I am pleased to share with you this unclassified version of a new National Intelligence Estimate on the reemergence of the threat from infectious diseases worldwide and its implications for the United States. This report represents an important initiative on the part of the Intelligence Community to consider the national security dimension of a nontraditional threat. It responds to a growing concern by senior US leaders about the implications--in terms of health, economics, and national security--of the growing global infectious disease threat. The dramatic increase in drug-resistant microbes, combined with the lag in development of new antibiotics, the rise of megacities with severe health care deficiencies, environmental degradation, and the growing ease and frequency of cross-border movements of people and produce have greatly facilitated the spread of infectious diseases.

In June 1996, President Clinton issued a Presidential Decision Directive calling for a more focused US policy on infectious diseases. The State Department's Strategic Plan for International Affairs lists protecting human health and reducing the spread of infectious diseases as US strategic goals, and Secretary Albright in December 1999 announced the second of two major U. S. initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS. The unprecedented UN Security Council session devoted exclusively to the threat to Africa from HIV/AIDS in January 2000 is a measure of the international community's concern about the infectious disease threat.

As part of this new US Government effort, the National Intelligence Council produced this National Intelligence Estimate. It examines the most lethal diseases globally and by region; develops alternative scenarios about their future course; examines national and international capacities to deal with them; and assesses their national and global social, economic, political, and security impact. It then assesses the infectious disease threat from international sources to the United States; to US military personnel overseas; and to regions in which the United States has or may develop significant equities.