The first of the new TFF Peace Pulse – #1 “WWIII? Just Doubt It”

In contrast to most, we’ll bring alternatives, solutions, hope and strategies for a better future. Times are dangerous, yes, but that only intensifies the need for constructive thinking and action!

Jan Oberg, TFF director

April 13, 2026

The new TFF Peace Pulse uses video messages in a new way: Max 3-5-minute-long comments, ideas or perhaps mini-lectures, all about peace – positive peace. We launch them today on April 13, 2026 with a carefully crafted visual aesthetic fitting the content. We hope to publish them regularly from now on.

We launch Peace Pulse (PP) – for a number of reasons.

The world is in chaos, and there are countless reasons to feel concerned, frustrated, even angry. The atmosphere is saturated with doom and gloom, with negative energy and rear‑mirror thinking, while vision, imagination, alternatives, strategies and genuine future‑mindedness remain in short supply. And without them, we simply can’t save the world.

Looking at problems from a hundred angles will never, by itself, create a solution. Discussing cancer cells in a body 24/7 won’t heal the patient. We need not only world Diagnosis and (doom and gloom) Prognosis, we need Treatment, Healing and a vision of a better future life.

Doom and gloom work like a psycho‑political sedative. People withdraw. They lose hope. They stop acting. They feel overwhelmed — and understandably so. But when catastrophe hits and patients flood the hospital, doctors do not sit down and surrender. They rise, because life demands response, not resignation.

Meanwhile, leaders North, West, East and South — the elites of the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – and their many cousins — quietly benefit when citizens give up and stop holding them accountable. A discouraged population is easier to deceive and steer.

As a wise German warned long ago, those who sleep in a democracy risk waking up in a dictatorship.

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And we cannot shape a better future if we never look toward it. Experts excel at interpreting yesterday and predicting tomorrow, but even the best rarely dare to say: Here is how we might think long‑term, how we might move toward solutions, toward a more peaceful horizon.

Solutions – peace-making – require imagination, creativity, and the courage to think outside the familiar box. Yet we have painfully few scholars and experts who see this as their task. And people cannot work for a future they cannot imagine; without that vision, we end up circling endlessly around what we oppose instead of what we propose.

Working against war, armament and militarism is necessary, but it is not sufficient. That is negative peace. What humanity needs is positive peace — ideas, strategies, values and visions that build a more peaceful world rather than merely resisting a violent one.

Such efforts are often dismissed as unrealistic or naïve. The first few who began working against slavery, women’s equal rights, sustainable development or colonialism were met with the same tired phrase. That argument usually comes from two types of people: those who lack imagination, and those in power who want you to believe there are no alternatives to what they do.

In contrast, when I look at the world, I see TAMA — There Are Many Alternatives. Only alternatives. That is what free thinkers, by definition, insist on seeing.

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The militarist cancer has metastasised, but the world body can still be cured.

TFF Peace Pulse is, in part, a quiet critique of how much public space and time war and violence occupy. People – mostly men but also women in power – love to talk about weapons, armament, doctrines, strategies, battlefields and ceasefires — as if this obsessive focus on the means of violence had anything to do with peace or security.

It does not. If weapons were a road to peace, we would have lived in a peaceful cooperative world long ago.

This exaggerated fixation on weaponry — by militarists and anti‑militarists alike — remains a curse on humanity, a primary obstacle to a peaceful future.

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TFF is a foundation for peace and future research. In a world drenched in war, overarmament and militarism, peace research is by definition future‑oriented — and therefore labelled unrealistic. We take that as a compliment.

We choose to think and act differently: pro‑peace, solution‑focused, future‑focused, grounded in the belief that alternatives exist and that World War III is not destiny.

And that is the essence of TFF Peace Pulse.

Here begins PP #1: World War III. Just Doubt It.

PhD, Peace & future researcher + ‌Art Photographer, Professor Emeritus and media commentator

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