We may have escaped the Cold War, but we have not escaped the nuclear threat, which not only remains but is growing. The sense that this danger is resigned to history books, common in Washington and other Western capitals, is precisely part of its danger. It is another echo of the months and years before World War I, when the world drifted unknowingly toward disaster.
In April of last year, just after Russia had annexed Crimea, the London-based think tank Chatham House published a report on the dangers of unintended nuclear conflict. It was not pegged to the events in Ukraine, and at that point few people, including the report's authors, saw Crimea as the potential beginning of a larger conflict. Even still, it was dire in its warnings. "The probability of inadvertent nuclear use is not zero and is higher than had been widely considered," it stated. "The risk associated with nuclear weapons is high" and "under-appreciated." Their warnings were widely ignored. As the report itself noted, the world has concluded, wrongly, that nuclear weapons no longer pose an imminent threat. Attention has moved on. But the seeds of a possible war are being sown in Europe. How World War III Became Possible, Max Fisher, 29 June
You don't have to agree with all Mr Fisher's contentions to be scared by his discussion about how Russia and NATO might be sleepwalking toward devastating conflict. Still less should we be concerned to allocate blame. Probably there are faults on both sides, but trying to weigh them so as to have an opinion about which side is worse than the other is something a self-indulgence; understandable perhaps, given how powerless we ordinary people feel.
But I'd say we can do better than watch and debate on the sidelines. I cannot suggest a way out of any impending nuclear conflict, but what I do suggest is that we offer incentives for people to find ways of avoiding such a conflagration. Rather than leave everything to the politicians, ideologues, military men and the war-gamers, we could encourage people to back Conflict Reduction Bonds that will be redeemed only when there has been a sustained period of nuclear peace. Backers could include any combination of governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and philanthropists, and their funds could be swelled by contributions from the rest of us.
The maintenance of nuclear peace is a goal that is ideal for solution via Social Policy Bonds:
- it has an unambiguous, verifiable metric
- existing policy doesn't seem to be working
- nobody now knows the best ways of achieving the goal
- the goal is long term
- the goal is likely to require a multiplicity of diverse, adaptive approaches.