Pandemic Preparedness: A U.K. Perspective on Overlaps with Countering Terrorism

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Abstract: The United Kingdom has developed a large and intricate counterterrorism infrastructure in the face of a persistent and evolving terrorist threat. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a government-in-crisis mode has drawn on the counterterrorism playbook. The severity of the crisis, however, was partly explained by the United Kingdom’s failure to treat national health as a top-tier national security concern. Linking national health and national security issues, however, carries both risks (to civil liberties, for example), as well as potential rewards (by enabling better resourcing and coordination efforts to counter pandemics and bioterrorism simultaneously).

 

The last two decades have made clear that terrorist attacks can be high-impact events with the potential to significantly change the ways in which societies function. And yet, a single event in 2020—a global pandemic—has been able to produce these effects in a greater order of magnitude. Both terrorism events and public health emergencies require high levels of planning and resource distribution to manage risk. This article examines this overlap in greater detail.

 

Based on the scale of terrorist attacks that the United Kingdom has faced in recent years, this article begins by examining the bolstering of systems, processes, and budgets as a response to countering terrorism on a national scale. An internally focused decision-making system and resource dis-tribution framework has allowed for the use of mechanisms orig-inally developed to counter terrorism, such as the national threat level system and protection of critical infrastructure and civilians (‘Protect’ under the United Kingdom’s counterterrorism strategy), to be employed in the response to other national emergencies, such as COVID-19. As such, the strengthened national security apparatus has led to significant overlaps between countering terrorism and COVID-19.

 

Despite these potential overlaps, current pandemic preparedness and response plans are dwarfed in comparison to security apparatuses, particularly when it comes to budgetary allocation, which has tended to focus on more traditional forms of defense spending rather than health threats, even though the latter may have a higher impact on society in terms of casual-ties. This brings up the question, therefore, of whether it is time to define national health as a top-tier national security priority. This article examines the potential risks as well as the rewards of this approach, with one of the risks relating to the issue of civil liberties. One potential reward in treating national health as a key national security concern is that it could lead to a more coordinated and better-funded effort to counter both future pandemics and bioterrorism, with steps taken to improve preparedness for the former benefiting readiness for the latter.

 

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Engineered Pathogens and Unnatural Biological Weapons   another "interesting" article west point