As we approach the 81st anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we invited colleagues to share a short reflection. Eighty-one years on, the nuclear risks we face have evolved in profound ways: from renewed nuclear brinkmanship and eroding arms control to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies that could reshape military decision-making in potentially dangerous ways. How does this anniversary shape the way you think about your work? Has it brought a particular question, challenge, or priority into sharper focus? How can organisations like the ELN help ensure that the human consequences of conflict remain at the centre of debates on nuclear policy, strategic stability, emerging technologies, and international security?
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“As direct testimony disappears, our task shifts from amplifying survivors’ voices to becoming custodians of their memory – channelling it into our convenings and policy recommendations, rather than simply invoking it on anniversaries.”
Bekki Field
Deputy Executive Director
This is a timely moment to reflect on how the arms control community can carry forward the devastating lessons of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Last year’s 80th anniversary saw major global efforts to mark the occasion, including my former organisation, The Elders, holding its bi-annual Board meeting in Hiroshima to shine a spotlight on the horrors of 1945. But we are reaching the point where the human story, in its most palpable sense, is fading from view. According to the latest government data, 91,105 hibakusha remain alive – a number that has fallen by nearly 10 percent in the last year alone. As with the Second World War, personal testimony from those who lived through the bombings will continue to decline and, within the next 20 years, is likely to disappear entirely.
At the ELN, our work is grounded in policy impact: contributing to better European security by speaking to governments in the language they understand – and, by extension, the language that resonates with people and societies. For me, that is first and foremost the language of human stories, and how they connect to the bigger geopolitical picture, even on technical and complex briefs like arms control.
This is the prism through which I see my own role, and where I think organisations like the ELN are well placed to do even more. The arms control community has understandably focused on technical and policy questions, sometimes at the expense of the human stories that underpin them. As direct testimony disappears, our task shifts from amplifying survivors’ voices to becoming custodians of their memory – channelling it into our convenings and policy recommendations, rather than simply invoking it on anniversaries.
The ELN’s ongoing work to identify workable paths towards nuclear disarmament – however distant those paths may seem right now – is pursued in solidarity with the victims and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That solidarity, translated into institutional practice, is how the human consequences of conflict stay central to the debate, long after living memory is gone.
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“[A]s long as humans remain in control of nuclear decision-making, it is within our power to eliminate those risks. To do so, however, we must keep our eyes wide open to the dangers that are looming, and whose statistical likelihood increases with every passing year.”
Julia Berghofer
Programme Lead, Nuclear Weapons and New Technologies
In 2025 and 2026 I had two profound and diametrically opposed experiences that had a lasting effect on my thinking about nuclear matters. First, I visited the Los Alamos History Museum – an astonishingly underwhelming place in the middle of nowhere that gives almost no hint that one of the most far-reaching developments in history took place there. The museum presents a blatantly uncritical account of the history of the atomic bomb, turning a blind eye to almost every aspect that makes nuclear weapons something other than a convenient tool of (some) world leaders. I came away humbled by the fact that this is a very real, non-satirical reading of history, and that people working in the arms control sphere are completely disconnected from those who support this worldview.
One year later, I had the exceptional opportunity to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which had an even more significant effect on my thinking. While one can certainly criticise the way in which Japan’s role in the Second World War is largely absent from the exhibition, this museum demonstrates in a harrowing way what a nuclear weapon is from the viewpoint of a normal citizen: nothing more than an instrument of terror which, when used, changes societies, lives, cities, and landscapes. Even though the city of Hiroshima looks modern and clean, it seems to lack the vibrance and lightness of other Japanese cities. It is deeply scarred.
Even though I have been working on nuclear issues for years, this stark contrast between these two narratives of the same story is still able to shock me. I think that profound shock and disbelief is something that the Hiroshima anniversary must continue to remind us of, because less than two decades from now, the 100th anniversary will mark a fatal demarcation line beyond which this tragedy may begin to feel too distant to remain relevant.
As researchers and think tankers working to reduce nuclear risks, we have a responsibility to carry this subject not just as a “job”, but as an important educational obligation. In particular, we need to commit ourselves to reminding those with power and influence that nuclear war is not an inevitability, but a choice. The logic of deterrence, and the grave risks associated with it, can create the impression that we are trapped in inescapable dilemmas. But as long as humans remain in control of nuclear decision-making, it is within our power to eliminate those risks. To do so, however, we must keep our eyes wide open to the dangers that are looming, and whose statistical likelihood increases with every passing year.
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“The consequences – not only of the atomic bombings, but of nuclear weapons more broadly – are not abstract. They are the ongoing, tangible costs of decisions taken in the name of security.”
Jana Baldus
Policy Fellow, Nuclear and Multilateral Disarmament
Each anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brings the human and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons back into the spotlight. But commemorating them once a year, only to set them aside again, is not enough. Especially not when the danger of their use – whether in war or through renewed “test” explosions – is higher than it has been in decades. And certainly not when the suffering caused by nuclear weapons continues.
For over eight decades, survivors of the atomic bombings – referred to in Japanese as hibakusha, literally “bomb-affected-people” – have fought for acknowledgement of the harms they suffered and for nuclear abolition. That struggle needs to be remembered, too. The consequences – not only of the atomic bombings, but of nuclear weapons more broadly – are not abstract. They are the ongoing, tangible costs of decisions taken in the name of security. And these costs have fallen not only on the hibakusha, but also on communities affected by countless nuclear tests, on Indigenous communities whose ancestral lands have been used for nuclear waste disposal, and on people who mine uranium for nuclear weapons.
Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow put it directly to those states that rely on nuclear weapons for their security: they are “each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering humankind”. As European states move to recentre nuclear deterrence in their security structures, this is not simply rhetorical – it is a reminder that engaging with nuclear weapons carries a specific, human responsibility. Any new use of nuclear weapons would create new hibakusha.
For my work at the ELN, I take this as a reminder to keep confronting supposedly “rational” security narratives with human perspectives, and to remind decision-makers that their “actions are consequential”. This anniversary should challenge us to keep survivors’ and affected communities’ voices at the centre of our work – not only today, but every day – so that, in the words of Nagasaki survivor Terumi Tanaka, “humanity [does not] destroy itself with nuclear weapons”.
“What official histories remove, research communities and organisations like the ELN have to keep in view. That is how the responsibility we carry for the precedent of 1945 is exercised.”
Kseniia Yehorova
Policy Fellow, Nuclear Deterrence and Risk Reduction
The tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki unfolded over two August mornings in 1945, and eighty-one years on we are still deciding what it will mean for us today. The past lives in the present through how it is remembered, interpreted, invoked and, at times, simplified. The precedent set by the use of nuclear weapons cannot be unmade, and we carry a responsibility for how it informs the judgements we make about security.
State narratives have the privilege of determining which interpretations become embedded in public memory, often reducing historical ambiguity so that a chosen national narrative serves contemporary political objectives. Yet acknowledging one historical truth does not necessarily require denying another. Japan can simultaneously be seen as the aggressor that waged a devastating war across Asia and as the only country to have experienced atomic bombings; recognising one does not diminish compassion for the other. Likewise, the fact that many American decision-makers believed they were acting to end the war does not resolve the question of what that judgement ultimately cost. Our task, as researchers, is to be able to hold that complexity.
Working recently on questions of Russian nuclear decision-making, I have become increasingly convinced that the past continues to shape the future not as a collection of historical facts, but as part of the political context in which new decisions are made. Once a narrative settles into place as a state’s interpretation of history, it sets the frame for which actions come to appear justified, necessary, or even inevitable. In the Russian case, this means that the language of history becomes, at the same time, the language of security.
Inevitability is assembled out of a past from which the cost has already been subtracted, and the human part goes first, because suffering resists being written into a justification. What official histories remove, research communities and organisations like the ELN have to keep in view. That is how the responsibility we carry for the precedent of 1945 is exercised.
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“The anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki serves as a reminder of the human cost of conflict, often obscured by strategic language and academic debate.”
Maria Branea
Policy and Research Coordinator, Russia and European Security
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in a new world. For decades, Cold War Europe was shaped by mutual paranoia, deterrence, proliferation, and fears of nuclear escalation. Its end lowered the temperature and paved the way for a period of unprecedented cooperation, multilateralism, arms control, and hope for nuclear non-proliferation and even disarmament.
Eighty-one years on, however, it can feel as though we are slipping back into the atmosphere and rhetoric of the early Cold War. European security and West-Russia relations are once again framed through deterrence, hard power, and nuclear brinkmanship. More than four years into Russia’s war against Ukraine, Russian nuclear signalling has intensified, while the French and British nuclear deterrents are returning to the centre of the debate, alongside discussions of a broader European nuclear umbrella. Europe is recalibrating its future security arrangements in response to a perceived return to a world of transactionalism, competition, and realpolitik. Working on Russia and European security means once again confronting familiar escalation risks and deterrence dynamics, now compounded by an uncertain US commitment to NATO, rapid advances in autonomous systems and other emerging technologies, and the integration of AI into military and nuclear decision-making.
The anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki serves as a reminder of the human cost of conflict, often obscured by strategic language and academic debate. It brings into sharper focus our failure to fully internalise the devastating, multi-generational humanitarian consequences of nuclear use, and to prevent nuclear weapons from re-emerging at the forefront of European security and West-Russia relations.
It also throws light on tensions within our own work. How can we engage meaningfully with Russian threats and European security concerns while working to prevent nuclear use from becoming normalised or treated as just another strategic option? By fostering constructive engagement across a diverse network, especially when trust is at an all-time low, and by exploring options for better security, risk reduction, and conflict resolution, the ELN’s role remains vital. European security cannot be built solely on deterrence; it must also rest on dialogue, restraint, and the prevention of human suffering.
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The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
