In the modern world where the distribution of nukes tends to damp down hot wars among major powers, pandemics may be a larger threat than actual warfare. A big threat calls for a robust response.
We cannot count on all countries to be candid about disease flare-ups. For reasons of both internal politics/ideology and external posturing, coverups will happen. And UN based agencies are nearly useless.
Our various intelligence gathering agencies plus the State Department should be tasked to watch for local disease flare-ups in addition to the eye they keep on military and ideological developments. We could develop ways to ‘predict’ disease outbreaks in the same way we predict adverse weather events.
Not that we’d always be accurate, but advance warning would help. When many hundreds of people travel vast distances every day, we can do no less. Events happening halfway around the world can trigger outbreaks in our entrepôts. We’ll need to accept targeted travel bans on people arriving from “hot” zones as a necessary “evil.”
