Clinton Administration declares AIDS a security threat

April 30, 2000
Web posted at: 7:54 p.m. EDT (2354 GMT)

In this story: Review of efforts to combat global AIDS epidemic Lott says AIDS not threat to U.S. security 'Numbers of people dying is quite severe' AIDS and government instability RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration has declared AIDS a national and global security threat, saying it has the potential to destabilize governments.

President Clinton's advisers in the National Security Council will lead a review of U.S. policy to fight AIDS and look at the disease's effect on international stability.

IN-DEPTH AIDS: Africa in Peril     ALSO AIDS in Africa     MESSAGE BOARD AIDS prevention   Toll of AIDS Percentages of people infected with HIV or who are suffering from AIDS in some countries: Zimbabwe: 25.9 Botswana: 25.1 Namibia: 19.4 Zambia: 19.1 South Africa: 12.9 India: .82 United States: .76 Source: The Washington Post, World Bank, WHO, UNICEF, USAID

Jim Kennedy, the White House Deputy Spokesman, said the administration now believes AIDS is "more than a legitimate ongoing health threat, but also has the potential to destabilize governments such as African or Asian nations, which makes it an international security issue.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the designation means that for the first time the National Security Council is involved in fighting an infectious disease.

The move will elevate AIDS research and work on the federal level to include the council and the Department of Defense.

Review of efforts to combat global AIDS epidemic

The council is directing an urgent review of the government's efforts to combat the global AIDS epidemic, which is particularly disastrous in southern Africa. Sixty percent of the 16 million people around the world who have died from AIDS since the 1980s lived in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Washington Post said those efforts have led to a doubling of the budget request, to $254 million, to combat AIDS overseas.

In January Vice President Al Gore told the United Nations, "The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives -- and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century."

Earlier this year Clinton developed a White House interagency group to fight AIDS and asked Congress for $100 million for AIDS prevention, care, public health infrastructure and education in the African and Asian countries hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic.

The topic will be a focus for the president at the U.S.-European Union summit in Portugal in May and the G-8 meeting in Japan in July. He will also push Washington's allies to acknowledge the security threat and assist in both research and resources.

Lott says AIDS not threat to U.S. security

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, said on Fox News Sunday, "This is just the president trying to make an appeal to certain groups."

Lott said he did not consider AIDS to be a threat to national security -- "not our national security."

The Post said the new push to fight AIDS was spurred by U.S. intelligence reports that examined the consequences of the disease as its spreads around the world. The reports looked into the broadest impact of AIDS on governments and societies.

One intelligence report prepared in January projected that a quarter of sub-Saharan Africa's population is likely to die of AIDS.

In Africa, AIDS is primarily a heterosexual disease that is hitting the middle- and upper-class populations hard.

'Numbers of people dying is quite severe'

"The numbers of people who are dying, the impact on elites -- like the army, the educated, the teachers -- is quite severe," Leon Fuerth, national security adviser to Gore, told the Post.

Fuerth, who acknowledged to the Post that the budget request is inadequate to the task, said AIDS in Africa is a "slow-motion destruction" affecting the "viability of these societies" and the "stability of the region. And it isn't as if this disease is going to stay put in sub-Saharan Africa."

The report said that based on current trends, south Asia and the former Soviet Union could also be on a course to disaster with the HIV-infected population in Russia alone projected to exceed 1 million by the end of 2000.

"The thing that's most staggering, and people are just beginning to grasp, is that Africa is the tip of the iceberg," Office of National Aids Policy co-chairwoman Sandra Thurman told the Post.

The Post said the interagency working group is scheduled to finish drafting in May its proposals for combating AIDS.

AIDS and government instability

The January intelligence report, posted on the CIA's Web site, said the "relationship between disease and political instability is indirect, but real." The report said the consequences of AIDS appear to have "a particularly strong correlation with the likelihood of state failure in partial democracies."

The study quoted research that held out the prospect of "revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, genocides and disruptive regime transitions" because of AIDS.

White House Correspondent Major Garrett, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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National Security Council (NSC)

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