John wrote:
Here's some speculation.
Suppose Ebola starts spreading through heavily populated regions,
including some in China. Question: Will that make a preemptive
military attack on the U.S. more or less likely?
It's possible that they'll do the calculation that with missiles
coming down on both sides, Ebola will take the lives of both
populations, and so there's no point in launching a war.
Pretty Pollyannaish, I know, but probably not out of the question.
Or, the opposite could happen. They may decide they want to make sure
that we get as much Ebola as they're getting, so they may add some
Ebola virus to the nuclear missile attacks.
John, looking back into history a bit here are a couple of observations.
1. The Spanish Flu epidemic that raged during the last year of WW-I. It is difficult to say with precision whether the epidemic had a definitive impact on the conduct of the war or not, but most of the literature about the conduct of the war doesn't even mention the magnitude of the epidemic regarding the conduct of the war.
What occurs to me is that, in so far as epidemics are concerned, there is little impact regarding strategic thinking, in that those who succumb to disease are viewed much like combat casualties -- they just disappear, and are just not available for use, such was also noted in the US Civil War. In past conflicts the disease caused "random" absence in no direct manner affected the combat mentality of the combat conduct of the war. You used what you had. The question is will this method of thinking continue? Wars have two primary reasons for termination, military defeat causing wholesale loss of life by one of the antagonists, or logistical deprivation causing one of the antagonist to no longer be able to conduct hostile operations, thus mandating suing for peace, or face total destruction in the field. It is interesting to note that though we are almost 65 years into the Nuclear Age nuclear armed nation states have not abandoned the purpose and place of national "massive" conventionally armed military organizations, in spite of the fact that since 8/6/1945 there have been no major nation state - nation state conventional conflicts, with Korea coming the closest. Proxy wars, and asymmetric warfare have evolved to be the preferred method of conducting combat operations - as they limit the prospect of unlimited nuclear escalation with the resultant direct, and indirect widely disbursed geographic destruction.
One of the maxims of warfare is: "... generals are always preparing to fight the last war, not the next war...." One of the major impediments to the use of bio weapons is that their spread is not predicable, and few nation states have the expensive capability to engineer, and produce the bio pathogens necessary to be immediately effective. The genetic structure of the pathogens also make stealth impossible - if it is your strain of pathogen killing everybody it is probably futile trying to convince anyone that you didn't do the foul deed. Ebola is different, it is in the wild, if you will. Doing a forensic analysis of the pathogen will simply lead back to West Africa, thus leaving no "smoking gun", or finger prints, as to who, specifically, is responsible for the event -- which leads us to the second observation.
2. The use of disease in war has a long history. In the middle ages plague victims were catapulted into heavily defended besieged strong points, thus causing the ravaging of those being besieged. John, your analysis re: West Africa appears accurate to me. Ebola will continue on unabated until all the vulnerable have died or recovered. Within the last few days I have come to see little differentiation between West Africa, and the rest of the world. The medical infrastructure that has been so touted in the media is a house of cards trying to contain the onslaught of a bowling ball. Having read several accounts of the Spanish Flu 1918 account at Ft. Devens, Mass., the onslaught was so fast, and so unexpected that all medical facilities were simply swept away within days. The numbers were so unbelievable that Washington send a personal representative to Devens just to verify the enormity of the numbers.
While Ebola, with sufficient effort, may yet be contained. We have been setting the stage for a pathogen like Ebola since the late 1920s. The transformation of America, followed by the world, from an agrarian society to an urban society has set the stage for some future pathogen to sweep away a large segment of humanity -- not just West Africa. If we presume that Ebola is a hemorrhagic flu, then the expertise probably exists in the pharma industry to create several hundred million doses of an immunization within 6 - 8 months. If Ebola is suffiecntly different and a vaccine cannot be created then it is reasonable to expect your West Africa analysis may be expanded globally. A quick look at the 1348 plague in Europe shows that the plague re-erupted every 8-12 years in Europe until the remaining population of Europe, as a whole, inherited a genetic immunity, after which the epidemics died out in the early 1400s (just a guess on my part).
Absent the development of a vaccine for Ebola, and/or its containment one may argue as to whether it really matters whether 2 - 3 billion people world wide are swept away by nuclear conflict, or pestilence.