Sleepwalking into nuclear war

 Antiwar.com describes the US military's latest brainwave: 

The Pentagon is reportedly drafting a new nuclear strategy that’s expected to emphasize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to give the president more “options” in a potential nuclear conflict. The strategy... is being drafted by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, who has for more than a decade called for the US to develop additional capabilities to fight a “limited nuclear war.” The idea would be to shift the US nuclear strategy away from the focus on using strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out an adversary’s nuclear capabilities and focus more on the possibility of using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in a “regional” conflict. Pentagon drafting new nuclear strategy..., Dave DeCamp, Anti-war.com, 9 August 2026

The logic is impeccable; each step can be fully explained by invoking the current situation and fears about what others might do. But the stakes now are impossibly high. It's surely worth trying something more radical than the processes that have led us to the brink of catastrophe. 

There are good, hardworking people working for organisations that have as their ostensible aim the ending of conflict at all levels: global, regional and local. But those best placed to know reckon we are closer than ever to nuclear conflict. The Pentagon's new strategy could take us even closer. We need to do things differently. 

Nuclear Peace Bonds could help halt the drift towards nuclear conflict, by putting in place a system that encourages and rewards people for researching, implementing and refining the most promising of such alternative approaches. The would inject the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of nuclear peace, sustained for a period of at least thirty years. 'Nuclear peace' could be defined as a period during which the number of people killed within 24 hours by the detonation of a nuclear device is less than (say) 500. The bonds would reward those who achieve such a sustained period of nuclear peace, whoever they are and however they do so: only the outcome would be stipulated. 

As well as pursuing activities the exact nature of which we cannot anticipate, investors in Nuclear Peace Bonds could do things that cannot be done by existing organisations, constrained as they are by precedent, and their perceived need to maintain their existence and so satisfy the bodies that fund them. So, for example, in today's world, nobody would have any incentive to bribe people close to decision makers in politics or the military to advocate nuclear disarmament. Likewise, an existing body is unlikely to try to get religious extremists to tone down their rhetoric or take up golf, even if it believed that were the most efficient way of reducing the probability of nuclear conflict. The risk and consequences of exposure and backlash are too great for current institutions to bear. Holders of Nuclear Peace Bonds, however, would not be deterred from whatever actions they think most effective: funds to redeem their bonds could be held in escrow. Once nuclear peace had been achieved and sustained, their reward would be guaranteed. 

Investors in the bonds could operate in parallel with existing bodies. They might decide that some of their activities are worthwhile and channel more funding into the most promising of these. Or, as with the bribery example, they could pursue radically different approaches. The main point is that all the investors decisions would be entirely directed to sustaining nuclear peace at least cost. Their goal would be exactly congruent with society's, and their funding would attract resources and expertise away from some  well-rewarded activities of little social merit. Advertising dog-food or writing algorithms for high-frequency share trading are two examples; there are many others. 

The Social Policy Bond concept, of which Nuclear Peace Bonds are on application hasn't gone very far in the decades since I came up with it. A non-tradable version is now in use in about 25 countries, but it's inherently limited as a means for achieving long-term goals, for reasons that I've explained here and here. I still hope that my original concept will be deployed, as I don't think we are currently on track to meet such huge and urgent challenges as nuclear conflict. 

Everything is backwards...

 A quote attributed to Michael Ellner: 

Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom. Michael Ellner

It's not true in every case, and it's not inevitable, but there's enough truth in it to be disturbing. And, while there are many idealistic doctors and lawyers, the majority become fully invested in their career and dependent on the goodwill of their governing body. And these bodies have, as their overarching goal, self-perpetuation, whatever their original ideals. All their ideals, activities, memberships and rules are subordinate to that goal.

Which is why I believe we should make policy as if these institutions do not exist. Under a Social Policy Bond regime, policy would be expressed in terms of verifiable, transparent outcomes, and any institutions that come into being as a result would have, as their sole focus, the efficient achievement of these outcomes. Such a regime would be ideal for those social and environmental goals for which:

• current policy is failing,
• a long-term view is essential,
• no obvious solutions exist, and
• a range of diverse, adaptive approaches is likely to be essential.

Sadly, there are many big, urgent challenges that satisfy all those criteria. For example, I've written about applying the Social Policy Bond concept to nuclear peace, climate change, and health. These policy areas would all benefit by, first, clarifying exactly what we want to achieve; most likely a set of subsidiary objectives all of which would have to be met before the targeted outcome would be deemed achieved. Second, by channelling the market's efficiencies and incentives into that achievement. What would happen then? With a guaranteed payout on success, investors would compete to bid for the bonds; collude, tacitly or otherwise, to bring about speedy achievement of the goal. This would entail research, experimentation and refinement of a range of possible approaches toward solving the targeted problem, with only the most promising of these approaches being pursued. A mosaic of diverse and adaptive approaches would be the most likely result. I believe a new sort of organisation would arise: again, it might not be a formal body, but its structure and composition, and all its co-ordinating activities would be entirely subordinate to achieving the targeted social or environmental goal. Thus, there would be an inextricable link between the objective of the organisation and society's targeted goal. 

'The ticks are winning': we need to focus on health outcomes

Jonathan Mingle and Sean Rameswaram discuss the tick problem in the US:  

Are we not fighting back against the ticks?

Not really. I mean, this is one of the surprising takeaways from my reporting is that we’re barely even trying. One way of understanding that is to think about two numbers. One number is 90 percent. 90 percent of vector-borne disease cases in the US are from ticks.

90 percent?

Yeah. And yet despite the fact that 90 percent of cases of vector-borne illness come from tick bites, if you look at what local city and county health agencies do in terms of vector control, 80 percent of what they do is mosquito control, and only about 10 or 11 percent of these local health agencies around the country do any kind of tick control. So why is that? It’s a familiar story in the public health world. It’s not enough funding or policy support for trying out, testing, and deploying new approaches to controlling ticks. The ticks are winning, Danielle Hewitt and Sean Rameswaram, 'Mother Jones', 1 August 2026

...Or a lack of incentives. This kind of mismatch between the a problem and the incentives devoted to solving it bedevils all policymaking in areas where existing institutions have no incentive to explore new approaches. It's rife in the field of health policy, where those in the profession have little incentive or capacity to think beyond their speciality, and so advise policymakers accordingly. 

Given the widespread, and justifiable, distrust of pharmaceutical companies, it would seem that this is the time to move towards rewarding those who achieve favourable health outcomes, rather than those who merely engage in activities purporting to deliver those outcomes. Those currently employed in healthcare are reacting rationally to the incentives on offer, to the detriment of our physical and mental health. And those incentives are to keep funding existing bodies and their approaches; as well, they encourage over-screening and over-diagnosis. 

It's time for a new approach. My suggestion is that rather than policymakers' focusing on the means by which they think good health can be achieved, they instead focus on targets for good physical and mental health, and provide incentives for people to achieve those targets. The Social Policy Bond concept, applied to health, would do this, and more: it would inject the market's incentives and efficiencies into all the processes necessary to improve a nation's health, regardless of the vested interests of the current service providers. A short piece on Health Bonds can be found here, and a much longer version, describing Tradeable Health Outcome Bonds is here. A bond regime would channel our scarce resources into the most efficient means of improving our health, including those currently neglected or not even considered by our current healthcare bodies. 

Health Bonds wouldn't stipulate how our health goals shall be achieved, nor who shall achieve them. This allows a broader approach. For example: if ticks are agreed to be a much bigger threat to health than mosquitos, then a bond regime would channel more resources into dealing with ticks rather than mosquitos. More broadly, our current narrow, short-term compartmentalised policy approach would not look into the positive health impacts of subsidising advanced courses for young drivers of motorbikes or cars. But holders of Health Bonds would look at such measures, investigate their possible health impacts, and make an informed decision as to whether any improvement they might bring to a population's health is worthwhile, compared to other possible interventions. 

Policymakers in general take the existing institutions, with their limited purview, as a given. An outcome-based approach, such as I envisage in a Social Policy Bond regime, would subordinate the composition, structures and all activities of institutions to the outcomes that policymakers target. For more on the new sorts of organisation that this approach would generate, please see here.