2025 Cyril Foster Lecture: How to End Wars: Pragmatic Approaches to Peacebuilding

The 2025 Cyril Foster Lecture brings together two leading, internationally renowned speakers on peace activism and peacekeeping. 

Christine Ahn is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the Founder, Women Cross DMZ and Lt Gen (Ret) Dan Leaf, US Air Force is a decorated combat fighter pilot whose focus areas include peace on the Korean Peninsula, the US-Vietnam relationship, conflict resolution, effective governance, and strategic leadership. 

Ahead of their Lecture on 8 May, they spoke to DPIR's communications team - we began by asking them how they felt about their forthcoming visit to Oxford:

Christine: I am deeply honoured and anxious to be invited to speak at Oxford! As someone who was born the 13th child to a poor, working-class family that survived colonization, division, war, dictatorship and migration – and barely made it to university – I never dreamed I’d speak at Oxford! But it is even more meaningful to know that I’ll be speaking at this lecture series named after Cyril Foster, a candy shop owner who bequeathed his sweet fortune to advancing peace. It reminds us that everyone can – and must – contribute to building a more peaceful world.

Dan: I am both humbled and encouraged. I never imagined having the opportunity to speak at Oxford on any topic. Being invited to speak with Christine Anh on the need to make peace with North Korea tells me that there is hope that our combined efforts will make a difference. The prestigious lecture is a major opportunity to gain visibility and support for the pursuit of reduced risk and improved human conditions on the Korean Peninsula.

Can you tell us a little more about the subject of this year’s lecture? 

Christine: This year – 2025 – marks the 80th anniversary of Korea’s division by Cold War powers. In 1945, two U.S. officers from the Truman administration tore a page from The National Geographic and drew a line across the 38th parallel – and that is literally how Korea was divided, without any input from a single Korean who had just survived 35 years of brutal Japanese colonization. As a Korean American, knowing this tragic history and the grave costs of this still unresolved Korean War, a decade ago, I led 30 women peacemakers, including Nobel Peace Laureates, across the Demilitarized Zone for peace. The theme – Making Peace with North Korea – is about empowering more people to take action for peace, especially women, because we cannot simply rely on those who hold political power, because they have failed to do so for more than three generations. 

Dan: There are practical steps that the U.S. government can and must take now to begin breaking the dangerous stalemate existent since the Armistice was signed in 1953.

Why is this such an important topic and what is its relevance to us today?

Dan: North Korea has the nuclear weapons, delivery means, and first-use doctrine that make an accidental or intentional genuine possibility. Kim Jong-un has seen US policy since the failed summitry with President Trump as wholly hostile and therefore ceased all official contact with the U.S. government.  We know that the risk of nuclear war with Korea is real; the suffering of ordinary North Koreans is also real; the policies of the last 30+ years have failed to reduce risk or alleviate suffering, and we must find an alternate approach; one option is to address the pre-existing condition, the state of war existent since the war started in 1950 and not ended by the Armistice Agreement.

Christine: We are witnessing a dangerous “New Cold War” against China, Russia and North Korea that could trigger WWIII. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and normalization of relations with China, the Cold War almost thawed, except it remained frozen on the Korean Peninsula. The unresolved Korean War is at the root and given the rapidly changing political situation in South Korea, the possible end of the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Trump administration’s approach to its longstanding allies, we are in a new frontier with both great danger and possibility on the Korean Peninsula. Ordinary people, especially those who are disproportionately impacted by war and conflict like women, must have a voice and contribute to peacebuilding. The shaping of foreign policy must not just be at the hands of the political elite when it has major implications for everyone, especially in empires like Great Britain and the United States where domestic conditions are impacted by maintaining an aggressive military posture.