The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded this year’s Peace Prize to a Japanese anti-nuclear-weapons organization, citing the threat of such weapons being used in current conflicts. Japan is the only country in the world that has suffered a nuclear strike.
Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, received the Peace Prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons,” the Committee said in a statement on Friday. Witness testimony provided by the group has demonstrated that “nuclear weapons must never be used again,” it added.
The two Japanese cities were hit by two American atomic bombs in the closing days of World War II in August 1945. An estimated 120,000 people were killed, and a comparable number died of burns and radiation injuries in the following months and years.
”Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically. A nuclear war could destroy our civilization,” the Nobel Prize committee warned.
”The nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare,” it added.
Russia has warned in recent weeks that the growing involvement of Western nuclear powers in the Ukraine conflict could force it to resort to the atomic option.
The destructive policies of the West could result in a direct military confrontation between nuclear powers, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Wednesday. Washington should consider the “catastrophic” consequences of a possible escalation, she added.
President Vladimir Putin proposed an update to the country’s nuclear doctrine last month, in response to deliberations by Kiev’s Western backers on whether to grant permission for Ukraine to use high-precision, foreign-made weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Putin suggested that the new nuclear strategy should treat “aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state,” as a “joint attack” that would cross the nuclear threshold.
Ukraine’s key supporters, the US, France, and the UK all possess nuclear arsenals. Putin’s proposal to update Russia’s nuclear doctrine should discourage the Western nations from supporting aggression against Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said.