What kind of civilization have we developed when two mentally unstable national leaders, Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, in an escalating confrontation with each other, threaten one another -- and the world -- with nuclear war? This kind of reckless, irrational behavior is reminiscent of the game of "Chicken," which achieved notoriety in the 1950s.
Published Articles by Lawrence Wittner
Should the average CEO receive 347 times the pay of the average worker? That's the situation today in the United States, where the income gap has grown rapidly during recent decades.
For as long as they have existed, nations have clung to the illusion that their military strength guarantees their security. In line with this illusion, the nine nations that have developed nuclear weapons have no plans to part with them. But most other nations take a quite different view of nuclear weapons and, under UN auspices, are now crafting a treaty, scheduled to be voted on this July, to ban the bomb.
In recent years, the State University of New York (SUNY) has embarked on two "partnerships" with private, profit-making businesses: Start-Up NY and SUNY Polytechnic Institute. According to government officials, these ventures would provide a dramatic boost to the state's economy and to higher education. But the outcome of these projects raises serious questions about the costs, benefits, and intellectual integrity of university-corporate collaboration.
In recent weeks, the people of the world have been treated to yet another display of the kind of nuclear insanity that has broken out periodically ever since 1945 and the dawn of the nuclear era. And what has been the response of the public to government officials in the United States and North Korea threatening nuclear war? It has been remarkably subdued. Why?
Political parties on the far right are today enjoying a surge of support and access to government power that they have not experienced since their heyday in the 1930s. A global alliance among them is now emerging, headed by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Scientific and technological change has been outstripping the ability of social institutions to cope with it, often -- as in the case of climate change and the nuclear arms race -- resulting in extremely perilous situations. The real question is whether people and nations can muster the political will to reshape their behavior and social institutions to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
In response to an article published in The Nation about reviving the peace movement, six leading peace proponents (including me) were asked to provide short commentaries on that subject. Here are their commentaries, published in a forum that appeared in thenation.com.
The accession of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency brings us face-to-face with a question that many have tried to avoid since 1945: Should anyone have the right to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust?
Although decades of effort in developing and deploying a national missile defense system (a revision of the "Star Wars" program once championed by Ronald Reagan) have cost U.S. taxpayers well over $180 billion, it still doesn't work. Aren't there better uses for America's resources?