Nuclear catastrophe: inevitable, sooner or later

 Haig Hovaness concludes a long and disturbing essay about nuclear weapons:

The nuclear powers have survived decades of dangerous encounters without a catastrophic failure of their command arrangements. But survival is not proof of safety. ... The real world offers many possible pathways to nuclear war disaster, and no one can establish that all of them have been reliably closed. This may be the ultimate absurdity of the nuclear era. We are asked to have faith in a system of unknown reliability in which catastrophic failure is unacceptable. Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Fail-Safe Fallacy: The Hidden Danger of Nuclear Weapons, Haig Hovaness, 10 November 2026

Reading that essay, and an equally alarming essay here, it's easy to believe that a nuclear catastrophe is inevitable within, perhaps, a decade. There are many, many organisations devoted to regional, global and nuclear peace but, while they have had some limited successes, their contribution relative to the actual and potential catastrophe of conventional and nuclear war has been small. I've contacted quite a few of these organisations, but none has taken my applications of the Social Policy Bond idea to conflict reduction seriously, as far as I can tell. (Few bother to reply to my emails.) I think that's a pity, as the more efficient of these organisations, for all their hard work and good intentions, could be more effective if they had more resources, such as would be sent their way by investors in Conflict Reduction Bonds or Nuclear Peace Bonds, who were convinced of their efficiency in achieving reduced levels of conflict. Incentives matter; in this case not because the employees of these bodies aren't motivated, but because they could effectively deploy more resources to achieve their goals of bringing about sustained peace. 

Unfortunately, mention of  'the market', and the possibility of wealthy bodies making money by investing in any application of Social Policy Bonds, turns off many who are otherwise fully in agreement of the goals that the bonds would target. It's understandable: markets or have been undermined, corrupted and abused in ways that have harmed people and the environment. But the Social Policy Bond idea would channel the market's efficiencies and incentives into the public good: people who buy, say, Nuclear Peace Bonds, would lose their entire investment if a nuclear exchange occurred. They would gain only by working toward achieving the targeted goal of nuclear peace; ideally sustained for three decades or more. 

The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate. There's nothing to indicate, despite the good work being done by the multiplicity of well-meaning peace organisations, that enough of our undoubted human ingenuity is being deployed in the service of social goals, including especially nuclear peace, rather than enriching the already wealthy.