Fusion Energy for Peace Building - A Trinity Test-Level Critical Juncture

This article analyses the development of a ‘burning plasma’ fusion breakthrough, which could trigger a ‘Future Fusion Economy’ around 2040, and its implications for worsening conflicts and for peace-building. To do so, we apply Glenn D. Paige’s (2009) nonkilling global political science (NKGPS) conceptual framework, Carayannis and Campbell’s (2010) quintuple helix innovation ecosystem model, and recent path dependence theory. Nuclear fusion energy’s arrival will be a nearly unprecedented historical event. The closest parallel is the Trinity Test, which heralded the Atomic Age, the implications of which for perpetuating conflict and potentially for peace building were keenly understood at the time. As with fission, fusion energy will be weaponized as it possesses intrinsic benefits compared to fission in terms of safety and cost. However, the innovations that are leading to nuclear fusion energy are not taking place in a vacuum. Unlike the Trinity Test, which was conducted in secret in wartime without civilian or media contributions, fusion energy is being developed in peacetime in the public eye, including civil society, the global media, and social media, i.e., in a quadruple helix innovation ecosystem. Immediately following the Second World War, despite initial progress, the USSR rejected the US Baruch Plan to put atomic energy and weapons under the United Nations to stifle a nuclear arms race, due to an insufficient political imperative to cooperate. The result was the Cold War. However, the much cleaner fusion energy, once developed, can be rapidly applied to address climate change, via the quintuple helix, which incorporates socioecological interactions. As such, a global critical juncture is emerging in which a new normative nuclear order can be created via a ‘new Baruch Plan’, with the IAEA accelerating the development and commercialization of fusion energy, the United Nations working towards a Universal Global Peace Treaty, and humanity re-prioritising its goals.