A Nobel Peace Prize to Reinvigorate the Nuclear Taboo

A Nobel Peace Prize to Reinvigorate the Nuclear Taboo
Nihon Hidankyo’s Co-Chairperson Mimaki Toshiyuki attends a press conference after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in Hiroshima City, Oct. 11, 2024 (Photo from the Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images).

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization that has for decades represented thousands of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Nobel committee said the group received the prize for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” (Washington Post)

Our Take

To the extent that the Nobel Peace Prize expresses a collective zeitgeist from year to year, then the choice of Nihon Hidankyo as this year’s honoree is understandable. Globally, angst about the menace of nuclear weapons has resurfaced since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That war is one of the rare instances in post-Cold War history of military confrontation, albeit indirect, between Russia and the West, and it is easily the most intense with the most plausible risks of escalation. If that were not enough, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made not-so-thinly veiled threats about the country’s nuclear capabilities in an effort to weaken Western resolve and isolate Kyiv.

There are other visible nuclear concerns as well. China is rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal. North Korea has become a nuclear weapons state. And the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal removed a key obstacle to Iran becoming a nuclear threshold state. These developments, along with Putin’s nuclear gamesmanship, serve as a reminder that the world has entered a dangerous new era of nuclear risk.

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