Those who do not believe in miracles are not realists
The largest military build-up in human history is currently taking place in real terms and on a global scale.
We are spending over three trillion dollars, that is over 3,000 billion, on preparing for war, while at the same time millions of people are starving to death every year. In concrete terms, this means that we are murdering them. The ancient Roman formula still applies: ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum – If you want peace, prepare for war.’
But more and more people are remembering where this motto has led: to the Crusades, the Thirty Years’ War, colonialism, the First and Second World Wars, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war in Ukraine and the wars in the Middle East, as well as the madness of today’s arms race. Do we simply want to continue like this? Or are we capable of learning?
How about trying a new motto: If you want peace, prepare for peace? Admittedly, this idea can easily be dismissed as fantasy and naivety. But do we really have a humane and reasonable alternative? Can we manage to think about alternatives in this time of great crisis and actually implement them? Do we have any role models for this?
Mikhail Gorbachev, as a realist politician, presented alternatives during just such a time of crisis and, together with US President Ronald Reagan, who was certainly no pacifist, ensured that 80 per cent of the nuclear weapons at that time were scrapped.
The threat of nuclear war and increasingly dramatic climate change are the greatest dangers to the future of humanity today. How can we, in these times of great danger, still and once again trust in the challenging power of confidence for a better world and work towards it? That is the question of all questions. Confidence is a divine virtue, but also a human one.
There is certainly no magic formula for solving today’s problems. But there are some signs of hope. After all, more than 100 member states of the United Nations, which is actually the majority of UN members, have already recognised the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as binding under international law. Why can’t we achieve today what was possible under Gorbachev? He showed us how it can be done.
There are also signs of hope when it comes to climate change. More than ten years ago, all 196 UN states in Paris agreed on the goal that global warming should not exceed 1.5 to 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. Suddenly, ecology was to be as important as economics. Respect for living things and awareness of our finitude suddenly took centre stage, writes French philosopher Corine Pellechon.
The fact that these Paris targets are still achievable was proven in 2025 by the billion-strong populations of India and China, whose CO2 emissions fell for the first time, five years earlier than previously planned. We still have the chance to create a more environmentally friendly, climate-friendly, peaceful and just world in which no child has to starve. Without the insane sums spent on the military, huge amounts of money would be freed up for a better world.
Mikhail Gorbachev said in our joint book ‘Come to Your Senses – Never Again War’: ‘A nuclear war would be the last war in human history, because after that there would be no more people left to wage war.’ If we come to our senses in time and, in Gorbachev’s words, ‘come to our senses’, we have the best prospects for a better and more peaceful world in the 21st century with the new communication technologies. The end of NATO can also be a historic opportunity, just as the end of the Warsaw Pact was in the 1990s.
Those who do not believe in miracles are not realists
Before 1989, hardly anyone believed in the peaceful reunification of Germany, but it happened. Hardly anyone believed in the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it fell. After 1945, hardly anyone believed in peaceful European unification within the European Union, but it happened. Since 1945, no EU member has ever waged war on another EU member, which had previously been the norm. My parents still thought that was impossible. In my lifetime, we have experienced a series of political miracles. But those who survive live more intensely afterwards. That is the opportunity presented by every crisis. Today and tomorrow.
Today’s frightened Europe can become an awakened and mature Europe in the future. Putin, Trump and Xi will not live forever. After that, this continent can use its political and economic power for good in the world.
Source
Franz Alt 2026 | Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
