Going It Alone Is Not an Option

It’s sometimes easy to despair about the future of mankind. Global climate change may make large portions of the planet uninhabitable. There are enough nuclear weapons to kill the world’s population several times over. Artificial intelligence is a potential threat to human control over our own creations.

(Read Britannica’s biography of James Baker.)

From the risk of worldwide pandemic to a cataclysmic collision with a meteor, the list of potential planetary calamities goes on and on. In fact, renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has predicted our species’ extinction if we don’t begin colonizing another planet within 100 years.

Although I am not a futurist, I understand the grave consequences of those challenges, as mind-numbing as they sometimes may seem. And I have great concern about each because I want my great grandchildren and their great grandchildren to inherit a world even better than the one I have enjoyed.

Isolating the foremost issue facing the world and placing it atop the list of all others is no easy task because there are so many daunting challenges confronting us. But here is my answer. Mankind must learn how to focus on its ability to work with one another in search of common solutions rather than fight one another over scarce resources, power, or prestige. To put it even more simplistically, we must abide by the mantra of Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers—“All for one and one for all.”

All of these challenges are global in nature, and, as a result, each will require global solutions. Going it alone is not an option. No single country, for example, can resolve the threat of climate change by itself. To do that will require cooperation from the major carbon-emitting economies and, just as importantly, a consensus for action within countries.

The same is true for the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The threat of mutually-assured destruction kept the world safe during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Today, however, more rogue nations are attempting to acquire these weapons, as are deadly terrorist organizations. Such efforts should be confronted—firmly and consistently—by the global community. In the meantime, the leaders of the nuclear-armed countries should work together to devise cooperative ways that drastically reduce their own arsenals, as we have in the past.

I recognize that achieving such a cooperative spirit is much easier said than done. After all, mankind has a history of conflict.

But there have also been periods of relative global peace and cooperation. Even during the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union recognized the need for cooperation, which led to agreements regarding space exploration starting in 1962, the Limited Test-Ban Treaty in 1963, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, among others. To generate such global cooperation, the United States and other world leaders should accentuate areas where they share similar goals, such as curbing global terrorism or coordinating scientific research that benefits the world. At the same time, major powers must manage their differences, such as human rights issues and territorial claims. In other words, we must seek pragmatic solutions to the most profound challenges that affect us all.

Additionally, we should continue to promote democracy. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of countries with some form of democratic rule has roughly doubled. In 1795 philosopher Immanuel Kant first suggested that democratic republics were less likely to make wars. He was right then. He is right now.

Finally, we should promote free trade and investment. In general, countries that trade with one another have fewer disputes than those that erect trade barriers. Such barriers often exacerbate differences between countries, as they did during the lead-up to World War II. Today, with communication and transportation systems rapidly shrinking the distances between us, integration into the global economy is a powerful engine for economic well-being and geopolitical stability.

In my 88th year, I don’t anticipate boarding a spaceship that will colonize another planet, should that indeed happen. I doubt that many of us will.

So it behooves us to work together to find solutions that benefit us all. We can do it, but only if we look beyond transitory self-advantage to enduring and existential common interests.

This essay was originally published in 2018 in Encyclopædia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence (1768–2018).