{"id":59,"date":"2005-12-01T19:49:24","date_gmt":"2005-12-02T00:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2005\/12\/01\/aids-and-african-militaries\/"},"modified":"2005-12-01T19:49:24","modified_gmt":"2005-12-02T00:49:24","slug":"aids-and-african-militaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2005\/12\/01\/aids-and-african-militaries\/","title":{"rendered":"AIDS and African militaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a121'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At TPM Cafe, Anne-Marie Slaughter <a href=\"http:\/\/americaabroad.tpmcafe.com\/story\/2005\/11\/30\/8483\/0075\">posts<\/a><br \/>\na note from a former student working in South Africa on AIDS<br \/>\nPrevention. Estimates suggest 23% of the South African military is HIV+<br \/>\nand that 7 of 10 deaths in the military are AIDS-related. This may make<br \/>\nit much harder for African militaries, the South African military in<br \/>\nparticular, to play a role in resolving local problems and supporting<br \/>\npeacekeeping operations. The hollowing out of the military in<br \/>\nAIDS-wracked countries has also been documented by <a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/gems\/politicshiv\/singerAIDS.pdf\">Peter Singer<\/a>. The posts from some readers project a sort of hopelessness,<br \/>\nparticularly given South Africa&#8217;s leadership&#8217;s puzzling antagonism<br \/>\ntowards recognizing both the existence of the disease and viable<br \/>\ntreatment strategies.&nbsp; While the scale of the tragedy is enormous, it<br \/>\nwould be too easy to write off the entire continent as hopeless. It<br \/>\nwould also be unseemly for a rich and generous nation like ours not to<br \/>\neven try.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of the AIDS virus on African militaries is a very serious<br \/>\nproblem. It is hard to tell if some of the reports of this overstate<br \/>\nthe security implications because they think this is the only way to<br \/>\nget the outside world to care, as if appeals to international morality<br \/>\nwill not induce rich donors to spend significant amounts of money. Are<br \/>\nwe only be moved to act when we think it is in our national interest? I<br \/>\nthink the evidence on HIV suggests the U.S. can be moved to care in the<br \/>\nabsence of clear security incentives. We might think the recognition of<br \/>\nthe problem of failed states moved President Bush to announce his<br \/>\n5-year, $15bn AIDS plan in his 2003 State of the Union address.<br \/>\nHowever, as a number of other analysts have demonstrated, Christian<br \/>\nconversatives, motivated by the affront to morality by a disease that<br \/>\nhad claimed more than 20 million lives, brought President Bush and<br \/>\nother conservative Republican leaders on board. I recommend Chapter 14<br \/>\nin Greg Behrman&#8217;s book <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2005\/01\/25#a15\">The Invisible People<\/a> and Holly Burkhalter&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/media-cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/gems\/politicshiv\/burkhalter.htm\">Foreign Affairs<\/a> piece.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll have more to say about a lecture I gave yesterday for World AIDS day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At TPM Cafe, Anne-Marie Slaughter posts a note from a former student working in South Africa on AIDS Prevention. Estimates suggest 23% of the South African military is HIV+ and that 7 of 10 deaths in the military are AIDS-related. This may make it much harder for African militaries, the South African military in particular, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-security"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}