Chatter: The Long History of US Foreign Disaster Aid, with Julia Irwin
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2024
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
American aid to global victims of natural disasters might seem like a relatively new phenomenon, perhaps linked to the Marshall Plan and other major programs in the past several decades. But US efforts to assist those suffering from earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, major flooding, and other such catastrophes actually goes back to the James Madison administration, followed by a burst of intense activity and the birth of the modern US approach at the very start of the 1900s.
David Priess chatted with Julia Irwin, history professor at Louisiana State University and author of the book Catastrophic Diplomacy, about the academic study of disaster assistance, why some natural disasters stick in collective memory more than others, how US aid for catastrophes started in 1812 in Venezuela, why US disaster aid expanded in the late 1800s, case studies from Martinique (1902) and Jamaica (1907) to Italy (1908) and Japan (1923), the effects of the two world wars on US disaster aid, the genesis of USAID and other governmental entities, the modern role of former presidents in raising money for disaster relief, the concept of disaster risk reduction, what contemporary US catastrophic assistance efforts have learned from the past, and the disaster movie genre.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Catastrophic Diplomacy by Julia Irwin
The book Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation's Humanitarian Awakening by Julia Irwin
The book The Great Kantō Earthquake and the Chimera of National Reconstruction in Japan by J. Charles Schencking
The movie Waterworld
The book Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era by Jacob A.C. Remes
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:30.0 | Welcome to Chatter. I'm David Priest. This week, historian and author Julia Irwin on the long history of U.S. foreign disaster aid. |
| 0:42.0 | Between the early 20th century and World War II, the American Red Cross was the U.S. government's |
| 0:49.2 | humanitarian arm. |
| 0:51.0 | One of the interesting things about disaster relief is that other than Jamaica for the most part these things are done by the invitation and an acceptance of a government that's been affected. |
| 1:02.0 | And when a major disaster like this happens... acceptance of a government that's been affected. |
| 1:02.5 | And when a major disaster like this happens, |
| 1:05.5 | many countries, most countries are keen to kind of welcome immediate assistance. |
| 1:17.2 | What we call a natural disaster, something caused by an earthquake, a hurricane, is really about human choices. |
| 1:18.7 | An earthquake that happens in, say, Japan, which happened fairly recently, may cause relatively few casualties, |
| 1:24.8 | less destruction than, say, an earthquake that occurs in Haiti. |
| 1:27.8 | And that's about the political choices that people have made. And |
| 1:37.0 | Julia Erwin, welcome to Chatter. Thanks so much for having me. |
| 1:39.0 | I'm glad you could join us and talk about one of my favorite topics which is |
| 1:43.8 | disasters and their recovery. That sounds horrible doesn't it? It sounds like |
| 1:47.6 | we're celebrating it. Yeah, it's unfortunately or fortunately become one of my |
| 1:52.0 | favorite topics too. |
| 1:53.0 | How did you get there? |
| 1:55.0 | Did you have a personal tragedy that drove you this way or you just read about them and thought, |
... |
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