Domestic Military Deployments in Response to COVID-19

Abstract

Militaries are commonly deployed in response to domestic disasters. However, our understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete, partly because the particulars of disasters make it hard to generalize about deployments used in response. This article leverages the COVID-19 pandemic’s global reach to systematically evaluate common hypotheses about when and how militaries are used to respond to domestic disasters. It presents original global data about domestic military deployments in pandemic response and uses it to assess common theoretical expectations about what shapes whether and how militaries are used in such contexts. The results suggest that decisions about whether to deploy militaries stem from the securitization of domestic disaster relief rather than being responses to specific disaster-related features, state capacity shortcomings, or other social or political factors, even as some of these elements shaped how militaries were used. The article concludes by outlining some hypotheses for future research about the impact of this securitization on civil–military relations.

How governance shaped military responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

“…It quickly became a domestic security issue: securitized language, such as being 'at war' with the virus, and the politics of exceptionalism were hallmarks to many countries' pandemic response (Kirk and McDonald, 2021). Indeed, we are not the first to demonstrate that a majority of countries deployed the military in some fashion when responding to the pandemic (Erickson, Kljajíc and Shelef, 2022).…”

“…We are aware of one other effort to collect data on military responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: Erickson et al (2022) similarly present original data on military deployments. Our approach differs in the way that we disaggregate deployments.…”

“…Our approach differs in the way that we disaggregate deployments. Erickson et al (2022) disaggregate deployments into logistic, healthcare, coercion, and policymaking. We disaggregate deployments into seven distinct categories.…”

Militarism and the Politics of Covid-19 Response in Uganda

“…Both are traceable to pre-crisis militarism, that is, the tendency to view and manage public affairs through the prism of the military. This approach builds on and also supplements the growing literature on global militarization of pandemics, the securitization of Covid-19 ( Acacio et al, 2022 ; Ayemoba et al, 2022 ; Erickson et al, 2022 ; Kalkman, 2021 ): pandemics are being framed as security threats in response to which military personnel, expertise, and resources are important.…”

“…We draw a distinction between “normal” or conventional humanitarian operations during public health crises, on one hand, and “overly militarized” responses, such as coercion and policymaking, which deviate from militaries’ normal humanitarian missions ( Erickson et al, 2022 , p. 8), on the other. This distinction is important because scholars may overlook militarization of Covid-19 in part because of overlapping definitions of security, especially human security perspectives that extend the concept to non-traditional threats, human freedoms from fear and want, and to rules-governed as opposed to war-based security ( Kaldor, 2011 , pp.…”