By Ramesh Jaura

This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com/

BERLIN | 6 May 2025 (WorldView) — As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of World War II, global tensions are escalating, including friction in the Baltic Sea, conflicts between Iran and Israel, unrest in Asia and Africa, and wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

The Nordic Defence Review highlights several factors that increase the risk of conflicts by 2025: climate change and resource shortages, U.-China rivalry, NATO-Russia tensions, cyberattacks, disinformation, AI weaponisation, and potential nuclear confrontations in India-Pakistan and the Korean Peninsula.

Despite the gloomy situation, two eminent organisations committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons do not despair. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), David Krieger co-founded in 1982, and the Tokyo-based Soka Gakkai International (SGI)  — a global community-based Buddhist organisation Daisaku Ikeda initiated in 1975 — convened the “Choose Hope Symposium” on March 12-13 at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, honouring David Krieger and Daisaku Ikeda, who died in late 2023.

In his Dialogue with David Krieger, Choose Hope, published in 2002, Buddhist leader Ikeda wrote: “Even in the face of the severe crisis confronting humanity today, I cannot side with the advocates of the apocalypse. Rather than the spurs and promptings of fear, we can best negotiate our challenges when guided by a vision of Hope.”

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen opened the symposium with a lecture on her book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, detailing a possible US response to a surprise nuclear attack by Russia based on insights from former security officials. “These are very human people operating in a ‘system of systems,'” said Jacobsen.

A video recording of Masako Wada, a survivor of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, followed Jacobsen’s talk. The video recounted her mother’s memories of the following days and weeks. Masako was one year old.

A panel of distinguished guests then took the stage to discuss humanity’s future. Melissa Parke, president of the 2017 Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), noted that “Nuclear weapons are the only devices ever created by humans that can destroy all complex life on Earth.” Referring to Jacobsen’s book, she added, “It makes clear that we are one accident, one miscalculation, one unhinged leader away from that outcome.”

Affirming, Peter Kuznick of American University briefed the audience on a series of close calls — when the world came within a hairsbreadth of all-out nuclear war, averted in most cases by “sheer dumb luck”.

All expressed their admiration for the atomic bomb survivors who, despite their horrific experiences, never lost Hope, never went silent, and never stopped advocating for a ban on such bombs.

The survivors’ voices led the way as panellists delved into key issues addressed in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This legally binding instrument entered into force in 2021, outlawing the possession, manufacture, distribution, and use of nuclear weapons.

Recalling the UN conference that negotiated the Treaty, over which she presided, Ambassador Elayne White accentuated one of its most notable features — that those led to its drafting with the most at stake. Leaders of small nations and civic groups, many women, worked powerfully together at the helm.

Filmmaker Andrew Davis spoke about the power of film in shaping public opinion, and journalist Mary Dickson highlighted a rarely acknowledged casualty of the Cold War — the ordinary US citizens, “downwinders,” exposed to fallout from domestic nuclear tests.

Emphasising Dickson’s testimony, Anna Ikeda, UN representative for the SGI, recalled the first States Parties Meeting to the TPNW in 2022, where the testimony of nuclear weapons survivors shifted the discussion away from abstract language and toward human realities.

“Survivors of nuclear weapons are the foremost experts because they truly understand what it means to survive their use, and their voices must be recognised the most,” she said. “We owe it to them that we have this Treaty.”

Alexander Harang, co-president of International Peace and Understanding, stressed the shared vision of Daisaku Ikeda and David Krieger on the need for a cultural shift. They argued that peace is not merely a political or diplomatic matter but a profoundly human one, requiring a fundamental transformation of consciousness.

Professor Harang concluded by sharing the following from Daisaku Ikeda in conversation with Krieger: “As history teaches, movements whose leaders lose their resolve stagnate and ultimately decline. In contrast, though it may take time, movements ultimately attain their goals as long as their leaders’ minds are aflame with their convictions”.

Source: https://rjaura.substack.com/p/is-there-a-future-for-peace-and-disarmament

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