Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely. Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway. Instead, all nine nuclear
How Donald Trump Worked to Destroy America’s Labor Unions
Although Donald Trump has been eager to garner support from American labor unions for his re-election campaign, there are lots of reasons he’s not going to get it. Chief among them is his record in sabotaging the nation’s labor movement.
During his decades as a wealthy businessman, Trump clashed with unions repeatedly.
Israel, Russia, and International Law
International law―the recognized rules of behavior among nations based on customary practices and treaties, among them the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights―has been agreed upon by large and small nations alike. To implement this law, the nations of the world have established a UN Security Council (to maintain international
Donald Trump’s Assault on the Wages of American Workers
Although Donald Trump, as president, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union address that he had produced a “blue-collar boom” in workers’ wages, the reality was quite different. Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S. government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by blocking raises and imposing wage reductions.
Only the preceding year, Trump derailed vital wage legislation. In July 2019―with the pathetically low federal minimum wage stuck at
Donald Trump’s Empty Promises on Jobs
In mid-2015, announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, Donald Trump declared that he would “be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
Subsequently, the Republican billionaire hammered away at this theme. The nation’s loss of factory jobs, he argued, was the fault of Democrats, but, as he
The Forgotten Element in Averting Nuclear Catastrophe
What will it take to end the nuclear nightmare that has gripped the world since the atomic bombings of 1945?
For a time, that nightmare seemed to have abated for, in response to massive popular resistance to the prospect of nuclear war, governments turned to signing nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. Even previously hawkish government officials proclaimed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
In recent decades, however, nuclear-armed nations have scrapped
The Ugly Origins of Trump’s “America First” Policy
People’s choice of words can be revealing. That’s certainly the case with respect to one of Donald Trump’s favorite slogans, “America First.”
In April 2016, Trump initially used the term in a campaign speech, proclaiming that “America First” would be “the major and overriding theme of my administration.” The following year, in his inaugural
Einstein’s Postwar Campaign to Save the World from Nuclear Destruction
Although the popular new Netflix film, Einstein and the Bomb, purports to tell the story of the great physicist’s relationship to nuclear weapons, it ignores his vital role in rallying the world against nuclear catastrophe.
Aghast at the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945 to obliterate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein threw himself into efforts to prevent worldwide nuclear annihilation. In September, responding to a letter from Robert Hutchins, Chancellor of the University
“It’s Getting Late”
For some time, it’s been apparent that the world’s nations are not meeting the growing challenges to human survival.
A key challenge comes from modern war.
Over the centuries, as military weapons have grown ever more destructive, war-related devastation has grown accordingly. World War II was the deadliest military conflict in human history, with an estimated 70-85 million people perishing from the war directly or through
Overcoming the Obstacles to UN Maintenance of International Peace and Security
Although, according to the UN Charter, the United Nations was established to “maintain international peace and security,” it has often fallen short of this goal. Russia’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine and the more recent Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza provide the latest examples of the world organization’s frequent paralysis in the face of violent international conflict.
The hobbling of the Security Council, the UN agency tasked with enforcing international peace and security,