The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a movement of survivors of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reflects widespread fear that the planet has never been closer to nuclear war. In recent weeks, Russia has lowered its threshold for using nuclear weapons and warned the United States and its allies that their support for Ukraine risks leading them to a direct conflict with Moscow that could turn nuclear.
In the Middle East, Israel, which according to weapons experts has around ninety nuclear warheads, faces Iran. There is speculation that he could attack facilities where he says Tehran, despite its denials, is developing its own atomic weapons. And the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared this week that his country would accelerate its efforts to become “a military and nuclear superpower”. The Federation of American Scientists estimates it already has 50 nuclear warheads.
“At a time when Russia is threatening nuclear weapons, all nuclear-armed states are rearming, and arms control treaties are collapsing, this warning signal is necessary,” he declared. Ulrich Kuehnarms expert at the Research Institute for Peace and Security Policy in Hamburg, welcoming the award of the Nobel Prize to the Japanese Nihon Hidankyo movement, interviewed by the Reuters agency.
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“Few Nobel Peace Prizes have been so timely, so deserved and so significant for the message they convey,” he said. Magnus Lovold from the Norwegian Academy of International Law.
The recognition comes three days before the start of the annual “Steadfast Noon” nuclear exercise, which features F-35A fighter jets and B-52 bombers among around 60 aircraft from 13 participating countries. Opponents of nuclear weapons have long campaigned for their abolition, arguing that firing one, whether intentionally or as a result of an accident or miscalculation, could trigger a spiral of retaliation that would lead to the destruction of the planet.
Proponents say the fact that rival nuclear powers could annihilate each other repeatedly – a scenario known during the Cold War as “mutual assured destruction” or MAD – is what makes it the ultimate deterrent. .
History lesson
The two atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II killed around 120,000 people, while thousands more later died from burns and radiation treatment. Today’s atomic weapons are far more powerful than those used in 1945. For decades, largely thanks to the work of Nihon Hidankyo, the destruction unleashed on the two Japanese cities was seen as a lesson from history making the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable. still nuclear weapons.
“We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”declared the five “officially” nuclear-armed states – Russia, the United States, China, France and the United Kingdom – as recently as January 2022.
The following month, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and experts began to change their assessment of nuclear risks.
On the day of the invasion, Putin warned Russia’s enemies that they would face “consequences they have never faced before in their history” if they tried to intervene. In September 2022, he called the US nuclear attacks on Japan a “precedent”. In January 2023, atomic scientists moved their “doomsday clock” closer than ever to midnight, the theoretical point of annihilation.
Since then, among many other signals to the West, Russia has announced the deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in Belarus, conducted several rounds of nuclear exercises and canceled its ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear weapons testing, a pact that the United States had never previously ratified. first place.
Arms control experts say carrying out a nuclear test…something only North Korea has done this century– would be a dramatic sign of escalation. Putin says Russia will not conduct nuclear tests unless the United States does and that it can win the war in Ukraine without resorting to nuclear weapons.
With the collapse of the arms control framework that emerged with the end of the Cold War, nuclear experts worry about the possibility of an accelerated arms race involving not only Russia and the United States, but also China .
The last pillar of arms control between the United States and Russia, the 2010 New START agreement which limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads on both sides, is set to expire in February 2026.
Beatrice Fihnformer director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, posted on X that she cried when she heard the news on Friday. He said the award should encourage more countries to join a global treaty banning nuclear weapons. “We still have a few survivors among us who have first-hand experience of what these horrible, inhumane and illegal weapons do,” Fihn wrote. “We owe it to them to act now!”
