Speech to Montpellier Peace Days

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 6 Oct 2025

David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service

21 Sep 2025 – We have been living in a new era of history since 1945, when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by nuclear bombs. In our time, the question of peace has become urgent.

Einstein told us this clearly in 1946:

“The unleashed power of the atom has transformed everything except our way of thinking. We are thus drifting toward an unimaginable catastrophe. The survival of humanity will require a profoundly new way of thinking.”

Unfortunately, our way of thinking has not changed enough, and we find ourselves in a profound crisis.

There are at least three aspects to this crisis:

Threats of war, enrichment of the rich, and environmental destruction.

Regarding the threats of war, they come from states. Indeed, states have become the culture of war, with their military-industrial complexes aided by a media that constantly speaks of the danger posed by the enemy.

States are controlled by the rich, who profit from the military industry and the media that supports it.

The rich become richer and more powerful, and the poor poorer. The number of billionaires grows every year, even every month.

The rich profit from environmental destruction. For them, profit is what counts, regardless of the future.

In the past, this was the case in Western Europe and America. But now the greatest gap between rich and poor is found in China and Russia.

Regarding the relationship between the rich and states, let us listen to the words of the revolutionary Lenin a century ago.

“A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, consequently, once capital has taken possession of this best shell… it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions, or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”

The people are not blind. They see that the state is controlled by the rich, and that it is through their control of the state that they enrich themselves.

This is not the revolution proposed by Lenin, but the people are revolting.

In state after state, the people vote against the old bourgeois who have ruled in the past.

And it is demagogues like Trump who win, saying they will change everything.

Indeed, we can say that bourgeois democracy is dead.

To quote Lenin again, What is to be done? Chto detats?

Lenin’s advice was to launch a secret revolutionary movement to overthrow bourgeois governments by violence.

But what was the result?

The result was the cultures of war in Russia and China.

The means used to make the revolution—secrecy and violence—became the means of governing.

In this regard, I remember a very clear moment. When he became prime minister in Russia, Gorbachev wanted to convert their military industry into commercial production. Instead of producing rockets and bombs, they should produce washing machines and computers. The person in charge of this task came to the UN when I was there, and he explained that the task was impossible. He met with the highest-ranking Russian generals and asked for a list of factories and plants for military production. But the generals refused, saying it was secret. Even Gorbachev had no right to know.

In a competition between a socialist country with a culture of war and a capitalist country with a culture of war, it is the capitalists who win. Socialist countries help other socialist countries. Capitalist countries exploit other capitalist countries. One gets rich through exploitation, not through generosity.

And there you have it, revolutionary countries have finally become capitalist, with an even wider gap between rich and poor than in other countries.

We must learn the lessons of this history and reject a secret and violent strategy for revolutionary movements.

Instead of Lenin, let’s adopt the strategy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King: mobilize the masses and channel their anger into a movement of nonviolent resistance.

King told us: The supreme task is to organize and unite the people so that their anger becomes a transformative force.

And Gandhi told us: I have learned from experience the supreme lesson: to contain my anger. Just as heat conserved is transformed into energy, our anger, when controlled, can be transformed into a power capable of transforming the world.

Such a nonviolent movement must not be secret.

Gandhi told us: Speak to your adversary, tell him what you are going to do. Gandhi went weekly to speak with the British Viceroy who ruled India to inform him about the actions planned by his movement and to advise him that the British must eventually withdraw from India.

Learning from King and Gandhi, we need a global movement for a culture of peace, democratic, transparent, and nonviolent.

A global movement is possible; another world is possible.

Since states have become the culture of war, we need a United Nations of the people, instead of a United Nations of governments.

The Charter of the United Nations, written in 1945, begins with the words: WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS.

It does not say WE THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITED NATIONS.

Imagine a United Nations Security Council composed of representatives of the mayors of cities from all regions of the world.

Such a council would not need to accept nuclear weapons and could finally achieve the nuclear disarmament we need. Such a council could be a culture of peace council in all its aspects.

Is that possible?

At this moment, that’s inconceivable.

But let’s imagine the effect of a major economic crash with the weakening of states everywhere. Let’s imagine that cities remain more reliable. In that case, we can imagine a profound reform of the United Nations in which the cities take charge.

Indeed, such a crash is likely, and even soon. It’s the same trend that sees more billionaires every month and more people thrown into poverty.  This will eventually lead us to the point where people will no longer have money to buy. And it’s people’s purchases that sustain the world’s economies.  Without these purchases, economies cannot survive.

Let’s imagine again the aftermath of a major economic crash.

One of two possibilities my follow: violent revolution or nonviolent revolution.

When the crash occurs, we must be ready to propose a culture of nonviolent peace, otherwise people will turn to secret and violent revolutionary movements.

We mustn’t wait for a crash. To ensure that the future is a culture of peace, we must prepare people for it.

For this, I propose the 2025 Peace Manifesto.

This new manifesto builds on the two other manifestos with which I was involved: the Seville Manifesto in 1986 and the 2000 Manifesto for the International Year for the Culture of Peace.

The Seville Manifesto was written by scientists from around the world to answer the question, “Is war inevitable because it is part of human nature?” The scientists answered that “the same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace.”

The 2000 Manifesto translated the Declaration and Program of Action on a Culture of Peace, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, into a simple text through by which individuals could promise to promote a culture of peace in their daily lives. Thanks to the commitment of the vast network of offices, agencies, and NGOs affiliated with the United Nations, the 2000 Manifesto was signed by 75 million people.

Considering the sorry state of the world, we decided that the time came to relaunch these manifestos.

The new Manifesto is very simple:

“I’m sick ad tired of the culture of war, so I give my support to the culture of peace and I will keep spreading the word on social media until we win!”

Why social media? Because half the world’s population is now connected to these networks.

It’s a paradox of our history. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, but at the same time, the poor are more connected than ever on a global scale.

We’ve already seen how this can work.

In the Philippines in 1986, when the old regime tried to stay in power through electoral fraud, the people used social media to mobilize and they took to the streets by the millions. The government’s tanks were powerless to prevent them from seizing and using radio and television stations to confirm the true results for a change of government.

Two other very recent examples: When President Biden announced he would not be a candidate in the election, Black women’s organizations managed to mobilize a million supporters for Kamala Harris through social media in two or three days. And this year, against Trump, thanks to the use of social media, there were five million participants in rallies called “No Kings”!

The Peace Manifesto 2025 is just the first step.

To follow up, we need the involvement of educators and anti-war movements.

Educate, educate, educate in non-violence, in the culture of peace, and in the vision of a United Nations led by the people.

And the more wars and threats of war there are, the more anti-war movements are needed to put the course of history into the hands of the people.

The Peace Manifesto can serve as a tool for education and for the slogans of anti-war movements.

Yes, another world is possible, but it is up to us to prepare for it.

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Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace.  Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email.

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