Introduction: war as disruption of the human-microbe environment

Much attention has rightly been concentrated on the adverse ecological consequences produced by wartime destruction of the natural environment. Iraq's deliberate attacks on Kuwaiti oil installations serve as dramatic examples of such environmental damage. When we contemplate the environmental consequences of war, we should also be concerned about war-induced disruptions to environmental contexts that encompass more than damage to natural ecosystems. The environmental context that forms the backdrop for this chapter is the complex relationship between humans and pathogenic microbes. One of the most devastating environmental consequences of war is the disruption of the peacetime human-microbe relationship, which produces outbreaks and epidemics of infectious diseases.

Both historical and more recent events prove that armed conflict produces opportunities for pathogenic microbes to spread in human populations. Experts often cite war as a factor contributing to the re-emergence of infectious diseases as a public health problem in the last twenty to thirty years. While warfare clearly plays a role in the current global crisis of emerging infectious diseases, it has always been a situation of microbial opportunity.

The human and microbial world have been interacting since the development of Homo sapiens. The long history of human-microbe interaction is punctuated by changes in the relationship that have allowed microbes or humans the opportunity to gain an upper hand. Recent analysis of the global problem of emerging infectious diseases provides a window on the many different kinds of changes that disrupt the human-microbe environment: population growth, urbanization, migration, climatic events, sexual behavior, technological and scientific advances, and war.