Policy Briefs on Contemporary Peace Research and Practice

This Policy Brief outlines a call for action that requires states to pool their resources, capacities and strengths for the common good of humanity to attain global public goods on a planetary scale.The world is in the throes of two classically defined global problems that confront humanity: climate change and a ruinous pandemic. Everyone is affected; only global solutions can solve them and a truly commonly agreed blueprint is needed not only to face ongoing threats, but to avoid the worst to come in the near future. Decisive joint action in the interests of all humanity is required. In the light of the stark losses incurred by the world economy as a consequence of both these problems, I argue that a new conceptualization of security must be embraced now: humanity’s security.

This policy brief is based on a security perspective and aims to evaluate the following aspects of COVID-19 responses: 1) institutional and legal preparation; 2) recognition of an ongoing crisis; 3) response networks including the use of information communication technologies (ICTs); 4) transparency and credibility; and 5) learning from past and ongoing experiences. The empirical study focuses on three countries, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, because they have relatively mild infection rates compared with those of some European countries and the United States. This article concludes that high-level awareness is necessary to manage a non-traditional security threat and that a response system endorsed by leadership to act based on a legal framework is essential. Mature civil society is essential for resilience, and ICT tools as part of smart city programmes are necessary to improve the efficiency of the response system.

The near-universal response to the panic created by COVID-19 leads to the conclusion that the number of ICU beds needed to deal with a disaster should become a new norm, and a new way to judge when radical action is needed to respond to a global threat. So what other types of global catastrophes could call for more hospital infrastructure and personnel than is now available? The nuclear bomb is one obvious answer. This Policy Brief, first published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (28 April 2010), applies the number of available intensive care beds as the new measure for potential nuclear catastrophes.

This policy brief is a response to the report on Toda’s workshop, “A Peace Research Agenda for the 21st Century,” in which the author identifies four closely interrelated failings in the current peace research agenda and their far-reaching implications. The intention here is not to belittle the importance or usefulness of a good deal of current peace research, but to suggest the need for a more ambitious and insightful agenda than is presently the case, one which recognises the profound transformation that is gathering pace as the Modern epoch reaches its limits.

The challenge of Covid-19 will either result in innovative systemic change or a reassertion of a status quo that has proven incapable of dealing with this pandemic and with increasing economic, political, social and environmental dysfunctionality. In this statement, Toda Peace Institute Director Professor Kevin P. Clements, examines the dangers and opportunities of the crisis, and identifies the present as a moment of creative possibility from which might emerge a world fit for the rest of this challenging century.