My first contention is that what Project HOPE did on the COMFORT was neither new nor innovative. They and a number of other NGOs had deployed on the USNS MERCY the previous year, on a similar mission in SE Asia. Whilst the COMFORT was sailing noisily around the Panama Canal, the USS Peleleu, with a contingent of HOPE volunteers, was quietly reprising the MERCY mission in SE Asia. Currently, a group of HOPE volunteers is aboard a USN ‘grey-hull’ off the coast of West Africa and the USNS MERCY prepares to sail, with HOPE volunteers and other NGOs for SE Asia in June.

Moreover, whilst relationships between the military and civilian humanitarians have certainly intensified over the last two decades, they are by no means new. As Hugo Slim notes in a series of excellent articles The Stretcher and the Drum: Civil—Military Relations in Peace Support Operations. The ICRC was born in 1863 out of the Battle of Solferino, the Save the Children Fund (SCF) in 1919 out of the First World War, and OXFAM and the US Committee for Aid and Relief Everywhere (CARE) out of the Second World War in 1942 and 1945 respectively. He points out that, to a large degree, “Militarism and humanitarianism have represented two sides of the same coin – humankind’s inability to manage conflict peacefully”.

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