From Ebola to conflict: Risks rise and the US is less able to respond

The Trump administration’s scramble to respond to the current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa opened another round of scrutiny of the rapid dismantling of a wide swath of U.S. foreign assistance institutions, spearheaded by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, and overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. As The Hill and other news outlets have reported, the United States now faces greater risk without a coordinated international health response infrastructure that existed for just this kind of emergency.

But the complexities of the Ebola outbreak call to mind a new University of Chicago study, which noted the sharp increase in conflict in African countries that relied heavily on U.S. assistance. Specifically, the study found “an increase [in all conflict-related events] of approximately 12.3 percent, an increase in the number of battles of around 7.3 percent, and an increase in protests and riots of around 6.8 percent.” These dry statistics mask the tragic realities of communities like those in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where public health emergency responders from around the world have struggled to contain what may be history’s worst Ebola outbreak.

Their effort is made much more challenging after decades of armed conflict that have left local populations traumatized and suspicious of outsiders. Years of war have also gutted local health facilities and weakened civil society groups that typically serve as the first line of a global early warning system for the outbreak of conflicts and the........

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