Regional Contagion: Social, Economic, Health and Population Crisis Diffusion; Final rept

摘要

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain and subsequent governance vacuum, the globe has seen more instability than any time in recent history. In this environment, multiple crises have escalated and diffused through spatial, temporal and population networks, like a contagion. Many times a crisis in one dimension, like population, may bleed into other dimensions such as the social, economic or health realms. Worse yet, these crises can escalate and lead to regional contagion by crossing borders. Evolving to this new world order, the U.S. national strategy and joint doctrine outline a need for conflict prediction and prevention along with interagency cooperation. Therefore, the operational commander must understand and anticipate the health, social, economic, and population interrelations, contagion and spillover effects of crisis. Using a simple contagion model developed from the health community, this work shows how a theater commander, the interagency and regional partners can assess, predict and possibly prevent crisis contagion, averting regional escalation. The model and methodology is applied to U.S. Southern Command, and uses Argentina, specifically, as a case study.