Global peace and security hinges on public health. The poor public health in the world is currently the biggest threat to the peace and security that is being striven for on a global level.
The health of the world’s citizens is necessary to maintain peace and security. For individual countries, their security is very much threatened when their population becomes sick. Sickness has the obvious possible result in death (and thus a smaller population) but it can also lead to a lack of efficiency in the country, threatening security. In addition, there is the threat of people traveling into individual countries and infecting populations, which can radically alter the way that individual states conduct international relations.
Public health problems are prevalent in the world and greatly effect the relations between states. In America, the government sees obesity as one of the major national security threats, because it threatens the country’s ability to recruit for the military and thus hampers defense. In Haiti, a cholera outbreak threatens the progress the nation has made in the past year. Africa is also overwhelmed with public health concerns. Not only are various states grappling with HIV/AIDS and malaria, they are also forced to deal with the health effects from a lack of clean water and proper nutrition. The world will need to deal with these and a plethora of other public health problems before they can truly become secure.
Although I agree that public health could be detrimental to a state's security, I disagree with your argument that it is the greatest threat to to peace and security. I believe that there are far greater priorities for states to address to protect their sovereignty, such as nuclear proliferation or drug and oil based financing of unstable regimes. Additionally, I do not see how public health is a threat to peace as, to the best of my knowledge, there have been no recent bloody conflicts that had their roots in poor public health.
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