—Money devoted to ever-more expensive military competition is money unavailable for adaptation, energy transformation and development.

Opinion by Mathew Carr*

AI, climate and security spending are usually treated as three separate policy problems when, strategically, they are becoming one problem: how humanity allocates enormous amounts of capital and technological power under conditions of growing geopolitical distrust.

The UN is unusually well placed to attempt a bargain precisely because no single great power can impose it.

The Case for a New Global Grand Bargain

The world is entering an era in which three transformations are occurring simultaneously: the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the accelerating disruption of the climate system, and a renewed global arms race.

Each is dangerous in isolation. Together, they create a problem that existing international institutions are poorly equipped to manage.

The United Nations should therefore attempt something much more ambitious: a Global Grand Bargain linking artificial intelligence, climate action and defence spending.

The logic is straightforward.

Countries will not make large concessions on security simply because they are asked to do so in the name of peace.

Nor will developing countries accept climate constraints if they believe wealthy nations are simultaneously spending vast sums on weapons while asking poorer countries to bear the costs of decarbonisation.

And the great powers will not accept restrictions on strategic technologies if they believe their rivals are gaining military advantage by ignoring them.

The solution is to connect the issues.

The bargain could offer countries something they desperately need: greater security in exchange for greater restraint on use of fossil fuels and greater investment in global public goods such as funding to clean up climate loss and damage.

Countries could commit to greater transparency over defence spending and, where geopolitical circumstances permit, limits or reductions in certain categories of expenditure, eg soldiers, tanks and rifles.

A portion of the resulting fiscal space could be directed towards climate adaptation, clean energy and development.

At the same time, countries could agree common rules governing the most dangerous applications of AI, particularly autonomous weapons, cyber operations and increasingly powerful dual-use systems.

This would not mean asking countries to disarm unilaterally.

It would mean creating mechanisms in which security guarantees, technological cooperation and climate finance reinforce one another.

There is already a foundation for such an initiative. In 2024, UN member states adopted the Pact for the Future, which explicitly brought together peace and security, sustainable development, climate change and AI governance.

Its Global Digital Compact established a framework for international AI cooperation, including an international scientific panel and a global dialogue on AI governance. 

The UN has also begun examining the relationship between military expenditure and sustainable development.

In 2025, the Secretary-General warned that global military spending had reached a record $2.7 trillion in 2024 and argued for a recalibration of security and development priorities. 

What is missing is the grand strategic connection.

AI could make military power dramatically cheaper, faster and more autonomous.

Climate disruption can intensify migration, food insecurity, political instability and conflict. Meanwhile, money devoted to ever-more expensive military competition is money unavailable for adaptation, energy transformation and development.

These are therefore not three separate negotiations. They are different dimensions of the same question: what kind of security does humanity want?

The UN should convene the major powers, emerging economies and developing countries around a single negotiating table and attempt to construct a bargain based on reciprocal commitments: responsible AI development, greater transparency and restraint in military spending, substantial climate finance, and investment in technologies that make countries simultaneously safer, richer and more resilient.

The UN cannot impose such a settlement.

But it can provide something increasingly scarce: a legitimate place where rival powers can exchange concessions across different domains of national interest.

The key is whether powerful leaders including Donald Trump can see the benefits of collaboration instead of continuous aggression.

The alternative is to keep managing each crisis separately, until they collide.

A smart Trump, grand-bargain options in hand, would recognise that the three crises already have.