Latest

  • image-6719

    The IFSH Celebrates 50 Years - Senate Reception at Hamburg City Hall (Video)

    Impressions from the celebration on 11 June 2021

    “Peace is not everything, but without peace, everything is nothing.” This dictum from Willy Brandt is our mandate and our motivation. For 50 years, we have been researching the mutually dependent…

    Read more

    Latest Publications

  • image-6525

    Newest publication: Read many articles from the last S+F issue free of charge

    This issue of the journal Security and Peace is a very special one: On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of IFSH, it is an anniversary issue. On the other hand, it is also a farewell – and unfortunately a farewell forever. After 38 years and more than 1300 contributions, "Security and Peace: S+F" appears for the last time with this issue.

     

    Difficult farewell after almost 40 years

    The decision to hire S+F was not an easy one. But ultimately there was no alternative. The rapid development of new and increasingly digital publication…

    Read more

About the IFSH

What does the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy do? And who benefits from it? In our new video series "Short & Sweet", Prof Ursula Schröder answers four central questions about the IFSH - in under three minutes!
(German)

Drones and autonomous weapons - blessing or curse?

Artificial intelligence is revolutionising many aspects of human life, including war. While drones are already being used for military purposes, the next step would be fully autonomous weapons that are capable of operating completely independent of human control. But could machines really make life-and-death decisions on the battlefield—and should they? In this new video, the IFSH presents not only the ethical dilemmas posed by autonomous weapons, but the security policy risks of digital warfare as well. The video also explains why this frontier threatens to open up a new arms race and why it is urgently necessary for autonomous weapons to be regulated by international agreements.

(German language with English subtitle)

What happens when a nuclear bomb explodes?

A scenario using Hamburg as an example

The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been the symbol of the cruelty and destructive power of this type of weapon for 75 years. However, they were not a warning: the nuclear weapons states continued to research and develop even more accurate and powerful bombs. The risk that nuclear weapons could actually be used is more realistic than ever before. With the help of an animated explanatory film, IFSH shows what would happen in concrete terms if a nuclear bomb were dropped on Hamburg.

(German language with English subtitle)

Arms race: Dark past or current danger?

NATO double-track, Pershing II missiles, underground nuclear bunkers: 1983 is considered one of the most dangerous years during the Cold War. More than one million people took to the streets in the Federal Republic of Germany at the time to demonstrate against the arms race. The Cold War is now history and its dangers seemed to have been overcome forever. But contracts from that time, which were intended to protect against armament, are expiring or are being terminated. Almost unnoticed by the public, a new era of the arms race has begun, this time with even more powerful bombs and new technologies.
Short and easy to understand, our animated explanatory video shows the dangers of the modern arms race.
(German with English subtitle)