To take advantage of the tax and tariff breaks, more and more firms will seek out partners from the hitherto opposed ethnicities. More and more, the most powerful among each group will begin to seek out partners from the other group, Serbs and Albanians and Croatians, for example, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, Arabs and Israelis in various key sites, Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Sufis in Kashmir, various embroiled tribes throughout much of Africa....

Over time, more and more, the most powerful and effective people of one ethnicity will find their own well-being at stake in the market and in the well-being of people in the formerly opposed ethnicity.

This would have to be a gradual process, not some dramatic diplomatic gesture which would be easy to oppose on an all-or-nothing basis. An incentive, to be effective, needs to be sitting on the margins of a million and one various decisions, not be the center feature of one great big decision.

Likewise, the tax and tariff breaks should not be dramatically large—two or three percent would more than suffice eventually. Conflicts build on the dramatic; peace builds on the mundane day-by-day accumulation of effects and mutual stakes. The incentive should be a (parenthetical) adjunct to development projects, not front and center on its own.

If the USA really wants to avoid the role of world policeman, and escape the costs of all these interventions and peace-keeping forces and occupying armies, it should quietly lead a move worldwide to amend the prevailing most-favored-nation tariff system to give that extra 2% to 3% break to firms which are officially in relation to regional development projects but in actuality limited to those which have shared ethnic ownership.

Alternatively, one could levy tariffs from the region 2% to 3% higher to pay for peace-keeping costs but exempt the firms which were jointly owned by the various ethnic groups involved. (I think the tax break would be easier to institute.)

We here in the States have seen first-hand the effectiveness of similar provision and preference for minority-owned firms, and for firms owned wholly or partially by women.

Our experiences here also have taught us that such arrangements need a "sunset clause." Fifteen years seem about right for a firm to be able to qualify for such provisions, followed by a gradual reduction of the preferential advantage to zero over, say, a further seven years.

Again, gradual is the word. Nothing dramatic, nothing to get anyone excited over it except the bookkeepers. But in that region, everyone's stakes would end up there, in the well-being of those who had been "on the other side."

In Northern Ireland, the peace movement has largely centered in the churches on each side. What we found is that the funds for reconstruction and for rebuilding the regional economy have to focus largely through the churches there. The churches were of huge importance during the conflict. They have to feel important in the community now, or the advance of peace becomes very problematic. Mostly unconsciously, the people at the very core of the peace process who are based in those churches may, in all sorts of little responses, unknowingly lead to the undoing of that hard-won peace.

Do your own run of Win-Win Finder on Northern Ireland and see what you come up with!

(I conveyed this information several times to the Northern Ireland Desk at the U.S. State Department, but the Department seems somewhat less than enthusiastic about ideas or answers from outside its inbred walls. When former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's astonishing successes in mediating, in Bosnia and elsewhere, were despised and castigated by U.S. State, I got the message and ceased my efforts.)

(Government in these United States no longer is for and by the people in the sense of individuals, only in the sense of organized masses, power and money. Nor are issues any more decided on their merits. Weep, oh Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Jefferson!)

Like Northern Ireland, special circumstances in each of many of the other conflict situations around the world may require something extra to bring and secure the peace. Win-Win Finder seems adept at finding it. And meanwhile, and generally, the above-proposed multi-ethnic ownership incentive could be working in countless small ways to build peace.

• Win-Win Finder. Incentive Equilibrium Analysis—resolve conflict so all sides win.
  
• Incentives as a preferred instrument of corporate and public policy, by Win Wenger, Ph.D.