Saturday, March 10. 2007
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
German Politics, US Domestic and Cultural Issues on Saturday, March 10. 2007
"Snow grinds global empire to halt," wrote FP Passport on March 7, 2007: When Hitler rained bombs on London for more than 50 consecutive nights in the fall of 1940, Londoners responded by tacking up "Business As Usual" signs on the city's streets. Life went on, and the Blitz be damned. Contrast that to this morning, when a light dusting of snow—less than one-eighth of an inch—fell on Washington. It was apparently too much for our federal government to handle. Business couldn't continue. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid struggled to explain why the chamber was helpless in the face of a dusting of snow. Taking a vote on a homeland security measure would have to wait. FP Passport makes tongue-in-cheek comments about terrorists getting cloud seeding technology and a pre-emptive strike against China. I am not linking to this American blog to make fun of Washington. Rather it seems appropriate to point out the vulnerability and lack of emergency preparedness, which US and German experts have assessed in some detail:
• GERMANY: The Third Risk Report by the Advisory Board for Civil Protection ("Dritter Gefahrenbericht der Schutzkommission") presented to the German Interior Minister on 26 March 2006 "gives an assessment of both the broad spectrum of imminent threats facing Germany and the provisions needed to meet them. In this report, expert consideration of possible future events is investigated, a distinction between ABC and other types of risks is made, and a systematic assessment of existing gaps, or deficiencies, in emergency preparedness and response is carried out."
The six "most imperative gaps, or deficiencies," are:
1. Mobilising the public’s ability to help themselves;
2. Protecting critical infrastructures;
3. Alerting and, subsequently, notifying the public, aid organisations and emergency response;
4. Providing victims with medical, pharmaceutical, and psychosocial support and aftercare;
5. Organising emergency management, in general; and 6. Supplying food and drinking water. More in the English summary and the German Zusammenfassung. Vollstaendiger Bericht (pdf) auf Deutsch.
• UNITED STATES: The Council on Foreign Relations presents an overview and an excerpt of Stephen Flynn's new book The Edge of Disaster (Amazon.com, Amazon.de): We have learned little from the cataclysms of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. When it comes to catastrophe, America is living on borrowed time—and squandering it. The truth is, acts of terror cannot always be prevented, and nature continues to show its fury in frighteningly unpredictable ways. Resiliency, argues Flynn, must now become our national motto. With chilling frankness and clarity, Flynn paints an all-too-real scenario of the threats we face within our own borders. (...) Our growing exposure to man-made and natural perils is largely rooted in our own negligence, as we take for granted the infrastructure handed down to us by earlier generations. Once the envy of the world, this infrastructure is now crumbling. After decades of neglect, our public health system leaves us at the mercy of microbes that could kill millions in the next flu pandemic. Flash flooding could wipe out a fifty-year-old dam north of Phoenix, placing thousands of homes and lives at risk. Stephen E. Flynn is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. A retired commander in the U.S. Coast Guard, he served in the White House Military Office in the George W. Bush administration and as a director for global issues on the National Security Council staff during the Bill Clinton administration.
Famous quote from Flynn's America the Vulnerable, published in 2005: "If September 11, 2001, was a wake-up call, clearly America has fallen back asleep..." And Germany has not really woken up, it seems.
Related posts in the Atlantic Review: Responding to "Al-Qaeda's Revival" and A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?
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