The European Central Bank's strong easing move Thursday indicates that the battle against deflation continues to play out around the world, asserts CNBC contributor Ron Insana.

"The single biggest threat to the global economy is the threat of deflation," he writes on CNBC.com.

It's not as big an issue in the United States, where consumer prices rose 2 percent in the year through April, Insana says. But it's a big deal in Japan and Europe and is cropping up in China, Russia and Brazil, too.

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Central banks' war against deflation now is a "mirror image" of their fight against inflation from 1971 to 1982, Insana says.

"I believe that lack of societal memory is one reason people have difficulty believing that the war on deflation is required to be as dramatic—and as long— as the war [on deflation] that started 43 years ago."

Many in the financial world don't understand that the fear of deflation will keep the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates anytime soon, Insana writes.

"Bond markets are telling us something from all quarters—that the deflation fight is not yet over."

The ECB's stimulus package Thursday included a cut in its deposit rate to minus 0.1 percent, a reduction in its benchmark rate to 0.15 percent, and a lending facility for banks.

"There’s a little bit more than expected," Grant Lewis, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets, told Bloomberg. ECB President Mario "Draghi has pulled a couple of rabbits out of the hat, which seems to have pleased people."

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