Planning for Terrible Situations

For many years, various world leaders, including Barack Obama and several Europeans, have participated in joint exercises designed to test their responsiveness and coordination in the face of a hypothetical emergency in which a terrorist group creates a dirty bomb — a nuclear bomb — and threatens to detonate it within an international financial center.

The latest exercise took place last March at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, Netherlands. World leaders gathered with their senior advisers, made decisions in person, contacting and coordinating with each other according to the increasingly threatening and catastrophic situations prepared by a group of international military experts that played out on the virtual stage.

The final result of these presidential exercises is unknown. However, one of the consequences of the summit called for Japan, Italy and Belgium to send some 500 tons of nuclear waste material to the United States, where it would supposedly be better controlled. The experts say, however, that Japan still has access to too much plutonium, which it has been recycling as fuel for its civil nuclear reactors, which it stores in its own territory, and which many experts would like to see maintained elsewhere.

The question is not whether or not these exercises are necessary. There is little doubt in that regard. What is striking, though, is that these world leaders readily agree to participate in this type of exercise of a military nature, but they do not hold similar exercises with respect to how they would react in the face of a possible crisis provoked not by a terrorist attack on an international financial center, but by an economic storm born from those same centers, or by a political bomb that spins out of control and causes similar consequences.

Of course, it is not for a lack of possible virtual scenarios. If you look at a map, you can see that potential threats and political uncertainties have notably increased in a span of only a few years. It is not just a question of the sudden conflict between Ukraine and Russia, but also the total war against the Islamic State that developed in a blink of an eye within territory that covers several countries. Not to mention the possible repercussions of the democratic movements in Hong Kong, the territorial conflicts between Tokyo and Beijing, or the constantly troubled Near East. Or the possibility of a rapid escalation of the European recession, which could put their currency at risk again.

The financial markets appear calm, warned the famous economist Nouriel Roubini, as if none of these troubles affect them. But that is a false impression. Any small financial storm could turn into a hurricane in a matter of days; any political turbulence could transform into an unstoppable, destabilizing force. Until well into the summer of 1914, the financial markets ignored the risks that clearly floated in the air, says Roubini.

Obviously, it seemed like a good idea for the European Union to prepare some exercises in which the all the leaders of its member countries, for example, were obligated to jointly examine the worst possible political scenarios and the eventual consequences of incorrect decisions. These presidential exercises stem from the premise that it is not enough to require that world leaders merely fulfill security measures, but that the worst is possible and that it is very easy to make mistakes when decisions are made under extreme pressure.

Maybe it would help to begin thinking that it is not enough to perform stress tests on the biggest financial entities of these countries with a single currency, but rather that it is necessary to measure the leaders, examine the worst case scenarios, and begin to coldly calculate how to reduce the impact of an uncontrollable political crisis — a political bomb. Maybe if our leaders had begun to carry out similar exercises years earlier, it would have been possible to avoid some of the grave errors that Europeans committed in the management of the crisis, errors which we still feel the effects of today.