In late 2024, I was captivated by a concept that has profoundly resonated with my thoughts around (collective) resilience and peacebuilding. Indy Johar’s framework for “Pre-emptive Peace Strikes” (PPPS) is one that reimagines peace not as the absence of conflict, but as critical planetary infrastructure that must be proactively created long before crises emerge.
So, I am delighted to share that Indy Johar, architect of this concept, will be in dialogue with Barry Knight, long time peacebuilding with Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace (PSJP). Please feel invited to join us!
This note includes some of the insights I have gained through conversations with both of them. It is a prelude for the Open Dialogue on April 23rd.
The Urgency of Our Moment
The concept of Pre-emptive Planetary Peace Strikes is based on an unflinching assessment of our current reality. The prevalence of violent conflict is now higher than at any time since 1945, while funding for peacebuilding infrastructure is rapidly declining and traditional alliances are crumbling. The recent Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development questioned whether today’s humanitarian, development and peacebuilding systems are already broken.
We thus stand at a planetary inflection point where multiple systemic vulnerabilities — ecological breakdown, resource scarcity, governance failures, and social upheaval — are creating unprecedented volatility. Drawing on Christopher Clark’s analysis in The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914, Barry emphasised how nations still tend to “drift into positions that they don’t fully understand until it is too late”.
Indy has highlighted why, in the current context, our approaches to peacebuilding are entirely inadequate, not only because they were built for a different time, but because they fail to address the profound interconnectedness that makes us all dependent on a different kind of peace.
“The acceleration of systemic vulnerabilities across ecological, social, economic, and geopolitical dimensions is creating an increasingly unstable global landscape. These vulnerabilities aren’t isolated; they’re interconnected in ways that create cascading risks, where a failure in one system compounds vulnerabilities in others, amplifying instability.”
From Reactive to Pre-emptive Peacebuilding
What makes this framework so compelling is its shift from reactive to anticipatory approaches. Traditional peace processes have largely been reactive, intervening, for the most part, after conflicts have erupted. Today in a ‘polycrisis world’, vulnerabilities can cascade rapidly into large-scale destabilization making this reactive approach less effective or viable. As Indy puts it,
“The cost of waiting until war breaks out before mobilising peace efforts is no longer tenable—neither in human, ecological, nor economic terms.”
Reimagining Peace
Pre-emptive Planetary Peace Strikes represent a multi-tiered approach to identify and address cascading risk pathways before they escalate into conflict. This includes systemic risk mapping, strategic resource deployment, diplomatic interventions, geopolitical mediation, and planetary governance frameworks.
The Himalayas: A Critical Intervention Point
To make this concepts tangible, the Himalayas provide a compelling and urgent case study. This region faces compounding vulnerabilities: accelerating glacier melt affecting water supply for billions, territorial disputes between nuclear-armed states, increasing militarisation, and climate-induced displacement. A conflict here would have devastating human and ecological costs, and could trigger global economic shocks, supply chain disruptions, and potential nuclear escalation.
Pre-emptive Peace Strikes in this region would involve transnational water-sharing agreements, cross-border climate adaptation measures, demilitarized ecological corridors, and financial instruments to fund long-term stabilization efforts. As Indy states:
“The 21st century will either be defined by strategic pre-emptive peacebuilding or by escalating global instability.”
An Invitation to Join the dialogue
The concept of Pre-emptive Planetary Peace Strikes challenges us to reimagine peace not as an abstract aspiration but as critical infrastructure that must be deliberately built. It invites us to recognise that in our interconnected world, vulnerabilities anywhere threaten stability everywhere.
This is not a call for prescribed actions but an invitation to join a vital conversation. How might we collectively explore this concept further? What diverse perspectives and experiences can build momentum toward this vision? What small steps can each of us take to begin constructing the foundations of pre-emptive peace?
By integrating Pre-emptive Peace Strikes into our thinking and actions, we have an opportunity to shift from reacting to crises to designing a world where large-scale war becomes increasingly unlikely. This vision of transformation offers us an invitation to move from crisis response to strategic foresight, from fragmentation to planetary cooperation, from reactive peacebuilding to pre-emptive peace.
The time to build momentum for this conversation is now.
Join Indy and Barry on Wednesday April 23rd, 2025, at 4pm UK. Register for the Zoom link here.
In late 2024, I was captivated by a concept that has profoundly resonated with my thoughts around (collective) resilience and peacebuilding. Indy Johar’s framework for “Pre-emptive Peace Strikes” (PPPS) is one that reimagines peace not as the absence of conflict, but as critical planetary infrastructure that must be proactively created long before crises emerge.
So, I am delighted to share that Indy Johar, architect of this concept, will be in dialogue with Barry Knight, long time peacebuilding with Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace (PSJP). Please feel invited to join us!
This note includes some of the insights I have gained through conversations with both of them. It is a prelude for the Open Dialogue on April 23rd.
The Urgency of Our Moment
The concept of Pre-emptive Planetary Peace Strikes is based on an unflinching assessment of our current reality. The prevalence of violent conflict is now higher than at any time since 1945, while funding for peacebuilding infrastructure is rapidly declining and traditional alliances are crumbling. The recent Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development questioned whether today’s humanitarian, development and peacebuilding systems are already broken.
We thus stand at a planetary inflection point where multiple systemic vulnerabilities — ecological breakdown, resource scarcity, governance failures, and social upheaval — are creating unprecedented volatility. Drawing on Christopher Clark’s analysis in The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914, Barry emphasised how nations still tend to “drift into positions that they don’t fully understand until it is too late”.
Indy has highlighted why, in the current context, our approaches to peacebuilding are entirely inadequate, not only because they were built for a different time, but because they fail to address the profound interconnectedness that makes us all dependent on a different kind of peace.
“The acceleration of systemic vulnerabilities across ecological, social, economic, and geopolitical dimensions is creating an increasingly unstable global landscape. These vulnerabilities aren’t isolated; they’re interconnected in ways that create cascading risks, where a failure in one system compounds vulnerabilities in others, amplifying instability.”
From Reactive to Pre-emptive Peacebuilding
What makes this framework so compelling is its shift from reactive to anticipatory approaches. Traditional peace processes have largely been reactive, intervening, for the most part, after conflicts have erupted. Today in a ‘polycrisis world’, vulnerabilities can cascade rapidly into large-scale destabilization making this reactive approach less effective or viable. As Indy puts it,
“The cost of waiting until war breaks out before mobilising peace efforts is no longer tenable—neither in human, ecological, nor economic terms.”
Reimagining Peace
Pre-emptive Planetary Peace Strikes represent a multi-tiered approach to identify and address cascading risk pathways before they escalate into conflict. This includes systemic risk mapping, strategic resource deployment, diplomatic interventions, geopolitical mediation, and planetary governance frameworks.
The Himalayas: A Critical Intervention Point
To make this concepts tangible, the Himalayas provide a compelling and urgent case study. This region faces compounding vulnerabilities: accelerating glacier melt affecting water supply for billions, territorial disputes between nuclear-armed states, increasing militarisation, and climate-induced displacement. A conflict here would have devastating human and ecological costs, and could trigger global economic shocks, supply chain disruptions, and potential nuclear escalation.
Pre-emptive Peace Strikes in this region would involve transnational water-sharing agreements, cross-border climate adaptation measures, demilitarized ecological corridors, and financial instruments to fund long-term stabilization efforts. As Indy states:
“The 21st century will either be defined by strategic pre-emptive peacebuilding or by escalating global instability.”
An Invitation to Join the dialogue
The concept of Pre-emptive Planetary Peace Strikes challenges us to reimagine peace not as an abstract aspiration but as critical infrastructure that must be deliberately built. It invites us to recognise that in our interconnected world, vulnerabilities anywhere threaten stability everywhere.
This is not a call for prescribed actions but an invitation to join a vital conversation. How might we collectively explore this concept further? What diverse perspectives and experiences can build momentum toward this vision? What small steps can each of us take to begin constructing the foundations of pre-emptive peace?
By integrating Pre-emptive Peace Strikes into our thinking and actions, we have an opportunity to shift from reacting to crises to designing a world where large-scale war becomes increasingly unlikely. This vision of transformation offers us an invitation to move from crisis response to strategic foresight, from fragmentation to planetary cooperation, from reactive peacebuilding to pre-emptive peace.
The time to build momentum for this conversation is now.
Join Indy and Barry on Wednesday April 23rd, 2025, at 4pm UK. Register for the Zoom link here.