not yet available in their own countries by traveling to more developed countries. Now, however, people from more developed countries like the United States are actually traveling to less developed countries for medical procedures [2]. In these less developed countries, people are able to have medical procedures done at a fraction of the cost it would have taken back home, and often they receive better patient care than they would at home. In addition, patients find it attractive that many of these countries offer procedures that have not yet been approved by the FDA.

Medical tourism offers many people an alternative to their healthcare plan’s coverage, especially for those individuals who find that their conventional healthcare options aren’t the most effective or rational. For those who do not have health insurance, it allows for a much less expensive option than traditional healthcare. In fact, medical procedures in countries such as India, Thailand, and South America, are a fraction of the cost of medical procedures in the United States. For instance, while open heart surgery would cost up to $150,000 in the United States, it ranges from only $10,000 in Iran. Cosmetic surgeries in Costa Rica are normally a third of the cost that they are in the United States [3], and procedures in India can be as low as 10% of the cost of procedures in the United States [2].

Price, however, is not the only factor increasing the demand for medical tourism. A demand for anonymity also drives people to look for healthcare abroad. For example, people can go to a foreign country under the guise of a vacation, undergo cosmetic or sexual reassignment surgery, and then return to their home country with no one the wiser. Medical tourism also allows people the option of having surgeries and medical practices that aren’t approved in their home country.

In India, people are offered the option of having a hip resurfacing surgery instead of a hip replacement surgery. Hip resurfacing surgery, which has not yet been approved by the FDA, allows for a shorter recovery period than hip replacement surgery as well as increased mobility compared to traditional hip replacement [4].

Medical tourism also provides a faster option for undergoing medical procedures than in the United States. In cases where waiting lists for certain procedures are rather long, it is often much quicker (and in many cases, cheaper) to go to a foreign country and get the procedure done there. Often wait times for certain surgeries can be up to eighteen months in a home country, while the same surgery in India or Thailand could be completed within a week and the patient would be home within two weeks [2].

As medical tourism is still a new trend, it does have its drawbacks. If any complications from the procedure arise after the patient has returned to their home country there is little they can do. There are no laws or regulations concerning international medical procedures, and in effect, those who do partake in medical tourism do so at their own risk. If medical malpractice occurs in the foreign country that an individual has decided to have the procedure in, they would have to try the case in that foreign country, a process that is often long and laborious [5]. To make matters worse, many patients are asked to sign liability forms that prevent them from being able to take foreign clinics to court. The procedures in foreign countries aren’t as strictly mandated, and while this allows them to offer procedures that are not offered in other countries, it also means that there is less of a concern for patient safety.

Though going abroad for medical procedures has its drawbacks, it is mostly beneficial for those coming in from other countries to have procedures done. Yet, the development of medical tourism has had an adverse impact on lower income families that are native to the countries providing services for medical tourism. While medical facilities are targeting their business to foreigners, medical care for those who actually reside in the country are being put on back burners. In the case of India, medical facilities are being expanded and the government is putting even more money into the medical tourism sector, and at the same time they are ignoring the lack of medical facilities in remote regions of the country [3,6]. So while medical tourism might be helping the economy of less developed countries grow it has a negative impact on the native population of the region.

In China, India, and Moldova, to get organs for organ transplantation, people are reimbursed for giving up their organs. While people are not actually paid for their organs, they are reimbursed for expenses that they incur as well as for loss of earnings as a result of the surgery. This then results in poor people giving up their organs so that they can receive money. Yet while aspects of medical tourism are unethical with respect to the individuals native to these foreign countries, this doesn’t seem to be slowing the growth of medical tourism.

President Obama’s healthcare plans, however, may dramatically change the market for medical tourism. Since the healthcare bill requires that a majority of Americans have insurance by 2014, this seems to predict a fall in medical tourism as a whole. If more Americans have insurance, then it seems logical to conclude that less Americans will have to turn to foreign countries for medical procedures that they cannot afford otherwise. However, the situation isn’t as simple as that. A shift to government sponsored healthcare could also lead to a further increase in wait times for medical procedures. As a result, the demand for medical tourism could remain high, as foreign healthcare services would be much more prompt than procedures in the U.S. [7]. This seems like a reasonable conclusion to make, as it is the current situation in countries like Canada and the UK, who do have government sponsored healthcare [2].

Over the last few years, medical tourism has been steadily rising. In 2008, 540,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical procedures. In 2009, that number rose to 648,000, and in 2010 it was 878,000. It is expected to rise to 1,300,000 individuals by this year [7]. This shows a steady rise for the demand for global healthcare, and it is unlikely that a health care reform will drastically change those numbers. When both insured and uninsured Americans were surveyed on whether they would consider going abroad for medical treatment if it was recommended to them by a doctor, 28% of the uninsured individuals said they wouldn’t consider it, compared to 22% of the insured individuals [7]. This shows that though cheaper healthcare might be one of the key reasons that individuals go to foreign countries for medical procedures, it is not the only reason, and the advent of more insured individuals may not result in a fall in the numbers of medical tourism.

The growth of medical tourism parallels globalization across the world. As globalization becomes a more common phenomenon, it becomes increasingly clear that no profession is nationally exclusive. Not only do American companies not have to hire American workers, but Americans can also choose not to use American healthcare. The balance of the world is shifting in a way that is equalizing all nations, and this change is going to occur in all fields of work.

References

1. Cussen MP. Top Five Reasons Why People Go Bankrupt. Forbes. 2010 Mar. 25.

2. Horowitz MD, Rosensweig JA, Jones CA. Medical Tourism: Globalization of the Healthcare Marketplace. Medscape J. Med. 2007 Nov. 13; 9(4):33.

3. Connel J. Medical Tourism: Sea, Sand, Sun, Surgery. Tourism Manag. 2005 Nov. 29; 27:1093-1100.

4. Leung R. Vacation, Adventure And Surgery?. CBS News. 2005 Sept. 4.

5. Mirrer-Singer P. Medical Malpractice Overseas: The Legal Uncertainty Surrounding Medical Tourism. Law Contemp Probl. 2007 Aug. 8; 70: 211-32.

6. Gray HH, Poland CS. Medical Tourism:Crossing Borders to Access Healthcare. Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 2008;18(2):193-201.

7. Baran M. Medical tourism pros consider impact of healthcare reform. Travel Weekly. 2011 Jan. 25.

This article was originally published in The Science in Society Review at the University of California at San Diego by The Triple Helix Inc. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter. Join us on Facebook

Bombay faces a variety of urban challenges, including a fast-growing housing deficit and spatial informality — the academic term for slums and other non-permanent constructions in the city. These problems have been caused by rapid population growth — Bombay has been in a state of constant demographic explosion since India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947. Originally at four million in the 1950s, the city’s population has grown exponentially to twelve million in the 2000s. Internal migration is the primary driver of this exponential growth. [2]

Public debate regarding these topics is extremely bounded by the geography of the city (formerly seven islands, now transformed into a peninsula through continuous reclamation of land) and the difficulties of stemming migration, preventing a meaningful policy solution to these issues. [3,4]

Even though these processes are pertinent and influential in reshaping the urban landscape, their effects are overemphasized to a fault in public debate. Contrary to common opinion, spatial informality and the housing deficit are not random aberrations that suddenly appeared on the urban horizon but rather results of very particular social and historical processes. The deficit in housing is deeply related to the genesis of spatial informality. Furthermore, formality and informality are symbiotic. Without slums, the elite’s towering apartment blocks would not be able to sustain themselves. Formalizing the informal is only possible if this symbiosis is first recognized.

First, an overview of the housing deficit’s historical trajectory: an overflow of soldiers during World War II caused Bombay’s housing prices to soar to unaffordable levels for Indians migrating into the city. When the war ended, a catastrophic Rent Act of 1947 froze rents on all buildings leased at that time to their 1940 levels. Most importantly, it allowed tenants to transfer the right to lease the property to their legal heirs. As long as the tenant was paying the 1940 or ‘standard’ rent, he could not be evicted, and lease renewal was not required. [1]

An informal market for the right to lease properties developed. Tenants became pseudo-owners of the properties. Since then, the Act has proved politically impossible to repeal. With 2.5 million tenants in Bombay, the tenant lobby group has emerged as one of the most powerful political mechanisms in the city. All the political parties are unified in their support for tenancy rights — the Rent Act has been extended more than 20 times — historically locking housing legislation and the deficit in formal housing. [1]

The proposed solution to the problem of rent by the tenants to the landlords is this: sell en masse to their residents for one hundred times the fixed rent on each property. This will end disputes once and for all — but it will also mean that thousands of properties in the most posh areas of the city would exchange hands for a pittance. The landlords do nothing except refuse to repair each property — they know that selling under the plan suggested by the tenant lobby is a raw deal of the highest order.  Expanding the housing stock of the city has become expensive, and more of the city falls into decay every year.   [1]

Meanwhile, migration has not stopped. However, migrants have nowhere to live because of the massive formal housing deficit, so they must resort to informal constructions. In this way antiquated rent laws have not only created the housing deficit but also factored into the creation of the slums — spatial informality. I am left to conjecture what might have happened had the pre-independence British civic authorities allowed an unregulated housing market to develop in Bombay. [1]

Formal power structures — civic and municipal authorities in Bombay — have systematically denied that informality of all types is produced by similar patterns in the city’s history, and also that informality plays an important role in sustaining the city. For example, state initiated demolition drives and relocation projects are common, and stringent anti-hawker (street vendor) laws are also currently in place.  [1,3,5-8]

Bombay cannot sustain itself without the informal.  Fifty percent of its population, by the most conservative estimates, lives in informal dwellings. From the fruit vendor to the vegetable seller to the taxi driver to the domestic helper – it is impossible to conceive of an urban reality without informal social structures. [2,4,6]

The need to be a part of a formal social fabric to stake a claim on urbanity excludes a large section of the population from the rubric of urban planning. For example – a residential claim is constituted by formalization. Convincing civic authorities to save a basti (slum) from demolishment is only possible if the resident has formal title deeds and proofs of residence. An economic claim is similarly constituted. To get a loan from a local bank the applicant must have formal documentation like salary slips and proofs of income tax payments. Unless informal actors can stake a formal claim on the city it is difficult for them to benefit from state policy. [1,4]

Policy is meaningless if it ignores these actors – there are too many of them for that to happen. The state must take upon itself the task of formalization, but for this, as a first step, the state must stop denying the importance of informality, and recognize that formality and informality are two sides of the coin that is modern urban life. The cost in terms of state resources of this recognition is great, but it must be done. The great statesman and the first prime minister of free India Jawaharlal Nehru famously said that India lives in her villages. If he had lived in Bombay today, he would have said that she lives in her slums. It is now time for us to accept this.

References

1. Mehta S Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. Mumbai: Penguin; 2004.
2. Naipaul VS India: A Million Mutinies Now. London: Heinemann;1990.
3. Prakash G Mumbai Fables: A History of an Enchanted City. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 2010.
4. Appadurai A, Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics. Public Culture 2002; 14(1): 21-47.
5. Hansen TB, Veerkaik O. Introduction–Urban Charisma: On Everyday Mythologies In The City. Critique of Anthropology 2009; 29(1):5-26.
6. Appadurai A, Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing:Notes on Millenial Mumbai. Public Culture 2000; 12(3):627-651.
7. Appadurai A, Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing:Notes on Millenial Mumbai. Public Culture 2000; 12(3):627-651.
8. Anand N, Towards an Anthropology of Water in Mumbai’s Settlements. The Blackwell Companion to the Anthropology of India 2011; 1(1).
9. Guha R India After Gandhi: A History of The World’s Largest Democracy. New Delhi: Harper Collins; 2007.
10. Mumbai Downtown. (Wikimedia Commons). [image on the Internet] 2007 Mar 2 [cited 2011 Aug 12]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mumbai_Downtown.jpg

Akshat Goel is a second-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in economics and sociology. Join The Triple Helix Online on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Proper education of civilians living near nuclear power plants to enhance their disaster responses could help reduce short-term mortality and heightened long-term risks of cancer from radiation exposure from a major accident. A 2003 health study conducted in the Three Mile Island region revealed that cancer-related mortality rates of infants, young children, and the elderly skyrocketed in the two years after the accident [3]. Similarly, only four years after Chernobyl, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported over 5,000 diagnosed cases of thyroid cancer among children aged 18 and younger in the Russian Federation, Belarus, and Ukraine [4]. While the precise health effects attributed to nuclear accidents can never be assessed, they do emphasize the importance of properly educating citizens who live close to a nuclear power plant. Poor public communication before and after the Chernobyl accident led to delayed evacuation mandates or ingestion of contaminated food or water, bringing more extensive radiation exposure to populations within Eastern Europe [5]. Near the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, only 20,000 households received monthly newspaper leaflets with instructions on how to react to a nuclear disaster [6]. The remaining population in the now 19-mile evacuation zone around Fukushima Daiichi failed to receive any prior safety information or disaster response training. Many residents were unsure of what measures should be taken to avoid radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Numerous civilians chose to stay in their homes and continued consuming food that was potentially tainted with radioactive fallout [6].

The situation is better in the United States, a nation currently home to 104 commercial reactors, the greatest number of plants in the world [1, 7]. Federal legislation mandates awareness training for populations living within a 10-mile radius of a nuclear power plant (≈ 2% of U.S. population) [7]. In the case of enormous nuclear accidents, where the area of contamination is greater than 15-miles, a greater effort must still be made in the United States and other nuclear nations to educate their citizens. Brochures distributed at regular intervals to residents living near a nuclear power plant could provide valuable knowledge and instructions. Through improved communication and training, risks of cancer induced by prolonged radiation exposure could be reduced, hence diminishing the perceived risks of living near a nuclear power plant.

Conversely, should nuclear threats to public health prove unavoidable, swift action should be taken to limit long-term environmental degradations through comprehensive waste disposal and remediation. Even with existing technologies in nuclear waste disposal, clean-up following a nuclear disaster still occurs at a painstaking rate. Three Mile Island took 14 years (1979-1993); Chernobyl will take 79 years (1986-2065) [8]. Fukushima Daiichi? Besides immense human health impacts, nuclear accidents can also inflict irreversible damage on the environment. Still under high surveillance today, the 19-mile Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone remains an agonizing reminder of permanent ecosystem damage caused by delays in remedial initiatives. Several years after the accident, the Soviet government succeeded in evacuating most populations near Chernobyl but did not make a clear effort towards environmental cleanup [9]. In turn, the nearby ecosystem was permanently disrupted, with several species vanishing completely [10]. Adjacent water sources were also dammed to prevent outflows of radioactive silt that would contaminate surrounding groundwater foundations [11]. Today, similar concerns for the groundwater aquifers near Fukushima beckon for rapid environmental cleanup. Initial dispersal of large quantities of Iodine-131, a principal carcinogen for thyroid cancer, will be the chief worry for the Japanese coastal environment [12]. On a global scale, persisting radionuclides, such as Cesium-137, will be of greater concern due to their potential for traveling over long distances and becoming concentrated in the tissues of marine wildlife, which could have immeasurable but enormous impacts on marine ecosystems.

Chernobyl and Fukushima hence offer valuable warnings to nuclear engineers in the future selection of power plant sites. The proximity of the Chernobyl power plant to Pripyat as well as the nearby Kiev and Dnieper Reservoirs magnifies possible human and environmental impacts should a nuclear accident occur [13]. Fukushima Daiichi’s location near sea level in a nation of high seismic activity made the reactors highly susceptible to earthquake and tidal damages in the long run [14]. Moreover, the recent accident is beginning to take its toll on nearby farmers, whose livelihoods are threatened by the fears of contaminated crops and livestock [15]. In order to minimize potential environmental and human health effects, the locations of upcoming nuclear power plants should be carefully scrutinized to consider all possible risks.

Yet the most challenging “remediation” effort involves the people affected by nuclear accidents. Individuals who may have been exposed to nuclear contamination have a natural tendency to fear for possible health effects. Even in the late 1990’s (a decade after Chernobyl), villagers from areas around Pripyat expressed concerns to investigating teams about the likelihood that their children would develop cancer and whether the Soviet government was honest about Chernobyl’s adverse health effects [16]. Indeed, the most perplexing problem facing researchers today is determining the long-term health effects of nuclear accidents. Data collection and analysis remain difficult due to a lack of national funding or interest as well as unclear linkage between human health consequences and the initial cause. The lack of such information is and continues to be a key source of mistrust for civilians living near Chernobyl [8].

The direct and indirect impacts of nuclear accidents on the psychological outlook of affected populations remain an essential aspect that impedes further exploration in nuclear energy. For example, not soon after the Chernobyl accident in 1986, around 150,000 to 200,000 protesters marched on Rome to protest the Italian nuclear program [17]. Similar demonstrations across Europe and the United States hindered the nuclear energy industry until around 2005, when the quest for clean energy revived interests in nuclear power. Even now, fierce public outcries may threaten to permanently shut down Germany’s nuclear power program in the next few decades, even though it provides 23% of the nation’s electricity needs [18]. Complete disposal of nuclear energy will likely lead to energy deficits and negative economic impacts in the short run and may even hinder developments in novel renewable energy technologies later on.

What could governmental agencies and environmental organizations do to better react to nuclear accidents? A main goal should be to present and maintain complete transparency of the nuclear accident. Lessons from Chernobyl instructed many countries currently developing nuclear power, including Japan, of the critical nature of immediate broadcasting in order to reduce human casualties. Mobile clinics, such as some preliminary ones set up in Japan, can help screen for nuclear contamination and possible risks for cancer [19]. The key advantage for such early screenings is, of course, to swiftly identify individuals who are at risk and direct them to appropriate treatment. Likewise, unnecessary anxiety among low-risk populations could be eliminated, reducing unwarranted popular skepticism of the nuclear industry or the government.

Another entry point for government intervention could be stricter monitoring of nuclear energy corporations. Since the onset of the Fukushima crisis, the Tokyo Electric Company (TEPCO) has been widely reproached for inefficient responses to explosions at several reactors [20]. Private economic interests in nuclear power plants may seek to preserve the operational status of damaged reactors in the hope that they could re-open in the future [21]. Such actions would delay first-response procedures and raise the gravity of the accident at hand. Direct governmental involvement could dispatch additional safety inspection teams to reactor sites in order to complement the results from private safety reporting. These added checkups could further diminish risks of nuclear accidents by emphasizing the safety of nearby civilians and the environment over solely the interests of the company.

The impact of nuclear accidents on human health and the environment are vital issues that lawmakers and industrial corporations must carefully assess prior to establishing power plants. While nuclear accidents occur as or even more infrequently than many natural disasters, their effects are usually devastating and very long lasting. Hence, first responses and safety precaution awareness could still be improved. Ideally, nuclear accidents and their subsequent human and environmental effects could be wholly eliminated. In the meantime, a stronger effort should be made to grant public access to basic information and the decision making process surrounding the developments of nuclear power plants. Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima are wake up calls. The time to heighten our concern for nuclear safety is now.

References:

1. European Nuclear Society. (2011, January 20). Nuclear power plants, world-wide. Retrieved from <http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm>
2. Benjamin K. Sovacool. The costs of failure: A preliminary assessment of major energy accidents, 1907–2007, Energy Policy 36 (2008), p. 1806.
3. Evelyn O. Talbott et al., “Mortality Among the Residents of the Three Mile Accident Area: 1979–1992,” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 108, no. 6, pp. 545–52 (2000)
4. World Health Organization, Initials. (April 2006). Health effects of the Chernobyl accident: an overview. (2006). WHO media center.
5. Williams, D., Baverstock K. (2006). “Chernobyl and the future: too soon for a final diagnosis” Nature 440(7087): 993-4.
6. Talmadge, Eric. (2011, March 22). “Many not prepared in Japan for nuclear crisis, interviews find”. The Associated Press.
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2011). “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle”. p. xv. Retrieved from <http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/studies/documents/nuclear-fuel-cycle/The_Nuclear_Fuel_Cycle-all.pdf.>
8. Peplow, M. (2011). “Chernobyl’s legacy”. Nature 471, 562-5; doi:10.1038/471562a
9. Flanary, W. et al. “Environmental effects of the Chernobyl accident”. Encyclopedia of Earth. (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment).
10. Chernobyl – A Continuing Catastrophe, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2000
11. The Report by the Chernobyl Forum 2003-2005, second revised version, Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, IAEA/PI/A.87 Rev.2/06-09181, April 2006. Retrieved from <www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf>
12. Fukushima – “Potential Marine Environment Impacts”, Presentation by the International Atomic Energy Agency, 25 March 2011, Retrieved from <http://www.slideshare.net/iaea/fukushima-potential-marine-enviroment-impacts>
13. Zheleznyak, M, et al., “Simulating the effectiveness of measures to reduce the transport of radionuclides in the Pripyat-Dnieper”, Intervention Levels and Countermeasures for Nuclear Accidents ( Proc. Int. Sem. Cadarashe, France, 1991), Commission of the Europian Communities, Radiation Protection-54, EUR 14469 (1992) 336-362.
14. Shirouzu, Norihiko. (2011, March 23). “Japan ignored warning of nuclear vulnerability”. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703410604576216481092750122.html>
15. Wines, Michael. (2011, March 29). “Japan nuclear crisis erodes farmers’ livelihoods” The New York Times.
16. The International Chernobyl Project Tech. Rep. (International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1991).
17. Marco Giugni (2004). Social Protest and Policy Change, p. 55.
18. Evans, Stephen. (2011, May 30). Germany: nuclear power plants to close by 2022. BBC News Europe, Retrieved from <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208>
19. Declan, B. (2011). “Fukushima health risks scrutinized”. Nature 472, 13-14; doi:10.1038/472013a
20. Gregory, Mark. (2011, March 16). “Is Tokyo electric power becoming Japan’s BP?” BBC News, Business section. Retrieved from <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12764458>
21. Belson, Ken. (2011, March 19). “Executives may have lost valuable time at damaged nuclear plant”. The New York Times. Retrieved from <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/asia/20time.html>
22. Nuclear is not clean nor sustainable nor cost-effective. (Flickr) [image on the Internet]. 2007 Nov 18 [cited 2011 July 29]. Available from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pepeketua/3364323115/
23. IAEA logo. (Sandia National Laboratories) [image on the Internet]. 2005 [cited 2011 July 30]. Available from: http://www.sandia.gov/IAEA/IAEA_Home.html
24. The Emblem of Entwined Serpents. (The Temple of Enki) [image on the Internet]. [cited 2011 July 30]. Available from: http://templeofenki.bravehost.com/serpent.html

Frank Qian is a second-year biological sciences and economics student at the University of Chicago. Join The Triple Helix Online on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

One way to observe the public’s anxiety about the Muslim Brotherhood is by means of a recent addition to Google’s search service, known as autocomplete. This once-experimental feature attempts to guess what a person is typing, displaying suggestions directly under the search box. Guesses are based entirely on the popularity of search terms typed by previous Google users. Autocomplete objectively captures the broad political thoughts and mood of an enormous amount of people. Type in Muslim brotherhood and a very telling list of predictions appear—a sequence that includes “terrorism, Iran, and Al-Qaeda,” none of which have positive connotations in the West. These “guess” items indicate the spoken and unspoken fears transmitted by the media to the mass public. It seems that anything containing the words Muslim or Islam in the post-9/11 era is subject to immediate scrutiny for connections to the more negative aspects of Islam and the Middle East. Yet, the Brotherhood’s background is an exemplar of religious moderation.

Formed in 1928 as a resistance movement to British occupation in Egypt, the organization slowly transitioned into a religiously oriented political party. Principle to its beliefs is the idea of the umma, meaning ‘community,’ being the source of sulta, translated as ‘political authority’ (Leinken).  As can be seen, this moderate vocation is a synonym for democracy. Even on issues such as homosexuality, sexual liberty, and drug use, the Brotherhood has indicated that it will respect the authority of the Egyptian people over the authority of religion (Hill). Indeed, it actively supports charitable actions, political involvement, and extensive education programs to combat religiously inspired violence and extremism. Such beliefs are a far cry from the “religious extremist” label that the contemporary Western media invariably pins on all Islamists.

Rumors of extremism in such groups are, for the most part, falsely created, often by the ruling autocratic regimes themselves. According to Lionel Beehner, a Fellow at the Truman National Security Project, threats of extremism are “used by autocrats to safeguard their positions.” For dictators, two principle purposes are served by exaggerating the threats of radical Islam. First, their regimes often acquire additional foreign aid from the United States, enabling them to ramp up their military and internal policing powers (Lionel). Second, autocrats exaggerate or falsely create internal threats to delegitimize opposition groups and, thereby, consolidate their domestic political power. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a prime example of this unfortunate dynamic.

After the assassination of his predecessor at the hands of radical Islamists, Egyptian leader Mubarak, in need of support from some religious groups to combat extremism in his country, attempted to form an alliance with the Brotherhood because of its moderate stances. The Brotherhood’s growing political power eventually led to its undoing, however. After gaining more seats in the Egyptian parliament than all other opposition groups combined, the group proceeded to criticize government actions as un-Islamic. Using the rise of Islamic militant group activity in the early 1990’s as a pretext, Mubarak called the Brotherhood an organization of fanatics, banned it from fielding candidates, and executed many of its leading members (Stilt). Despite the false label and the transparently self-serving political motives that generated it, the organization is still commonly associated with radicalism.

Unfortunately, the United States, desperate for allies in the Middle East, is shooting itself in the foot by failing to recognize nuances in Islamism. Literally, Islamism is defined as “an Islamic revivalist movement, often characterized by moral conservatism” (Islamism). This broad definition allows for beliefs that often complement, rather than contradict, US interests. In the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, America is losing a possible strategic ally—one that represents at its core the antithesis of the extremism that the US is fighting. Indeed, Al Qaeda’s Ayman Zawahiri himself once exclaimed that the Brotherhood “lures thousands of young Muslim men into lines for elections…instead of into the lines of jihad” (Leiken). The Brotherhood espouses the liberal values of an open, civil, and democratic society. How else can one explain the group’s support for the secular politician, Mohamed El-Baradei?

America policies cannot succeed in the Middle East unless they engage powerful Islamic influences in the area; and, though often forgotten, both governments created by the United States in the region are Islamic republics. It is, therefore, imperative that the American people, the US government, and the Western media start to distinguish the Brotherhood and, more generally, moderate Islam, from radical Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood—enemy of our enemy—is, after all, our natural friend.

References:

Autocomplete : Features – Web Search Help.” Google. Web. 04 Feb. 2011.

Beehner, Lionel. “In Egypt, ‘Islamist’ fears overblown.” USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

Google. Web. 06 Feb. 2011.

Hill, Evan. “The Muslim Brotherhood in Flux – In Depth – Al Jazeera English.” AJE – Al Jazeera English. 21 Nov. 2010. Web. 06 Feb. 2011.

“Islamism – Definition of Islamism by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.” Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus – The Free Dictionary. Web. 07 Feb. 2011.

Leiken, Robert S., and Steven Brooke. “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.” Foreign Affairs 86.2 (2007): 107-121. Academic Search Alumni Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

Masoud, Tarek. “What Is Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood? : NPR.” Interview by Steve Inskeep.NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts : NPR. National Public Radio, 1 Feb. 2011. Web. 06 Feb. 2011.

Stilt, Kristen. “Islam Is the Solution: Constitutional Visions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood | Africa North Africa from AllBusiness.com.” Small Business Advice and Resources from AllBusiness.com. Texas International Law Journal, 1 Oct. 2010. Web. 06 Feb. 2011

Written by The Triple Helix at Ohio State University

Eagle Island, a remote safari camp in Botswana

Ecotourism is a growing industry in many developing countries.  As an alternative to mining, hunting or farming, it seems more sustainable.  It preserves the rainforests, the rivers, and the savannas, but what does ecotourism mean for economic development in these countries?  In many countries that formerly relied on colonial plantations for income, ecotourism is an industry that makes a lot of sense.  It preserves natural ecosystems, making it more sustainable than agricultural expansion, and it provides a venue for unskilled laborers to work without the input of capital necessary for industrialization.  It seems like a perfect solution.

In my travels, the people I spoke to often praised their governments’ support of ecotourism and nature preservation. In Botswana, the alternative had been hunting reserves as a supplement to the mining industry. Photographic safari reserves provide a sustainable and more fashionable alternative.  Costa Rica, the poster-child for ecotourism, have made a name for themselves as the adventurous, grittier alternative to Mexico for American tourists. It leads me to wonder what will happen if the success of this product is based on its novelty?

The underlying framework of this argument lies in the theory behind the position of developing nations vis-à-vis globalization.  Developing nations enter the global market at a distinct disadvantage. They lack the capital for heavy industry and large-scale agriculture, mining, and tourism are often funded by foreign multi-nationals.  Tourism creates jobs, but it does not necessarily lead to development. Most jobs in tourism are menial and provide little upward mobility, creating a conundrum.  On one hand, ecotourism creates jobs and provides a growing and sustainable industry relative to farming, hunting, or mining in countries with growing populations and shrinking wild lands.  On the other hand, relying on tourism traps these countries in a cycle of dependency on the countries that provide the tourists. This leaves them vulnerable to the whims of those people and the fluctuations in their markets.  Obviously, recessions in developed countries can wreak havoc on developing countries if they become reliant on something as transient as tourism.

The problem with ecotourism is that while it is sustainable, it is also exclusive. It excludes mining and agricultural expansion and precludes the development of industry by putting high demands on land conservation and pollution control.   I don’t know the answer to this problem, but it seems to be the dilemma of all “latecomers” to the global economy: how to overcome dependency without isolating themselves.  Further, in ecotourism, like many other industries often run remotely by foreign companies, how do you ensure that the country making the product reaps the benefits?  The second question is easier to remedy than the first, but in either case economic diversification remains a difficult issue, especially in developing nations. I just wonder if the move toward ecotourism is sustainable in the economic sense rather than just the environmental sense.

Obviously the counterexample would be a fast-growing, developing economy such as India or China that has taken to heart internationally decided pollution exemptions for industrial expansion in developing countries. While this leads to a larger, more diversified economy, and faster growth, some countries that have followed this model, most notably China, are beginning to see the repercussions of fast economic growth without regard for the environment.  Many of China’s rivers and natural places are hopelessly polluted, and its cities are plagued by thick smog from burning coal, which is the cheapest fossil fuel, to meet the giant populations ever-increasing energy demands. All of this environmental destruction is finally affecting their ability to grow food as well as people’s health.  In contrast to ecotourism, this model does better people’s quality of life much faster, the economy becomes more diversified, and there is more upward mobility. However, it leads to health, food and sustainability problems in the long run.  I am not sure which model is better because you don’t see the China/India model in places with small populations, and you don’t see the ecotourism model in densely populated countries because that would imply that the natural areas were already encroached upon.  I wonder if there is a way to reconcile both economic and environmental interests in developing countries when they seem so far in opposition under most definitions of development.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20643839

Social Networks

Terror as Coercion: The Major Stumbling Block in a New Subject for Social Network Analysis

Since the notorious events of September 11^th, 2001, the study of suicide terrorism and the strategic logic behind large-scale acts of extremism has taken off in a variety of disciplines. As readers of the national news, we receive a predominantly qualitative analysis of terrorist cells, how they are organized, recruit and sometimes cooperate. Without reference to a lot of numerical data or statistics and seemingly without the goal of precise and generalizable measurements, news casters present footage of interviews with Iraqis and Americans that get at the “why” of the issue but not exactly the “how.” Qualitative research on terrorism isn’t confined to the realm of media but extends into academia as well. In this context, a large and enlarging body of literature traces the rise and fall of various terrorist campaigns while commenting on the history of terrorism in general. Such studies are extremely beneficial to our understanding of, for instance, the transformation of an ideology into a formidable terrorist organization. However, given that terrorist groups are uniquely decentralized, diffuse, dynamic and constituted by clusters of dense networks that are otherwise isolated or weakly linked to other clusters[1], it is unreasonable to hope that qualitative methods will produce a sufficiently thorough and dependable explanation for how terrorists function or a reliable framework for predicting future terrorist attacks. Qualitative research, which requires a considerable amount of time to execute under the best of circumstances cannot fully and quickly address the “how” of terrorism and when it comes to the systematic use of terror, time is of the essence. A much more practical approach is that of social network analysis—a set of techniques, theories, models and applications that have proven themselves remarkably valuable to the studies of interaction, interdependency, sustained and truncated relational ties, opportunities for and constraints upon individual action, and structures of the social, economic and political sort.

Social network analysis conceives of relationships, contacts, affiliations, friendships and other web-like structures in terms of “nodes” and “edges,” best defined by the below graphic[2]:

In this example, which depicts a pattern of email communication among employees of Hewlett Packard, the nodes (red dots) represent the individual employees and the edges (gray lines) between them represent their email exchanges. It is easy to see how we might map a terrorist network in this way, allowing nodes to represent terrorist suspects and edges instances contact between them. It is also easy to see how the resulting graph would aid our understanding of how terrorist organizations operate and solve problems, as well as how disaggregated (or centralized!) they really are.

In addition to possessing the attributes described above, the study of terrorism also lends itself to social or dynamic network analysis since it is associated with massive volumes of information that need to be synthesized and disseminated in an efficient way. According to Patrick Keefe, when still engaged in wiretapping, the National Security Agency intercepted some 650 million communications on a daily basis. Furthermore, the National Counterterrorism Center’s database of suspected terrorists currently contains over 325,000 names.[3] Network analysis can help to make sense of this wealth of data by giving it a form and shape that can be more easily appreciated than an interminable list of names and dates.

However, in light of these statistics and intimidatingly large numbers, it is no surprise that productive network analysis is often hindered by an overabundance of information, the bulk of which is frequently extraneous and of limited relevance. Valdis Krebs, the first person to diagram the network of terrorist cells associated with the 9/11 hijackings, notes that the nodes (people, potential terrorists) present in the existing body of information often have “fuzzy boundaries” between them, making it difficult to determine who and who not to include in the mapping of a particular terrorist network.[4] False leads are inevitable but not always immediately apparent and therefore represent a debilitating time waster.[5] The question is, then, how can this profusion of information be gathered, managed and propagated in an efficient way? Assuming we can surmount some major roadblocks—such as this baffling quantity of data—the answer may be contained in the relatively new but burgeoning field of social network analysis.

The Next Generation of the Web: Semantics

As many readers of this article will already know, as the number of pages grows in the World Wide Web, so do the number of search engines, portals and directories, all of which are designed to facilitate the location of useful information. Indeed, much of the information amassed and used by government officials has its origins in the Internet. So what if there was a way to organize and integrate all of this feedback into a single model while also selectively removing unusable or worthless data?  This may in fact be feasible through a tool called the Semantic Web, a group of methods and technologies that allows users to build vocabularies or “ontologies” that enrich data with additional meaning and therefore increase opportunities for effective use of said data.[6] Put succinctly, the purpose of the Semantic Web—an intelligent technique for information categorization, extraction and search—is to make the Web “smarter” and better able to perform useful services for users by adding semantic annotation to Web documents and other resources so that knowledge, rather than unstructured material, is consistently accessed. Through Semantic Web methods and technologies, machines can understand the semantics, the meaning of information, text and data and subsequently create connections for those who take advantage of it, thereby relieving them (at least partially) of the laborious task of consolidating and making sense of various bits and pieces of dispersed information.

Traditional Web portals, those with which the average Internet user is most familiar, are websites that collect information and links to pages and usually operate around a specific theme or topic. Semantic Web portals instead “collect URIs of files on the Semantic Web, and allow users to interact with…statements,” statements being carefully crafted descriptions of URIs that are eventually translated into Resource Description Framework (RDF) graphs in which each resource is represented by a node and each statement—conveying a property—represents an edge. For example, we could take the sentence “Wali Zazi is the father of Najibullah Zazi” (the two were arrested in 2009 for conspiring to execute domestic terrorism) and endow it with machine-readable meaning. With the help of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and an RDF graph, the Semantic Web would identify “Wali Zazi” as the sentence’s subject, “is the father of” as the sentence’s property, and “Najibullah Zazi” as the sentence’s object. In order to more fully comprehend the names in the sentence and the relationship between them, the Semantic Web would use uniform resource indicators or URIs—series of characters that identify names or resources on the Internet and generally begin with “http”—to associate each element of the sentence with a resource describing its nature, a resource that might not necessarily be a part of the Web. For example, it might associate “Wali Zazi” and “Najibullah Zazi” with a list of suspected terrorists that is not accessible by Web to the general public. After this and many other such meaning-enriched sentences have been entered into the RDF graph, our hypothetical machine can start drawing inferences, eventually making connections between the Zazi men and others who may have helped them to develop their terrorism scheme. A significant implication of this structure is that it allows users of a given RDF graph to navigate through it based on their personal interests, following statements to relevant information that reflects individual objectives and areas of curiosity. In plainer language, although the Semantic Web cannot make computers self-aware, intelligent or sensible, it can make the Web “readable” to machines so that they are able to find and, to a certain degree, decipher information.

Consider the following example: You want to buy “The Lord of the Rings” boxed set online but you have a few specifications: You want widescreen DVDs and you want only those with the extended versions and bonus material. You are willing to buy a used set but only if the quality of the DVDs is still classifiably excellent and while you don’t want to wait too long for delivery, you also don’t want to pay an excessive amount for shipping. Rather than asking you to compare the items available at Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, DVDEmpire.com, etc., the Semantic Web would allow you to input your preferences into a computerized agent that, in addition to searching the Web and finding the best option for you, could also record the amount you spent in the financial software on your computer and mark your computer calendar with the date your DVDs should arrive.[7]

The above is but a synopsis of the constituent elements behind and capabilities of the Semantic Web, whose attributes cannot be fully explored here. Rather, applying the basic knowledge presented, the remainder of this essay will try to demonstrate its potential usefulness for ongoing analyses of terrorist networks.

The Consequences of the Semantic Web for Terrorist Network Analysis

Today, for better or for worse, the U.S. government and its various representatives in the intelligence community are constantly monitoring travelers’ behavior in a surreptitious but large-scale search for mal-intentioned voyagers. Regardless of whether it is consistent with the Constitution, analysts have access to information about what individuals are denied entry into what countries, where suspects stay when they are in transit, the origin of those who visit them at their hotels, etc. Sometimes, by following the movements of two or more suspects simultaneously, they try to determine if collaboration is at work. Semantic Web technologies can facilitate these related processes of pursuit and decision-making by allowing analysts to draw on stored information about the individual suspects in question, such as where they have traveled in the past, if ever they have been in the same location, if they have in common an affiliation with a specific (religious) organization, and so on. Here, the results of initial behavioral scrutiny are essentially input factors into the Semantic Web, which instantaneously links them to relevant available files, allowing analysts to engineer a comprehensive picture of what is going on and to respond to it in a suitable and timely manner without being delayed by the distractions of superfluous information.

The careful plotting of a terrorist network or organization is no modest task but instead requires an onerous series of steps, including collecting data, harmonizing data, and accurately pinpointing relationships between data points. As this process is continually repeated for the sake of completeness, irrelevant data is inevitably accumulated in discouragingly large quantities. Google, the most prominent and most used of traditional search engines, only exacerbates this crisis of immaterial information through its PageRank link analysis algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the Web that assigns a numerical weighting to hyperlinks for the purpose of determining their relative importance in comparison with other links. PageRank is, essentially, a vote, by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is, where a link to a page counts as a vote of support. In the end, the more times a page is linked to and the more times it is linked to by frequently cited pages, the greater its numerical weighting and the more likely it is to appear at the top of search results. Inevitably, this algorithm will consider any frequently or habitually cited page as “relevant,” regardless of whether that page’s content truly reflects, from the user’s perspective, the query that caused it to surface. A Google search for “Abu al Zarqawi,” a close associate of Osama bin Laden, and “Israel,” into which Zarqawi has been accused of smuggling terrorists, generates approximately 148,000 results; however, only a handful of these, scattered throughout, offer information about the connection between Zarqawi and Israel. Most are Web pages that include both the words “Zarqawi” and “Israel” in them, but only coincidentally. The Semantic Web, by contrast, is more discriminatory and would allow researchers to endow the search phrase “Zarqawi+Israel” or “Zarqawi and Israel” with a specific meaning—perhaps related to Zarqawi’s smuggling activity in Israel—so that only the most appropriate information is retrieved and entered into the Web portal.

Additionally, standard search engines can only return data formatted in words and numbers, despite the fact that images, pictures and photographs often convey linkages as well. Fortunately for intelligence case officers, the Semantic Web makes it possible to associate notes, theories and other facts and messages with these forms of information so that no stone is left unturned. For instance, terrorists sometimes communicate through graffiti on the walls and building sides of urban spaces in a way that signifies a “secrete cable of ‘others’ who could strike without warning.”[8] Images of this crafty means of interchange could undoubtedly be helpful as intelligence officers shadow prospective human threats and establish their relationship to other terrorist network insiders.

The Semantic Web is also valuable when aliases, pseudonyms, monikers and other kinds of assumed names come into play. MSNBC.com provides a list of basic information on at-large al Qaeda operatives, including their nicknames when these are known. Some on the list, such as Ayman al Zawahiri, have upwards of twelve known aliases. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed boasts more than 15. Others, including Midhat Mursi, have only one but these can be drastically different from the individuals’ actual names (Mursi’s is Abu Khabab). What is more, MSNBC accentuates that some of its spellings/transliterations “may vary from what has been published elsewhere since different Arab countries use different spellings of even the most common names,”[9] compelling us to acknowledge that illicit activity has probably gone unnoticed in the past because of the failure of traditional search instruments to encode the relationship between, for example, Uday and Oday or Khaddafy and Ghaddafi. A Google search using “Ghaddafi” does not return results with the name “Khaddafy”—a fairly common alternative spelling—nor does it offer the latter as a suggestion for a related search. The Semantic Web represents a way in which to equate multiple alternative spellings and/or to recognize aliases such as “The Doctor” or “The Manager,” making it less easy to unintentionally overlook constructive information.

In the end, a terrorist network is the outcome of hundreds of personal connections. Understanding the relationships and links between the members of this category of network is critical to preemptively deterring terrorist plans or at least to interrupting them. Thankfully, the Semantic Web gives us a way in which to exhaustively describe these relationships, using our knowledge of various members’ hometowns, workplaces, residences, communal affiliations, involvement in certain events, etc. An excellent example of the Semantic Web in action comes from a dataset known as Profiles in Terror (PIT). Developed at University of Maryland, College Park, this resource contains counter-terrorism intelligence information collected from various publicly available real-world sources such as federal court indictments and news reports.[10]

This diagram[11], generated using a PIT demo, acts as a visual representation for the arguments presented above. As we can see, it contains both events (Passover Massacre, Taher calls Sayyed, Driver recruited, etc.) and names (Mohammed Taher, etc.) so that a complete or near complete picture is revealed to the analyst, unlike in the case of conventional Web portals, whose graphs simply cannot contain such a range of information.

The Obstacles that Remain: Making the Web a More Understandable (Mine-able) Place

At the foundation of the Semantic Web are machine-understandable Web pages (this characteristic is essential since it allows for the creation of expansive portals of highly applicable, congruous information). Continuing with our example of terrorism, we may want to extract from various Web pages newspaper articles, video clips, etc. about terrorist activity. These resources and the information contained in them must undergo a process of data mining, during which patterns are extracted from data, so that they become sensible to the machines directly responsible for pulling together and coherently arranging information and therefore indirectly responsible for informing analysts of potential terrorist threats.

Yet establishing a robust Web mining capacity in the context of the Semantic Web is not without its challenges. As noted by Syed Ahsan and Abad Shah, employing the technology behind data mining is difficult when it comes to matters of terrorism because much of the information pertaining to it exists in disparate databases scattered among numerous federal, provincial and local entities that often cannot or simply do not swap knowledge.[12] Nonetheless, the inadequacy of traditional Web portals as compared to the Semantic Web has been fully exposed and unless maximum efficiency and accuracy are not the goals of the CIA and U.S. Government, a concerted effort must be made to make the transition. Rather than forsake the possibilities inherent in the Semantic Web, we should work to achieve greater intergovernmental transparency and correspondence.

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[2] David Easley and John Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World, Cambridge University Press (2010), p. 3, http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/.

[3] Patrick Keefe, “Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?,” The New York Times Magazine, March 12, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/magazine/312wwln_essay.html?_r=1.

[4] Valdis Krebs, “Uncloaking Terrorist Networks,” First Monday, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2002), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/941/863.

[5] Robert Baer quoted in Jennifer Goldbeck, Aaron Mannes and James Hendler, “Semantic Web Technologies for Terrorist Network Analysis.”

[6] “Semantic Web,” W3C, http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/.

[7] Tracy V. Wilson, “How Semantic Web Works,” How Stuff Works: A Discovery Company.

[8] Rene Larche, “Global Terrorism Issues and Developments,” Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2008, p. 37.

[9] “Al-Qaida Leaders, Associates,” MSNBC.com.

[10] Lise Getoor, Prithviraj Sen and Bin Zhao, “Entity and Relationship Labeling in Affiliation Networks,” Conference on Machine Learning, 2006.

[11] profilesinterror.mindswap.org

[12] Syed Ahsan and Abad Shah, “Data Mining, Semantic Web and Advanced Information Technologies for Fighting Terrorism,” IEEEXplore, 2008, p. 3. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4547644&userType=inst&tag=1.

Clean water is an aid item even more essential than food after a disaster: the human body can survive for weeks without food but only for about three to five days without water [1]. Unfortunately, flood victims often have no access to clean water, because of the destruction or absence of sanitation facilities, or problems with the distribution of water supplies. Worse, there is often general ignorance about the dangers of waterborne disease. All of these factors place survivors of floods at a great risk. As thirst becomes intolerable, a basic need of life becomes a hazard, and even people who are aware of the risk are compelled to disregard it because they do not know how to render water safe for use. For example, in the aftermath of the Bangladesh floods in 1998, 75% of the victims interviewed who drank from rivers or wells said that they believed the water was contaminated [2].

When heavy flooding occurs, sewage and industrial chemicals mingle in a dangerous microbial soup. Increased volumes of water can change the direction of its flow or divert its course, so that it runs through dung fields, or other places where pathogens are present. The growth of plankton and bacteria increases from the presence of chemical nutrient sources in the water, which will stagnate or flow into rivers, tainting them [3].

Water can transmit disease in a variety of ways. The various illnesses which humans can contract by drinking tainted water can be placed into three main categories according to the causative agent: protozoal, bacterial, and viral. The diseases which are among the most common and the earliest to have an effect are diarrhea-related diseases such as dysentery and cholera, which ironically can lead to death by dehydration [4]. External contact with tainted water can be enough to cause serious health problems. Microbes can enter the body not only by hand to mouth, but through mucus linings, such as through the nasal passages, down the respiratory tract, wounds and broken skin, and corneal contact [5]. There are numerous diseases and conditions, such as dermatitis, respiratory problems, and gastrointestinal ulcers, which are the result of casual contact with the water by wading or swimming [3]. Indeed, those who swim through muddy water to save someone’s life may compromise their own.

Many factors can magnify the impact of waterborne disease. Exposure to the contaminated water in disaster scenarios comes at a time when immune systems are most likely already impaired due to lack of food and exposure to the elements due to lack of shelter. Floods demolish preexisting infrastructure, including water treatment centers and medical facilities. The gravity of the situation also depends partly on the prevalence of the microorganisms prior to floods, which is difficult to control [2]. But it depends additionally on population density and the amount of people displaced [6]. Makeshift camps are usually crowded, and when the newly homeless pour into established towns and urban areas, the communicability of diseases is increased [6].

Often, the most serious humanitarian crises occur in developing nations such as Pakistan and Bangladesh where general poverty and a lack of infrastructure exacerbate the problems affecting disaster areas. When these poorer countries are affected, another concern is the widespread ignorance of the risks associated with drinking untreated water, especially among children. Citizens of these nations, whose standard of living is low, are also usually unable to wash their hands in clean water and lack proper latrines [7]. In these environments there are greater probabilities of fecal matter mixing into waters [2].

All of these dilemmas may find solutions in two sources: the governments of stricken countries and outside aid. Disasters and humanitarian crises give the domestic governments and the international community the opportunity − indeed, the responsibility − to take action. But these are reactive steps – responses to crisis. Even before a crisis can befall a nation, as a preventative measure, the populace should, once aware of the risk present in water, be educated about the necessity of taking simple steps to render water safe for drinking.

These steps are numerous and not at all difficult. Boiling water has long been known to destroy the potency of microbes. When obtaining firewood is a problem, purification tablets are an essential part of aid packages [8].  Bleach added thirty minutes prior to drinking may change the taste of the water, but is an effective disinfectant [8]. Recently, electrolysis cells which can produce a disinfecting solution, sodium hypochlorite, from salt and water have been developed [8]. Inexpensive and easy to use, these cells can run on solar power [9]. On a far simpler note, covering jars prevents microbe entry [2, 7].

Another preventative measure that governments in particularly flood-prone areas can, where possible, take to preserve both supplies of clean water and the means of rendering water clean, is enforcing construction laws. Currently, during the reconstruction process, buildings are often recreated by aid groups using the same methods as before [10]. Sturdily built housing and infrastructure will minimize the damage to water treatment and sewage plants [10]. A smaller displaced population would mean less crowding in temporary shelters, and decrease the likelihood of disease transmission.

In the midst of a massive crisis, the government can only do so much on its own. The international aid response after the disaster also needs to be prompt and sustained. One would think that any country would, out of compassion for humanity, participate in relief efforts. One would also think that the government would work in conjunction with outside aid groups as much as possible in an emergency. This may not always be the case. An example that is both recent and illustrates this point well is Pakistan.

Pakistan was already a country which had problems establishing and maintaining a clean water supply. About thirty percent of yearly deaths in Pakistan were from waterborne disease, two hundred fifty thousand being of children [11]. The 2010 floods exacerbated the problem, and now ten million, according to the United Nations (UN), are at risk of drinking contaminated water. Despite the urgency of the situation and calls from the UN for millions, the arrival of aid is slow. Pledges to donate are not fulfilled [12].This may be due to fears over the instability of Pakistan. Indeed, there are areas with records of violent outbreaks where the government has restricted aid groups from access, including flying in aid [13]. The national army must provide for these areas alone, and by itself is having difficulty reaching everyone [10]. Yet there is no reason to deny a country aid due to problems in certain areas. Perhaps potential donors fear the use of funds to support violent activity. But reducing the impact of waterborne diseases on post flood death tolls is already a weighty task without the international community seizing upon reasons for half-hearted aid campaign participation.

The elimination of, or at least the drastic reduction of, water-borne illnesses seems to be an insurmountably difficult goal, with a multi-part solution too wide in range to implement. However, the basic science behind the prevention of such diseases is little more than germ theory. With international cooperation and national government action, the incidence of post-disaster waterborne diseases can be lessened when preventative measures are implemented.

References

1. Bryant, CW.  How long can you go without food and water? Discovery Health. 2008 11 February [cited 30 Nov 2010]; 1.  Available from http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/live-without-food-and-water.htm.
2. Kunii O, Nakamura S, Abdur R, Wakai S. The impact on health and risk factors of the  diarrhoea epidemics in the 1998 Bangladesh floods. Public Health. 2002 March; 116(2):68-74.
3. Hunter PR. Climate change and waterborne and vector-borne disease. Journal of Applied Microbiology. 2003 May; 94(s1):37-46.
4. [WHO] World Health Organization. Water sanitation and health: Water-related diseases. WHO; 2010 [cited 1 Dec 2010]. Available from http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/diarrhoea/en/.
5. Schuster, FL, Visvesvara GS. Amebae and ciliated protozoa as causal agent of waterborne zoonotic disease. Veterinary Parasitology. 2004 Dec 9; 126 (1-2): 91-120.
6. Barcellos C, Sabroza PC. The place behind the case: leptospirosis risks and associated environmental conditions in a flood-related outbreak in Rio de Janeiro. Cad. Saude Publica. 2001; 117(s).
7. M Hashizume, Y Wagatsuma, AS Faruque, T Hayashi, PR Hunter, B Armstrong, DA Sack. Factors determining vulnerability to diarrhoea during and after severe floods in Bangladesh. J Water Health. 2008 Sep; 6(3): 323-32
8. [WHO] World Health Organization. Flooding and communicable diseases fact sheet: Health action in crises. WHO; 2010 [cited 5 Nov 2010]. Available from http://www.who.int/hac/techguidance/ems/flood_cds/en/.
9. Mintz E, Reiff F, Tauxe R. Safe water treatment and storage in the home: A practical new strategy to prevent waterborne disease. JAMA 1995; 273: 948-953.
10. Alertnet, Reuters Foundation. Floods. 2010 Jun 7 [cited 5 Nov 2010]. Available from http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/floods.htm.
11. Sever M. Fixing Pakistan’s water woes. Earth. 2010 Sep 23; 3(10).
12. OCHA. Pakistan – Flood – July 2010. Table A: List of all commitments/contributions and pledges as of 02 December 2010. 2010 Dec 02. Available from http://fts.unocha.org/reports/daily/ocha_R10_E15913_asof___1012020204.pdf.
13. M Rowling. Alertnet, Reuters Foundation. Hundreds of thousands in flood-hit Pakistan may never get aid. 2010 Oct 28 [cited 30 Nov 2010]. Available from http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/interview-hundreds-of-thousands-in-flood-hit-pakistan-may-never-get-aid-icrc/.

Niloufar is a first-year at the University of Chicago majoring in biology.

Although I agree in principle with Ms. Ifill when she argues that inaction by the U.S. Federal Government on the issue of torture is damning to U.S. international prestige, I feel Ms. Ifill fails to answer two questions that are important for her call to action to gain traction. First, how does the absence of convictions of U.S. leaders supporting torture harm U.S international prestige? And second, why is the loss international prestige a significant concern for the U.S.?

The answer to the latter question is relatively simple, so I will discuss it first. The U.S. relies on its allies for its national security despite its status as one of the strongest nations in the world. This is because today’s U.S. national security threats no longer take the form of interstate conflict, but rather of actors with no geographic affiliation (e.g., terrorist groups). As such, the U.S. requires the cooperation of many different governments around the world to maintain domestic and international security.

For example, to target a terrorist cell in Malaysia the U.S. would need the cooperation of the Malaysian government and people, as without such support getting access to Malaysian airspace and intelligence would be virtually impossible. In a world where the U.S. enjoys the support of its allies, this type of task is relatively easy. However, when the U.S. suffers from diminishing international prestige because of questionable practices like torture this same task becomes much more difficult, as nations and their people are reluctant to cooperate.

Moreover, as former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Harvard Professor Joseph S. Nye notes in his seminal book Soft Power, the War On Terrorism can only be won when moderate Muslims are able to definitively displace radical ones in Middle Eastern states. Unfortunately for the U.S, its recent torture practices have provided radical Muslim groups with the rhetorical ammunition they need to recruit an increasing number of Muslims into their cause.

To be sure, a recent article in Comparative Political Studies by James I. Walsh and James A. Piazza finds that U.S. torture practices facilitate terrorist recruitment by radicalizing moderate Muslim populations against the U.S. And this finding makes sense in light of the number of Muslims who have yet to decide their loyalties in the War on Terrorism, which is to say that by engaging in torture, the U.S. allows for the radicalization of these “fence-sitters” in support of anti-American terrorist causes.

With this in mind, the answer to the question of why failure to demonstrate accountability for Bush-era torture policies harms U.S international prestige is very simple. By failing to hold leaders complicit in U.S. torture practices around the world accountable, the U.S. sends the message to moderate Muslims and its allies that it does not consider the prosecution of torture an important concern.

By broadcasting such a message, the U.S. encourages its allies to engage in similar behavior. Indeed, in the past several years countries like China, Russia and Sri Lanka have all invoked U.S. torture practices to publicly justify their own policies. One particularly salient example occurred in 2008, when China released a report that publicly accused the U.S. of hypocrisy in condemning its human rights record. This type of reaction to U.S. torture practices is not unexpected however, as Joseph S. Nye and Richard L. Armitage recognize during an April 2008 congressional hearing: “[America] cannot denounce torture and water boarding in other countries and condone it at home.”

Clearly U.S. torture practices give other nations license to make a mockery of U.S. global leadership, undermining U.S. prestige and international influence in the process. As one 2007 World Opinion Poll showed, 49% of respondents (the largest plurality) believed that the U.S. had an overall negative impact on the world; in the same poll 67% of respondents indicated that they disapproved of the way in which the U.S. treated detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

All of this is to say that the U.S.’s history of torture and failed attempts at redemption are and will continue to be problematic for U.S. global leadership and national security. The Obama Administration must therefore move beyond rhetoric and demand accountability from those most involved in the instigation of U.S. torture around the world. Only through this show of leadership and strength can the U.S. rebuild its international credibility and prestige.

This article was originally published at Yahoo Associated Content. View the article here. Zain Pasha is the Executive Director of Electronic Publishing for The Triple Helix Inc and the founder of The Triple Helix Online. Follow him on Twitter

Photo courtesy of Messay Shoakena on Flickr

After nearly two weeks of turmoil, it looks like Tahrir Square is starting to empty out. The Egyptian Revolution – if we can call it that – seems to be entering its inevitable second phase, the power political phase, where elites sit down at a negotiating table and wield the old images of the angry masses as bargaining chips during administrative transition.

This is not “revolution” in the fullest sense of the word – in the sense that evokes images of the Red Army or the guillotine; in the sense of capital being restructured or new ideas being born. What we’re seeing in Egypt, instead, is “regime change”: the substitution of one set of elites for another, and the reorganization of the Egyptian state. Our modest hope should be for a government that’s a bit more democratic and a bit more fair. If we permit ourselves to dream, it should be for an Egyptian state that achieves what is possible for truly and uniquely Islamic democracy, a state that is organized around a serious attempt by a free society to work out its own self-understandings writ large. This crazy hope, it seems to me, has not yet died. It’s not really revolution, but it is as exciting as hell.

We’ve spent this forum trying to answer the question, “What, if anything, does the Internet have to do with this?” To answer this question, we’ve got to keep our minds open to the complex ways that democratization actually goes forward in the real world. If democratization were really a simple binary, where Egyptian democrats are either (a) sacking their government or (b) doing nothing at all, then Malcolm Gladwell’s famous thesis that social media doesn’t create “strong ties” would be all we needed to know. Because he’s right: Twitter and Facebook won’t get your friends to die in any cause. Facebook makes friendship easy; while dying for causes, needless to say, is hard.

But democratization is much more complex than just getting your friends to do big things. To have a functioning democracy, you need a functioning civic community. And community is all about the small things. It’s about the incremental increases in trust when you help someone out; the sharing of new ideas with new people; the building of a collective identity. Community helps a democratic society work out its shared values, and through this process, to ratify rules (and rulers) as legitimate. That process of communal affirmation is what democracy is all about, and while guns are an important part of all this (as coercion power), the process is ultimately discursive and imagined — which is to say, it happens through the sharing of information.

It’s not crazy to claim, then, that democracies and information networks are in some fundamental way aligned in their structure and logic: free individuals (nodes in a network) share information freely with other people (distribute information across the network) in public places like town centers, libraries, the post office, the National Mall and the printing press (the public information platforms that make democracy work). In the process, they give substance to the idea of a sovereign — they create “a people” with a “will.”

Facebook and Twitter are thus nothing more (and nothing less) than new tools for this older, democratic function: the distribution of information across networks; the communicative action between citizens; the creating of shared meaning. This is the hope that the Internet can bring to a repressed society like Egypt: not the killing of kings in Tahrir, but the building of a civic community once the square’s been emptied out.

I’ll end this with a quote from Manuel Castells’s very cool book, Communication Power. (Replace “communication” with “the tools that facilitate communication like flyers and Facebook.”)

“My working hypothesis is that the most fundamental form of power lies in the ability to shape the human mind….If the fundamental battle about the definition of the norms of society, and the application of these norms in everyday life, revolves around the shaping of the human mind, communication is central to this battle. Because it is through communication that the human mind interacts with its social and natural environment…The communication process decisively mediates the way in which power relationships are constructed and challenged in every domain of social practice, including political practice.”

ACE Consortium Publication from the Harvard Political Review

While the World Wide Web does make the task of connecting with other politically like-minded individuals more effortless, the Internet inevitably fractures mass movements at an early stage. Remote and essentially anonymous, the nature of the Web encourages users to interact in a fundamentally abnormal way (as opposed to the way they would in face-to-face exchanges). The psychoanalytic concept of “transference”—the process whereby emotions are displaced from one person to another—is particularly relevant to understanding the qualities of online relationships. As noted by John Suler in his hypertext book, The Psychology of Cyberspace, because the experience of the other person is often limited to text, there is a tendency for the user to project a variety of wishes, fantasies and fears onto the ambiguous and imperceptible figure at the other end of cyberspace (Suler 1998).

Related to this phenomenon of unconscious feeling-displacement is an experience called the “disinhibition effect,” a term used to describe uncharacteristic impulsivity, contempt for social conventions and a general lack of personal restraint. With specific regard to the Internet, the sensation of disinhibition is amplified through the anonymity and status neutralization afforded one by the web. When the effects of transference and disinhibition combine, uncensored web-based conflicts are easily brought to extremes. Simply consider the innumerable Facebook group discussion boards overrun by banal but heated arguments full of ad hominem and imprudently worded attacks. With the absence of visual and auditory cues, individuals perceive their Internet communications as occurring primarily in their heads and therefore make remarks publicly that they would ordinarily only think to themselves. Essentially, the Internet induces anomie and erodes social capital by enabling users to retreat into an artificial and unexamined world that has become a substitute for concrete social interactions (DiMaggio 2001). This effect predictably makes enforcement of ideological conformity more difficult than when individuals are forced to assemble in the streets.

What does this mean for the Middle East, where Facebook, Twitter and other forms of new media have been hailed as innovative and effective ways of circumventing suppression? It means that what appears to be legitimate social activism is actually a potentially divisive force as well as a low-cost way of avoiding more open forms of protest. Facebook and its messaging service cousins threaten to estrange not only members within a group but also entire groups from members of the outside world who are engaging in more aggressive forms of activism. The majority of Internet-powered campaigns depend on the assumption that raising awareness is enough to resolve an issue, an unproblematic expectation for some local causes such as gay marriage but a completely hazardous one when it comes to questions of genocide, authoritarian regimes, etc. Indeed, interactive digital media is making it extremely difficult for many Pan-Arab initiatives, such as a recent attempt to liberate an incarcerated Egyptian dissident through translation and publication of his blogs, to elicit direct action from inhabitants of the Middle East. This dilemma is epitomized on the aforementioned campaign’s website, which features a sign reading, “Don’t Donate. Take Action.” (Evgeny 2009). As further affirmation of the disconnect between residents of cyberspace and reality, dissidents in Egypt complain that Facebook-literate citizens, extolled for bringing Egypt’s political currents and opposition figures into greater profile, give Egyptians the impression that physical unity is extraneous. A vibrant, computer-based civil society has come to displace tangible civil society to the extent that those experienced with communication technologies no longer feel it imperative to coordinate or migrate offline (Shapiro 2009).

Moreover, while interactive media is generally impervious to government resistance, autocratic regimes can easily follow Facebook activity and can even more easily distinguish, and consequently apprehend, specific protestors. As stated before, autocratic regimes’ overwhelmingly efficient response to this perceived new danger (in the form of arrests, blocks on Facebook and positioning of law enforcement at possible congregation sites) means that those Facebook-ing and Twitter-ing from home seldom or never take to the streets to execute their proposals. Furthermore, the West is apparently not sympathetic to Facebook activists as it has barely acknowledged these fresh and ill-treated oppositional voices and has certainly not pressed for their release from various prisons, which presently hold a growing number of individuals considered delinquent only because they engaged in visible dialogue.

While the role of digital new media in contributing to the emergence of a reawakened regional Arab consciousness and national identity is limited, information technologies do have their distinct advantages. Development, communications and culture researcher Dr. Loubna Skalli observes that the Internet is a driver of sociopolitical transformations that have allowed women to contribute to and participate in civic and political endeavors. Through the diverse apparatuses of new media, which do not discriminate on the basis of gender, women are finally redefining the public sphere by disseminating alternative knowledge about women, citizenship and political participation and by creating trangressive spaces (Skalli 2006). Ultimately, while micro-blogging and social networking services alone may not subdue autocratic regimes, they at least create heterogeneity among their society’s political participants and present a voice to segments of society once inaudible.

Works Cited

DiMaggio, Paul. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology, no. 27             (2001): 307-336.

Morozov, Evgeny. “It Feels Like Activism.” Newsweek. 29 6 2009.

Skalli, Loubna. “Communicating Gender in the Public Sphere: Women and Information    Technologies in the MENA.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, no. 2 (2006).

Shapiro, Samantha. “Revolution, Facebook-Style.” The New York Times Magazine. 22 1 2009.

Suler, John. The Psychology of Cyberspace. http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html: 1998.

How significant of a role does technological superiority assume in the determination of victory? Though the study of Russia provides an interesting case in military history, it is no anomaly. War is a chaotic system, infinitely complex in its variables and conditions, but analysis of recent and historical conflicts suggest that some factors play larger roles than others in the decisiveness of war.  The advancement of weapons changes how wars are fought, but leadership, training, moral, and most importantly, political strategy dictate how wars are won.

First, a empirical perspective of wars must be considered. Before the 1700′s, wars were fought in the classical sense: seemingly infinite battalions marched in parallel columns in the fog of cannon shots, musket balls, and gunpowder smoke. In this sense, battles were truly fought as chess games, such that commanders would spend hours mobilizing, organizing, and detaching men, cavalry, and artillery into massive segments to be slowly but surely dealt out on the battlefield. By a consequence of this nature of warfare, strong leadership was absolutely critical. As described by Robert K. Massie, the popular American historian and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, in his book on Tzar Peter of Russia, hundreds of thousands of men needed to be coordinated and precisely timed with the rest of the army to deliver a decisive attack [1]. Organization became the crux of combat, the current mode of warfare required extensive management and logistics [1]. However, what happens if the invention of a weapon with a higher rate of fire, such as a machine gun, comes about? Suddenly this idea of concentrating men in a slow moving column is rendered utterly useless.

The early 1700′s rested on the bridge between two technologically different stages of war. The first and arguably most important weaponry advancement resulted from the introduction of flintlock rifles. This invention made the rifle more reliable and quicker to reload. Therefore, a typical rifleman could nearly double his rate of fire: “As a smaller number of men could now deliver the same volume of fire, the sizes of battalions were reduced to make them easier to handle. Command became quicker, easier, and more responsive” [1]. In a matter of years the mode of warfare changed completely, generals had to rethink doctrine and soldiers had to rework tactics. Nonetheless, it is evident that this advancement did not help predict the outcome of any battle; it only revised how the battle would be fought. As George Raudzens, a professor of history at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, states in his paper,

“[advances in weapons] brought huge changes in the nature and methods of war, but little advantage to innovators since their competitors quickly imitated each new weapon…. The point remains, however, that the new gunpowder arms did little to change battle outcomes. Even at the point of introduction, where the innovative side had a monopoly, the decisiveness of impact was at best modest.” [2]

Better weapons give no one any specific advantage past an acute period of transition. So then what happens during this stage of imbalance? Feudal Russia again provides an excellent example of the competitor in technological lag. Despite such critical advancements in the early 1700s, “only the Russians and Turks continued to issue old, heavy matchlock muskets, to the detriment of their infantry firepower”[1].

In the Great Northern War, a Russian army, one again severely under-armed with pikes and matchlock muskets, faced off against a superior Swedish force. King Charles XII of Sweden had the most modern and well equipped army in all of Europe. These glaring discrepancies help illustrate the factors to which Robert K. Massie attributes Russian victory in the face of technological inferiority: leadership and training [1]. Tzar Peter’s risky decision to lure the enemy into the cold winter of Russia and sever their supply lines reflects dominance in strategy over strength, brains over brawn. In one fell swoop, just one mistake by the Swedish command, Charles’ great army was defeated. This is only one of many instances in history where the underdog bested his opponent so quickly through means other than attrition. Napoleon was famous for winning battles against opponents four times in size through sheer manipulation of geography and maneuver. In World War II (WWII) General Zhukov of the Soviet Union accomplished a similar feat by surrounding and starving the mechanized German 6^th Army in the Russian winter.

From the onset of war there is never any ability to predict a victor, mathematics cannot measure the abstract qualities of courage, wit, and luck. George Raudzens notes that “scholarly writers more often emphasize the context in which such technology must fit and recognize weapons as parts of a system of armaments and institutions rather than isolated devices” [2]. The fact is that throughout the history of warfare “there is indeed insufficient evidence to demonstrate that improved military technology has increased casualties or won battles” because solely analyzing the weapon does little to bring light to the bigger picture [2].

Understandably, wars cannot be boiled down to simple factors that determine a single outcome like flipping a coin. Alastair Smith, from the political science department at Washington University, defines war as “a dynamically evolving process” where the conditions are examined in “the decision to fight, effort levels, choice of military strategy, negotiation position, and domestic support” as a whole [3]. Both Raudzen and Smith agree that a large field of variables influence the tide of battle and no single item can determinately decide the outcome. This idea is never more critical than now when the United States is engaged in a new type of warfare where the opponent is always under-armed, outnumbered, and unorganized. Assuming technological superiority as a means for victory is dangerous.

One school of thought divides warfare in four “generations”: linear (Napoleonic columns), attrition (WWII mass sieges), maneuver (Blitzkrieg), and insurgency (War in Iraq) [4]. Whether or not the idea of concise and clear generations exists, the current conflict America faces is one of asymmetrical battles with insurgents. The War in Iraq is therefore reliant on the social and political realm, i.e. “winning the hearts and minds of the people”, because insurgents are not a state to be negotiated with but more of an ideology to influence. Focus should be directed to manipulation of political will rather than pure attrition, a “generation” of warfare the US military has been stuck in since WWII [4]. Insurgency is only another mode of warfare that America has only recently dealt with, and radical changes in doctrine are necessary for our military to respond to the evolving nature of war around the world.

In the early hours of March 20, 2003, the First Marine Division raced across the southern border of Iraq in armor-plated vehicles, determined to capture the southern oil fields in less than 48 hours. Moving at a speed that outpaced both the enemy and the remainder of the invasion force, General Mattis and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld embraced the doctrine of maneuver warfare, an American blitzkrieg that would conquer the country in a matter of days rather than months [5]. A country-wide siege supported by rapid mechanized units, computer guided cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) completely destroyed the Baath Party and Saddam’s regime. However, even though victory had been proclaimed for the Allied forces, sporadic fighting continues to this day. The invasion was successful, but occupation and restoring order remains a headache for the American and Iraqi governments. Why can the military not quickly and effectively respond to decentralized guerilla attacks?

Sean Gourley, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University with a Ph.D. specializing in networks and complexity, has analyzed large volumes of statistical data from attacks in Iraq and has discovered a mathematical relationship between frequency of attacks and fatality rate. Supposedly the structure of an insurgency can be defined by a ratio, which determines coalescence or fragmentation of a given political group. This number can decrease, indicating a more cohesive force with more organized attacks and political influence, or increase, suggesting higher fragmentation but weaker attacks [6]. Moreover, these fluctuations in violence and insurgency strength are affected by changes in political climate, not the result of battles. Gourley’s evidence implies events such as Iraqi elections and the US decision to implement a surge acted as turning points in the war [6]. Neither the million-dollar missiles nor the cutting technology America built can help win a psychosocial and political war.

There is, however, still one mode of warfare that seems to elude conforming to the thesis. Nuclear warfare, and indeed any weapon of mass destruction, has the unique property of assured annihilation. Regardless of leadership, training, or skill, a thermonuclear device will render any opponent incapacitated; the factors of time and effort disappear altogether. Instead, this topic broaches the more abstract ideas of game theory and psychology. What political stakes and ethical consequences will one gamble with when deciding to push the button? If anything nuclear warfare represents the most pure form of strategy, a game where battles have been simplified into single, definitive moves and generals and politicians evaluate the cost of victory.

In all of human history nations have strived to be the best armed and have superior technology. The Shang Dynasty had crossbows, the Assyrians had iron, and the Germans had Panzer tanks. Famous wars are identified with the emergence of a new weapon or technology, yet we often ignore the larger factors that military historians attribute to the cause of success. The Shang Dynasty was a military bureaucracy that armed even slaves for battle, the Assyrians utilized the Tigris River next to their cities to acquire expedience in the invasion of opposing regions, and Germany was the first to develop and implement maneuver warfare. The US has focused too strongly on one form of warfare that favors the cult of technology and thus has a hard time seeing how the opponent’s battle is changing.

The advantage of better technology is of no more value than training, cohesion, strategy, or geography. The time before the enemy adopts the newer weapon is almost negligible. Even in the case where technological imbalance is permanent, such as the conflict in Middle East, the will of the combatant can overcome the gap. The most important example comes from the Vietnam Era, where in 1968 the Viet Cong attacked US forces on multiple fronts and overran the embassy in Saigon. The offensive was considered a complete tactical failure, the Viet Cong were repelled swiftly and order was restored, yet American media televised the pandemonium to the world. Soon the war lost popular support in America and the withdrawal of US troops was inevitable: a political victory for the Viet Cong. Politics, not weapons, shifted the tide of war. After all, as explained in On War, written by General Carl von Clausewitz, the most widely influential military theorist, war is a function of the political realm: it remains independent of technology and science, and every conflict is an extension of politics [7].

Better weapons do change warfare, drastically. From the Great Northern War to the War on Terrorism, the modus operandi of armies evolved into an entirely new beast with different strategy and tactics. With every new technological advancement there is a corresponding change in training, cohesion, strategy, geography, etc. But although one tends to approach war in the most logical fashion possible, it must be accepted that there are an overwhelming number of factors and probabilities of which we cannot possible aggregate. Scholars from political science departments to the Society for Military History agree that wars are multifaceted organisms that grow and are inherently as complex as the humans that fight them.

References:

1.  Massie RK. Peter The Great: His Life and World. New York: Ballantine Books; 1980.

2.  Raudzens G. War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of Technological Determinism in Military History. Journal of Military History. 1990; 54 (4): 403-34.

3.  Smith A. Fighting Battles, Winning Wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution. 1998; 42 (3): 301-20.

4.  Dr. Bunker RJ. Generations, Waves, and Epochs: Modes of Warfare and the RPMA. Airpower Journal. Spring 1996; 10 (1): 1-9.

5.  Wright E. Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War. New York City, New York: Berkley Publishing Group; 2004.

6.  Dr. Gourley S. “The Mathematics of War.” TED2009 Conference. Long Beach, CA: TED; Feb 2009.

7.  General Clausewitz CV. On War. Radford, Virginia: Wilder Publications; 2008.

Alex Kessler is a student at Georgia Tech.

GHGs persist in the atmosphere for hundreds of years [2]. Climate change is thus a very unique issue as its effects transcend time and space: GHGs emitted now in any location will affect the whole planet for many generations to come. Therefore, the generation that knowingly creates negative climate change should make every effort to reduce that impact; this represents a moral choice.

The Kyoto Protocol of 1998 was organized to develop limits that would stabilize levels of GHGs [3]. However, the United States decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The main debate focused on concerns for the economy over climate change. This consideration is still the focus of climate change policy. For example, in response to a proposal to reduce GHGs by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, this statement reflects the sentiment of a large majority of climate change policy opponents:

“The estimated costs [of the proposal] are staggering. So is the sweep of regulations that could severely affect nearly every major energy-using product from cars to lawnmowers, and a million or more businesses [which will be forced to curb emissions] and buildings of all types. And all of this sacrifice is in order to make, at best, a minuscule contribution to an overstated environmental threat” [4].

Two issues are brought up in this statement: first, that the proposed policy was considered on an economic level only, and second, that the consequences of the human role in climate change are overestimated. An ethical perspective renders both of these claims irrelevant.

Climate change has tremendous impact because it is the result of a vast network of interconnected environmental structures: “The whole earth is an interactive system,” states Professor Bill McGuire of University College London [5].  While the effects on a yearly timescale might be small, the effort and time required to change the trends will be enormous. While most of the public attention for climate change has focused on rising average global temperatures, other effects are equally hazardous.  These include ocean acidification; ice sheets melting; more frequent and severe weather events like fires, flooding, and storms; drastic changes in rainfall and drought patterns; and highly altered life cycles of species [2, 6].

The largest share of GHG emissions are those of developed nations: since 1850 the United States and Western Europe together have contributed to more than fifty six percent of GHG emissions [7]. However, the developing nations bear the staggering consequences as they are highly populous and therefore suffer a disproportionate impact of the adverse effects. Higher temperatures can lead to an increase in parasites which are especially devastating in areas with large populations highly susceptible to disease. Extreme weather can affect poor countries like Malawi in southeastern Africa that rely disproportionately on agricultural productivity – 40% of economic activity [8].

However, while the consequences that developing nations suffer are indeed harsh, data collected from numerous expeditions illustrates that the most serious victims of climate change are also the most ignored: all the other species of the earth [9]. While humans are highly developed organisms and can adapt to changes in environment relatively easily, this is not true for all other species which have evolved over millions of years in order to precisely adapt to their specific environments [6]. Many species have long life-spans and a change in their reproductive rates can have impacts well beyond the timescales that are familiar to humans. Climate change affects both ecosystems of these organisms as well as the organisms themselves; a delay in implementation of policy only worsens these effects. These result in changes in the environment of an ecosystem and can lead to species extinction, or, more gravely, the extinction of a keystone species which would trigger a chain of extinction [10]. Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, emphasizes that even small changes in environment can lead to disastrous consequences [11]. Consequently, it is estimated that between two thousand and ten thousand species will go extinct each year due to the adverse effects of climate change [12]. The uncertainty in this figure results from the sheer magnitude of the species which go undiscovered.

Ironically, the most serious victims of climate change are also the ones who do not have a voice in the mitigation of the problem. Therefore, the implementation of policy becomes deeply ethical. Human activity has already resulted in the loss of many thousands of species and the trend will only continue [12]. Going back to the economic arguments, placing an economic value on the existence of a species or an ecosystem is not viable and as such economic arguments fail to be effective. Trying to fix an ethical problem with an economic solution is simply deficient.

On the other hand, the ethical obligations that society should take into consideration can be defined: humans, developed nations especially, are risking the well-being of life on earth, as well as the future generations who will have to deal with the costs of the actions that society takes and puts off. If ethical obligations become a philosophical driving force for the legislation, policymakers will be forced to accept these obligations and deal with them in a just manner.

Throughout the history of the United States, society has benefited by enacting laws that started out as moral movements: the United States Constitution, civil rights movements, child labor laws, and EPA acts such as the Clean Air Act. Therefore, as there is a strong precedent for law with an ethical basis, a list of defined ethical obligations can be used as a standard for climate change action on a federal or global level. Such a documented plan can create debate and lead to a shift in societal thinking that, in turn, can result in better laws for the future. A moral and ethical platform will also allow participants from across the entire planet to see the value of implementing the changes that will be needed. Thus, significant progress in climate change policy can be made.

Climate change is a universal issue, one that affects all life on the planet, and therefore settling the adverse effects is an ethical decision. As a country with strong relations with much of the world, the United States can take the lead in bringing nations together in a collaborative effort to fix the global problem with a global solution.

References:

1. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC; 2007. 104 p. Report No: 4.
2. Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC; 2000. Report No: 1.
3. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Kyoto Protocol [Internet]. 1997. Available from: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php.
4. Lieberman B. The True Costs of EPA Global Warming Regulation. Michigan Science. 2009 Feb 12. Available from: http://www.mackinac.org/10271.
5. Mears R. Global Warming May Bring Tsunami and Quakes. The Guardian 2009 Sept. 16.
6. United Nations Environment Programme. Climate Change and Biodiversity: Ecosystems [Internet]. Available from: http://www.unep-wcmc.org/climate/.
7. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. GHG Data from UNFCC [Internet].  Available from: http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/items/3800.php.
8. International Food Policy Research Institute. Agriculture’s Critical Role in Africa’s Development [Internet]. 2009. Available from: http://www.ifpri.org/publication/agriculture-s-critical-role-africa-s-development.
9. World Wildlife Fund. The impacts of climate change on nature [Internet]. Available from: http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/impacts/.
10. Alois P. Keystone Species Extinction Overview. The Arlington Institute. Available from: http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/wbp/species-extinction/443.
11. Preparing for Climate Change: Adaptation Polities and Programs: 2009: Subcommittee on Energy and Environment; U.S. Congress, House. 111th Cong. Available from: http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?Itemid=95&id=1549&option=com_content&task=view.
12. Thomas C. Extinction risk from climate change. Nature [Internet]. 2004; 427 (6970).
13. Blue Marble. 2002. Available from: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2429.

Suchita Nety is a sophomore at the Harker School in California