Portside

For the 80th year in a row, on the mornings of 6 and 9 August, two Japanese cities will start the day observing a minute of silence to remember the two nuclear bomb attacks on civilian populations and to keep the memory alive for future generations. While Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand firm in their commitment to peace and promoting the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide, powerful arms producers continue to fill their coffers in every corner of the globe. From the United States to Europe, China and Japan, military spending is rising in a spiral of rearmament and new conflicts.

“No more Hibakusha” is the rallying cry of the atomic bomb survivors in Japan [editor’s note: ‘Hibakusha’ literally means ‘bomb-affected people’ in Japanese]. “Let not humanity destroy itself with nuclear weapons! Let us work together for a human society, in a world free of nuclear weapons and war!” was the call made by Terumi Tanaka, a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, at the close of his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Nihon Hidankyo association. Is his plea for humanity more necessary now than ever?

The top 100 firms engaged in the sale of arms and military services increased their global revenues by 4.2 per cent in 2023 due to high global demand, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Heading the list are five US companies, followed by one British, one Russian and three Chinese. There are 27 European companies in the top 100 (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, etc.), compared with 41 from the US. The war in Ukraine has fuelled the purchase of ammunition, artillery, defence systems and tanks in Europe, along with the renewal and modernisation of arsenals, as outlined by Fundipau and SIPRI.

Russian and Middle Eastern companies are not lagging behind in their sales either. And the war in Gaza and the conflict in Iran portend an upward trend. Three Israeli companies had record-breaking revenues according to SIPRI, while the number of fatal victims in Gaza – a third of them children – has exceeded 80,000, and the numbers keep rising. And, still, a permanent ceasefire is nowhere in sight.

There are 23 companies from Asia in the top 100. Japan’s five weapons producers and South Korea’s four are raking in profits from the global arms race, as their governments increase defence spending in response to the perceived threat posed by the rise of China, and having embraced the US military umbrella. There are nine Chinese companies, three Indian, one based in Taiwan and three Turkish, along with several others on the list of leading military industry players.

A decade of increased military spending and the move “away from peace”

We are witnessing the sharpest increase in military spending since the Cold War, as shown by the figures compiled by SIPRI, with an increase of 9.4 per cent and total spending of US$2.72 trillion in 2024. This is the tenth annual increase in a row. By country, the United States, China, Russia, Germany and India have the largest military budgets in the world and account for 60 per cent of the total. And more than 100 other countries are also increasing their military spending. In Europe alone, including Russia, defence spending rose by 17 per cent, triggering a global chain reaction.

For Jesús Núñez, co-director of the Spanish Institute for Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action (IECAH), this intense arms race has its roots in the global rivalry between the US and China, but that this is not the only driver. Washington is asking its Pacific allies to increase their military efforts to help contain China, while the European Union, he explains, “has not only set itself the goal of strategic autonomy in the face of the Russian threat posed by the war in Ukraine but also out of fear that the US will cease to be the ultimate guarantor of its security and withdraw the protection it has provided over the last few decades. This is driving the EU’s rearmament.” Another factor, he adds, is the local or regional agenda fuelling other conflicts: “There are middle powers that are vying for regional leadership and are intensifying the race. Morocco and Algeria, for example, are fighting for leadership in the Maghreb.” For this expert, the times we are living in are a repeat of the Cold War dynamics and are “moving us away from peace”.

In June 2025, 32 NATO leaders met in The Hague and agreed on a historic increase in defence spending, to five per cent of national GDP by 2035. All countries, except Spain, agreed to join this arms race. But prioritising military security will come at the expense of other spending, with economic and social repercussions for citizens, as experts and activists warn. Peace organisations such as Campaign Against Arms Trade and the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT) have stepped up their criticism of European rearmament plans, considering them to benefit the arms industry at the expense of social spending.

How to prevent conflict?

“The UN is the main body for preventing war for future generations,” says Núñez, referring to the Charter of the United Nations, a tool created in 1945 to maintain international peace and security, followed in 1948 by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But, as the expert notes, “We are going backwards, with the UN weakened and left powerless by the lack of political will shown by member states.” Núñez points to the promotion of democracy as a means of preventing violent conflicts, but warns of the growing deterioration of democracies and the rise of authoritarianism, combined with poor leadership and the short-termism that dominates the agendas of national governments, without a vision that embraces future generations.

A prime example is Japan, which is also increasing defence spending and is on track to reach its two per cent of GDP target by 2027.

Despite a civil society crying out for pacifism in light of its status as a victim of the atomic bombings, the Japanese government has not ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force in 2021. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are at the core of this treaty, which mentions the survivors of the atomic bombs in its preamble.

Japan proffers the excuse that none of the states that possess nuclear weapons have ratified it and that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – to which it is a signatory – acts more as a deterrent without curbing nuclear development. The Hiroshima Prefecture, however, sees the TPNW as a crucial step toward achieving a “world without nuclear weapons”, and has repeatedly urged the Japanese government to change its stance.

In the global context of rearmament, there seems to be no sign of any move towards reducing nuclear arsenals or halting their modernisation. Quite the contrary. And so, as SIPRI warns in another recent report, nuclear risks are increasing amid the new arms race. Almost all countries with nuclear weapons (the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – which maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity) are modernising or increasing their nuclear arsenals, and, if they had not already done so by 2024, as is the case with the United Kingdom, they are likely to do so in the future.

Peace and historical memory, an endless struggle

The Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs, the Hibakusha, are living witnesses and global symbols of peace. Now in their eighties and nineties, they are aware that time is running out. In 2024, Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, founded in 1956, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway for its dedication and global impact.

For Agustín Rivera, journalist and author of Hiroshima: Testimonios de los últimos supervivientes (Hiroshima: Testimonies of the Last Survivors, 2023), “Their struggle has been unrelenting, yet recognition for their work has been slow in coming.” This Spanish journalist spent years tracking down the last survivors of this atrocity, to record their voices before it was too late in a delicately crafted book of great historical value.

As Rivera explains: “The International Peace Bureau (IPB), an organisation working for disarmament and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910, nominated Nihon Hidankyo for the award in 1985. It did so again in 1994. To no avail. Not then, nor when the International Atomic Energy Agency received the Nobel Prize in 2005, although the Japanese association did, at least, receive a mention at that point for its work against nuclear war.”

For decades, the survivors of the atomic bombs have carried out vital educational work, involving future generations to ensure that their memory is not lost and young people can pass it on in the future.

They are convinced, in the words of survivor Tanaka, that only through testimony and human empathy can people be a “force for change” and influence national policies. Their work is a guiding light in the quest for human rights.