ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the significance of the argument that military HIV infection rates were higher than the general public, that through AIDS this had significant national security impacts, and that it in turn it had regional and international security implications. In 2000 the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) released the most influential evidence of the links between the epidemic, military forces and conflict. The military AIDS hypothesis is a narrow and specific form of securitisation that sits alongside other perspectives developed during the 1990's and 2000's that securitised AIDS. The role of Richard Holbrooke in steering resolution 1308 into a central place in the history of AIDS highlights that the birth of the military AIDS hypothesis was essentially political. The natural implication of the catastrophisation of the impact of AIDS in the early 2000's should have been to undertake more research into military prevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa.
