Cesspits are also stable: how to bring about peace in the Middle East

Aljazeera reports:  

[German] Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged both Israel and Iran to avoid any “further escalation”. Both sides should refrain from steps that could “destabilise the entire region,” said Merz... 

Australia said it was “alarmed by the escalation between Israel and Iran”. “This risks further destabilising a region that is already volatile. We call on all parties to refrain from actions and rhetoric that will further exacerbate tensions,” said Foreign Minister Penny Wong. How the world is reacting to Israel attacks on Iran nuclear, military sites, Aljazeera.com, 13 June 2025 

One great advantage of a Social Policy Bond regime is that it would oblige us to choose real, meaningful goals. Cesspits are generally stable, but a social environment as stable a cesspit is hardly aspirational.  

 

 

 

 

 

Ahh, stability: a cesspit in New Zealand 

 

I'm convinced that, for most of us, a stable Middle East is not a goal. A peaceful, prosperous, enlightened Middle East would surely be a more desirable goal for the vast majority of the region's population, but getting there will mean change. Instability is a necessary condition for movement towards our goal, but it's not sufficient. It needs to be guided and that is where a Middle East Peace Bond regime could help. 

Now peace in the Middle East - a lasting, warm peace - might seem an outlandish goal, and so it is if we take a short-term view. But a regime would have as its goal a peace sustained for, say four decades. How to achieve that? No single approach will work by itself. My suggestion is that we put in place incentives to research, experiment and implement the most promising of a range of diverse approaches, always with the ultimate goal of a lasting peace in mind. 

While robust definitions of 'peace' will need to be thought through, a long-term peace means more than the absence of war. We could issue Middle East Peace bonds redeemable only when there had been no significant numbers of people in the region killed, injured or forced to flee their homes during our four decades. That would necessitate not just the minimisation of casualties, but elimination of the threat of such casualties: only a warm peace would bring that about, circumventing the need for a definition of such a concept. 

Middle East Peace Bonds would be an application of the Social Policy Bond concept. They would, in effect, contract out the achievement of long-term peace to those who are most efficient at bringing it about. Bondholders have incentives explore and implement new, more diverse options than are currently being undertaken, and they could divert funding into the most promising of these. They would have more latitude for action than existing - failing - efforts undertaken by governments. For example, bondholders could subsidise intermarriage between members of different religious or territorial communities. They could sponsor school exchange visits, sports matches or the broadcasting of peaceful propaganda. They could arrange for the most virulent warlords and preachers of hate to take one-way, first-class journeys to luxurious holidays in remote resorts with limited access to communication facilities. There are well-meaning and hard-working bodies working today in imaginative and helpful ways (see here for example), but they lack resources: bond regime would channel funds into the most promising of these bodies. 

Whatever holders of bonds targeting war and terrorism do, they will have successes and failures. But they will also have incentives to terminate projects that are failing and to refine and replicate their successes - to be efficient, in other words. Government has no such direct incentive. It cannot offer direct financial rewards for success, and its talent pool is limited, partly for that reason. It has a short-term focus, too often resorting to military action, and it would get into trouble if it advocated things like intermarriage, or sponsored sybaritic retirement for the region's warmongers. Its actions tend to be one-size-fits-all, slow to adapt and advocated mainly because they have been done before, rather than because of their putated efficiency: government will always prefer tried, tested and failed solutions to innovative, promising, and successful initiatives that entail relinquishing some of their powers. 

The field of conflict is one area where the private sector can and should be given the chance to operate more freely. Sadly, it is largely private, short-term incentives - to arms dealers and fanatics - that keep conflict going. A well-funded bond regime would redress the balance. 

Under a Middle East Peace Bond regime, government could still play a role in defining our peace goal and raising some of the revenue for its achievement, but I am more convinced now that the private sector will have to take the initiative. That could mean a combination of NGOs, interested corporations, philanthropists and ordinary citizens. Probably all of these, with perhaps some neutral governments, would be needed to raise sufficient funding. The goal of long-term, warm peace, would benefit tens of millions and if that means making the current iteration of the region less stable than a cesspit, then so be it. 

Blundering toward catastrophe

 Gillian Tett interviews Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency: 

...Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has put civilian nuclear plants in the line of fire; meanwhile Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. "This is worrying because it normalises this," Grossi admits with masterly understatement. "In the past, this was quite taboo, but now people talk about tactical nuclear weapons like something which could be contained or permissible." Grossi also faces a nuclear-armed North Korea, rising tensions between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, and his "biggest preoccupation": Iran. Lunch with the FT, 'Financial Times', 7 June 2025

The taboo against threatening the use of nuclear weapons has been broken.  It now appears inevitable that, unless we are determined to establish long-term nuclear peace, the taboo against their use will also break. There are few incentives not to threaten use of nuclear weapons, and plenty of incentive to acquire them. We need to offer meaningful and effective incentives for people to do everything they can to deter the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons.     

For many of our social goals, one difficulty is reliably monitoring progress toward their achievement. That certainly applies to the Social Policy Bond concept - but not in the case of nuclear peace. Use of a nuclear weapon that kills, say, more than 500 people, or that creates a serious electromagnetic pulse, is something that we could unequivocally detect. There are other reasons why maintaining nuclear peace would be an ideal goal for the Social Policy Bond concept:

•     existing initiatives don't seem to be working,
•     the goal is long term, and
•     the goal is likely to require a multiplicity of diverse, adaptive approaches. 

There are bodies, including the IAEA, that are working toward nuclear peace either as their main activity or indirectly, but they are typically short of resources and - relatedly - have little financial incentive to succeed. 

Given that a nuclear conflict is one of the worst scenarios imaginable, dwarfing even our serious, urgent social and environmental problems, it's worth exploring new approaches to nuclear peace. I don't know a way out of any impending nuclear conflict, but what I can propose is that we offer incentives for people to find such ways. Rather than leave everything to the politicians, ideologues, military men and the war-gamers, or even the well-meaning, dedicated professionals at bodies such as the IAEA, we could encourage the issuing of Nuclear Peace Bonds that would be redeemed only when there has been a sustained period of nuclear peace. Backers would contribute to the funds for redemption of the bonds, which would occur only when nuclear peace, defined as, say, the absence of a nuclear detonation that kills more than 500 people (or a serious electromagnetic pulse) has been sustained for three decades. The bonds could be backed and issued by any combination of governments, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists, and their funds could be swelled by contributions from the public.

Nuclear Peace Bonds could run in parallel with existing efforts. Indeed, it's likely to channel more resources into those existing bodies whose activities are most promising. It would also encourage new approaches, the precise nature of which we cannot and need not know in advance.

A Nuclear Peace Bond regime would reward those who achieve peace, whoever they are and however they do so. It’s an admittedly novel approach, but the relevant question is 'what is the alternative?'. The Doomsday Clock is currently at 89 seconds to midnight.