Diplomacy when disaster strikes

Folks across Jamaica are just starting to emerge from shelter after the Cat-5 Hurricane Melissa barrelled into the island with winds of up to 282km/h (175mph).

It’s the third-worst hurricane to hit the Caribbean after Wilma (2005) and Gilbert (1988), and it’s now ploughing into Cuba as a Category-4. So as details become clearer (including several tragic deaths), we wanted to offer some insights into how embassies and capitals approach these kinds of disasters, realistically all starting with…

• Step 1: Help your staff

You don’t always get advance warning, so embassies typically run emergency drills every year to test their back-up generators, satellite links, radio comms, water/food supplies, etc.

If you do get a warning, embassies will often evacuate non-essential staff and families.

In addition to the obvious welfare concerns, this reduces the burden on local authorities, while also enabling remaining embassy staff to focus on doing their job, which gets us to…

• Step 2: Help your nationals 

Prevention is better than cure, so the best way to help your fellow citizens is often just to push them home before disaster hits. To that end, embassies have put out some remarkably stark “leave now” warnings this week, with tourists dutifully jamming the exits.

But many still typically remain for all kinds of reasons: no seats, no insurance, no money, no clue, or even no flights (airlines started cancelling services earlier this week). Jamaican authorities say there were still 25,000 tourists on the island when Melissa hit.

For those left, capitals will typically set up a hotline to handle the worried families back home (to avoid the embassy getting swamped), while blasting guidance out if (big if) comms are still working, urging folks to find shelter and follow the local authorities.

Then once the situation stabilises, embassy staff will often spend the bulk of their time out in evacuation centres, hospitals, and (yes) morgues, helping connect citizens with their families, their insurance providers, their airlines and (in extreme cases) repatriation flights.

• Step 3: Help your hosts 

In parallel (if not in advance), HQs back home will be coordinating any help they can offer hosts (Jamaica in this case), subject to embassy advice from the ground — it’s a delicate balance between wanting to help, but not wanting to further overwhelm local authorities.

The best approach is often to present a ‘menu’ of ways you can assist, whether engineers to repair infrastructure, doctors to treat patients, C-130s to deliver food and water, search & rescue teams to help find survivors, etc. The local authorities then pick what they need.

Intrigue’s Take

While nothing unites humanity like a slap from Mother Nature, the reality is capitals are still quietly but acutely mindful of the geopolitics at play. Governments want to both…

• i) project their nation as a generous, capable, and dependable partner (the US and China each maintain military hospital ships for disaster relief), and
• ii) build goodwill with key decision-makers, including not just political elites but also the generals who often lead local responses.

That’s because these days, messaging is key: some, like Russia, have a record of faking or amplifying online edge-lords to allege (say) defects in aid, or a disparity between DC’s help for foreigners versus helping Americans back home. Any wealthy country can and should do both, but this criticism is often an attempt to deflect from Putin doing neither, while also eroding a) domestic trust in DC, and b) global trust in the US.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s President Petro just gave us another timely example, describing Hurricane Melissa as “saving the Caribbean” 🤔 — it’s a pretty indelicate nod to the fact that, while a Cat-5 storm leaves a trail of death and destruction, it also delays any US military action against Venezuela’s Maduro regime or alleged narco-boats in the area.

So it’ll be interesting to see what role the US naval build-up now plays in any disaster response, as the reality is it can leave a lasting footprint: for example, Indonesia’s then leader (Yudhoyono) was famously struck by the scale and speed of Australia’s help after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, shaping his perception of a more benevolent neighbour.

But it can also work the other way: Myanmar’s junta has famously blocked some aid for fear of losing its grip, gutting its own credibility in the process. And while Japanese rescue groups were among the first foreign aid teams to enter Sichuan after China’s 2008 quake left 90,000 dead, increasingly toxic Tokyo-Beijing ties might’ve explained why Xi then said “no thanks” to Japan after China’s 2013 quake. A government worried about its own legitimacy might think twice before relying on any help from abroad, let alone from a top rival.

Sound even smarter:

• If you’d like to help, NGOs like Water Mission are focused on helping rebuild local water supplies, which are often the first services to collapse in a hurricane.