Security and global health - Stefan Elbe

Every era, it is said, has its defining malady. What will be ours?Will it be a new human pandemic caused by an animal-borneinfectious disease, such as swine flu? Will it be a lethal microbelike anthrax deliberately released by terrorists bent on causingmass civilian casualties? Or will it be one of our new'lifestyle' diseases - the epidemics of smoking, obesity andexcessive alcohol consumption that threaten to engulf modernsocieties? Perhaps our era will even be remembered for its tragicneglect of certain health issues - endemic diseases such asmalaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS that continue to ravage millionsin developing countries.

In this book Stefan Elbe shows that in the new millenniuminternational politics is no longer characterized by itspreoccupation with a single disease, but precisely by its need tourgently confront what is now an epidemic of epidemics. Over thepast decade a whole host of diverse global health issues haveraised the highest levels of political concern, provokinggovernments and international institutions to tackle such healththreats through the prism of security - be it national security,biosecurity, or human security. This convergence between healthissues and security concerns has also produced the new notion ofhealth security, which has already begun to shape the wayinternational health policy is formulated.

The intersection of the worlds of health and security isbeginning to change our very ideas of what security means and howit is achieved. At the outset of the twenty-first century,practising security increasingly demands that citizens becomepatients, that states resemble huge hospitals, and that securityitself becomes a technology of medical control. It is thistransformation of security, Elbe argues in an innovative andengaging re-conceptualization of the health-security nexus, thatmarks nothing short of the medicalization of security.