Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Lawrence Wittner

  • The United States Is No. 1 – But In What?

    [Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany.  His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?]

    Lawrence WittnerAmerican politicians are fond of telling their audiences that the United States is the greatest country in the world.  Is there any evidence for this claim?

    Well, yes.  When it comes to violence and preparations for violence, the United States is, indeed, No. 1.  In 2013, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government accounted for 37 percent of world military expenditures, putting it far ahead of all other nations.  (The two closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted for 11 percent and 5 percent respectively.)  From 2004 to 2013, the United States was also the No. 1 weapons exporter in the world.  Moreover, given the U.S. government’s almost continuous series of wars and acts of military intervention since 1941, it seems likely that it surpasses all rivals when it comes to international violence.

    This record is paralleled on the domestic front, where the United States has more guns and gun-related deaths than any other country.  A study released in late 2013 reported that the United States had 88 guns for every 100 people, and 40 gun-related deaths for every 400,000 people―the most of any of the 27 economically developed countries surveyed.  By contrast, in Britain there were 6 guns per 100 people and 1 gun-related death per 400,000 people.

    Yet, in a great many other areas, the United States is not No. 1 at all.

    Take education.  In late 2013, the Program for International Student Assessment released a report on how 15-year old students from 65 nations performed on its tests.  The report showed that U.S. students ranked 17th in reading and 21st in math.  An international survey a bit earlier that year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the ranking was slightly worse for American adults.  In 2014, Pearson, a multinational educational services company, placed the United States 20th in the world in “educational attainment”―well behind Poland and the Slovak Republic.

    American healthcare and health fare even worse.  In a 2014 study of healthcare (including infant mortality, healthy life expectancy, and mortality from preventable conditions) in 11 advanced industrial countries, the Commonwealth Fund concluded that the United States ranked last among them.  According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. healthcare system ranks 30th in the world.  Other studies reach somewhat different conclusions, but all are very unflattering to the United States, as are studies of American health.  The United States, for example, has one of the world’s worst cancer rates (the seventh highest), and life expectancy is declining compared to other nations.  An article in the Washington Post in late 2013 reported that the United States ranked 26th among nations in life expectancy, and that the average American lifespan had fallen a year behind the international average.

    What about the environment?  Specialists at Yale University have developed a highly sophisticated Environmental Performance Index to examine the behavior of nations.  In the area of protection of human health from environmental harm, their 2014 index placed the United States 35th in health impacts, 36th in water and sanitation, and 38th in air quality.  In the other area studied―protection of ecosystems―the United States ranked 32nd in water resources, 49th in climate and energy, 86th in biodiversity and habitat, 96th in fisheries, 107th in forests, and 109th in agriculture.

    These and other areas of interest are dealt with by the Social Progress Index, which was developed by Michael Porter, an eminent professor of business (and a Republican) at Harvard.  According to Porter and his team, in 2014 the United States ranked 23rd in access to information and communications, 24th in nutrition and basic medical care, 31st in personal safety, 34th in water and sanitation, 39th in access to basic knowledge, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, and 70th in health and wellness.

    The widespread extent of poverty, especially among children, remains a disgrace in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.  A 2013 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund noted that, of the 35 economically advanced countries that had been studied, only Rumania had a higher percentage of children living in poverty than did the United States.

    Of course, the United States is not locked into these dismal rankings and the sad situation they reveal about the health, education, and welfare of its citizens.  It could do much better if its vast wealth, resources, and technology were employed differently than they are at present.

    Ultimately, it’s a matter of priorities.  When most U.S. government discretionary spending goes for war and preparations for war, it should come as no surprise that the United States emerges No. 1 among nations in its capacity for violence and falls far behind other nations in providing for the well-being of its people.

    Americans might want to keep this in mind as their nation embarks upon yet another costly military crusade.

  • The Endless Arms Race

    Lawrence WittnerIt’s heartening to see that an agreement has been reached to ensure that Iran honors its commitment, made when it signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to forgo developing nuclear weapons.

    But what about the other key part of the NPT, Article VI, which commits nuclear-armed nations to “cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” as well as to “a treaty on general and complete disarmament”? Here we find that, 44 years after the NPT went into force, the United States and other nuclear powers continue to pursue their nuclear weapons buildups, with no end in sight.

    On January 8, 2014, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced what Reuters termed “ambitious plans to upgrade [U.S.] nuclear weapons systems by modernizing weapons and building new submarines, missiles and bombers to deliver them.” The Pentagon intends to build a dozen new ballistic missile submarines, a new fleet of long-range nuclear bombers, and new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in late December that implementing the plans would cost $355 billion over the next decade, while an analysis by the independent Center for Nonproliferation Studies reported that this upgrade of U.S. nuclear forces would cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years. If the higher estimate proves correct, the submarines alone would cost over $29 billion each.

    Of course, the United States already has a massive nuclear weapons capability — approximately 7,700 nuclear weapons, with more than enough explosive power to destroy the world. Together with Russia, it possesses about 95 percent of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that comprise the global nuclear arsenal.

    Nor is the United States the only nation with grand nuclear ambitions. Although China currently has only about 250 nuclear weapons, including 75 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), it recently flight-tested a hypersonic nuclear missile delivery vehicle capable of penetrating any existing defense system. The weapon, dubbed the Wu-14 by U.S. officials, was detected flying at ten times the speed of sound during a test flight over China during early January 2014. According to Chinese scientists, their government had put an “enormous investment” into the project, with more than a hundred teams from leading research institutes and universities working on it. Professor Wang Yuhui, a researcher on hypersonic flight control at Nanjing University, stated that “many more tests will be carried out” to solve the remaining technical problems. “It’s just the beginning.” Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based naval expert, commented approvingly that “missiles will play a dominant role in warfare, and China has a very clear idea of what is important.”

    Other nations are engaged in this arms race, as well. Russia, the other dominant nuclear power, seems determined to keep pace with the United States through modernization of its nuclear forces. The development of new, updated Russian ICBMs is proceeding rapidly, while new nuclear submarines are already being produced. Also, the Russian government has started work on a new strategic bomber, known as the PAK DA, which reportedly will become operational in 2025. Both Russia and India are known to be working on their own versions of a hypersonic nuclear missile carrier. But, thus far, these two nuclear nations lag behind the United States and China in its development. Israel is also proceeding with modernization of its nuclear weapons, and apparently played the key role in scuttling the proposed U.N. conference on a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East in 2012.

    This nuclear weapons buildup certainly contradicts the official rhetoric. On April 5, 2009, in his first major foreign policy address, President Barack Obama proclaimed “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” That fall, the UN Security Council — including Russia, China, Britain, France, and the United States, all of them nuclear powers — unanimously passed Resolution 1887, which reiterated the point that the NPT required the “disarmament of countries currently possessing nuclear weapons.” But rhetoric, it seems, is one thing and action quite another.

    Thus, although the Iranian government’s willingness to forgo the development of nuclear weapons is cause for encouragement, the failure of the nuclear nations to fulfill their own NPT obligations is appalling. Given these nations’ enhanced preparations for nuclear war — a war that would be nothing short of catastrophic — their evasion of responsibility should be condemned by everyone seeking a safer, saner world.

    This article was originally published by the History News Network.

    Lawrence S. Wittner (lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization, What’s Going On at UAardvark?

  • When Will They Ever Learn? The American People and Support for War

    When it comes to war, the American public is remarkably fickle.

    Lawrence WittnerThe responses of Americans to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provide telling examples.  In 2003, according to opinion polls, 72 percent of Americans thought going to war in Iraq was the right decision.  By early 2013, support for that decision had declined to 41 percent.  Similarly, in October 2001, when U.S. military action began in Afghanistan, it was backed by 90 percent of the American public.  By December 2013, public approval of the Afghanistan war had dropped to only 17 percent.

    In fact, this collapse of public support for once-popular wars is a long-term phenomenon.  Although World War I preceded public opinion polling, observers reported considerable enthusiasm for U.S. entry into that conflict in April 1917.  But, after the war, the enthusiasm melted away.  In 1937, when pollsters asked Americans whether the United States should participate in another war like the World War, 95 percent of the respondents said “No.”

    And so it went.  When President Truman dispatched U.S. troops to Korea in June 1950, 78 percent of Americans polled expressed their approval.  By February 1952, according to polls, 50 percent of Americans believed that U.S. entry into the Korean War had been a mistake.  The same phenomenon occurred in connection with the Vietnam War.  In August 1965, when Americans were asked if the U.S. government had made “a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam,” 61 percent of them said “No.”  But by August 1968, support for the war had fallen to 35 percent, and by May 1971 it had dropped to 28 percent.

    Of all America’s wars over the past century, only World War II has retained mass public approval.  And this was a very unusual war – one involving a devastating military attack upon American soil, fiendish foes determined to conquer and enslave the world, and a clear-cut, total victory.

    In almost all cases, though, Americans turned against wars they once supported.  How should one explain this pattern of disillusionment?

    The major reason appears to be the immense cost of war — in lives and resources.  During the Korean and Vietnam wars, as the body bags and crippled veterans began coming back to the United States in large numbers, public support for the wars dwindled considerably.  Although the Afghanistan and Iraq wars produced fewer American casualties, the economic costs have been immense.  Two recent scholarly studies have estimated that these two wars will ultimately cost American taxpayers from $4 trillion to $6 trillion.  As a result, most of the U.S. government’s spending no longer goes for education, health care, parks, and infrastructure, but to cover the costs of war.  It is hardly surprising that many Americans have turned sour on these conflicts.

    But if the heavy burden of wars has disillusioned many Americans, why are they so easily suckered into supporting new ones?

    A key reason seems to be that that powerful, opinion-molding institutions – the mass communications media, government, political parties, and even education – are controlled, more or less, by what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.”  And, at the outset of a conflict, these institutions are usually capable of getting flags waving, bands playing, and crowds cheering for war.

    But it is also true that much of the American public is very gullible and, at least initially, quite ready to rally ‘round the flag.  Certainly, many Americans are very nationalistic and resonate to super-patriotic appeals.  A mainstay of U.S. political rhetoric is the sacrosanct claim that America is “the greatest nation in the world” – a very useful motivator of U.S. military action against other countries.  And this heady brew is topped off with considerable reverence for guns and U.S. soldiers.  (“Let’s hear the applause for Our Heroes!”)

    Of course, there is also an important American peace constituency, which has formed long-term peace organizations, including Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and other antiwar groups.  This peace constituency, often driven by moral and political ideals, provides the key force behind the opposition to U.S. wars in their early stages.  But it is counterbalanced by staunch military enthusiasts, ready to applaud wars to the last surviving American.  The shifting force in U.S. public opinion is the large number of people who rally ‘round the flag at the beginning of a war and, then, gradually, become fed up with the conflict.

    And so a cyclical process ensues.  Benjamin Franklin recognized it as early as the eighteenth century, when he penned a short poem for  A Pocket Almanack For the Year 1744:

    War begets Poverty,
    Poverty Peace;
    Peace makes Riches flow,
    (Fate ne’er doth cease.)
    Riches produce Pride,
    Pride is War’s Ground;
    War begets Poverty &c.
    The World goes round.

    There would certainly be less disillusionment, as well as a great savings in lives and resources, if more Americans recognized the terrible costs of war before they rushed to embrace it.  But a clearer understanding of war and its consequences will probably be necessary to convince Americans to break out of the cycle in which they seem trapped.

  • Book Review: Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual

    Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual by Lawrence S. Wittner


    Publisher:  University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN


    Publication Date: February 2012, 288 pages


    Paperback Price: $29.95


    Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual is a must read for all who are interested and involved in the search for peace, racial equality, and other aspects of social justice.  The book is a very well written autobiography by Lawrence S. Wittner, emeritus professor of history at the State University of New York-Albany.


    Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York,  Wittner graduated from Columbia College (B.A., 1962), the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1963), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in history, 1967).  His teaching assignments were at Hampton Institute, Vassar College, the University of Toyko, and finally, SUNY/Albany from which he retired as a full professor in 2010.  His scholarship included authorship of eight books and the editing or co-editing of another four, plus the writing of over 250 published articles and book reviews.  His most challenging scholarly effort was the completion of a three book series The Struggle Against the Bomb on the history of the nuclear disarmament movement.  The books were:  One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953;  Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970;  and Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present.  An abbreviated version of the entire trilogy is also available as Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement. Additionally, his Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 is a widely acclaimed, comprehensive account of the missing link between the mass peace and justice movements of the 1930s and their rebirth in the 1960s with emphasis on civil rights, non-violent resistance and the prevention of World War III.


    During the course of his research, Wittner delved into the records and periodicals of many peace organizations like the War Resisters League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and SANE (now Peace Action). Among the prominent peace activists whom he interviewed for his publications were A.J. Muste, Norman Thomas, Dave Dellinger, and Mercedes  Randall.  During his research for the Struggle Against the Bomb series, he interviewed such well known peace movement leaders as Randy Forsberg, Sandy Gottlieb, Helen Caldicott, John Isaacs, Randy Kehler, Jeremy Stone, Bernard Lown, Bob Musil and Frank von Hippel.


    In addition to his research and teaching roles, Wittner was a tireless agitator and social activist.  A paragraph in the Preface of the book describes those activities:


    ” Over the course of my life, I … have been tear-gassed, threatened by police with drawn guns, charged by soldiers with fixed bayonets, spied upon by U.S. government intelligence agencies, and purged from my job for political reasons.  Although, in my opinion, I did nothing that merited this kind of treatment, it is certainly true that much of my behavior was quite unconventional.  Indeed throughout most of my life I worked diligently as a peace agitator, civil rights activist, socialist organizer, labor union militant, and subversive songwriter. My experiences ranged from challenging racism in the South, to building alliances with maquiladora workers in Mexico, to leading the annual antinuclear parade through the streets of Hiroshima.  Like Wendell Phillilps, the great abolitionist leader, I have been a consistent thorn in the side of complacency – at least I hope so.”


    Clearly Wittner paid a price for his agitation and activism.  While he had a very enviable and successful academic career, his road to success was not easy.  Most major U.S. universities require three primary duties of their tenured professors and those who are seeking tenure.  Those duties are research, teaching, and community service.  If there ever was a university professor who excelled in all three of those functions, it was Lawrence Wittner.  That fact, notwithstanding, he had a VERY rough road to promotion and success because of ultra conservative presidents, deans, departmental chairs, and dead-wood academic colleagues.  Several of those individuals threw sand into the gears of his work as researcher, teacher, and community service provider.  Inane university politics delayed his achievement of tenure,  and ensured that his pay was not usually commensurate with his voluminous work output.   Lesser individuals would have succumbed to such outlandish obstacles.  This was not the case with Lawrence Wittner.  His life was, and is, a life of caring, persistence and dedication to the cause of peace, social justice and human survival.  It is important that his life’s contributions and achievements be passed on to young and old alike.  Working for Peace and Justice is an excellent book for general audiences, peace activists, ethicists, students of peace studies, students of history, and social activists of every stripe. 

  • Lying About Nuclear Weapons

    One of the most popular muckraking American journalists of the late twentieth century, I.F. Stone, once remarked:  “All governments lie.”  Even a prominent government official — Andrei Gromyko, the veteran Soviet diplomat — once admitted, in a weak moment:  “Governments are never sincere.”

    This gloomy assessment appears all too true when it comes to national security policy, and particularly so with respect to nuclear weapons.  Indeed, in early March, a new Japanese political party — swept into governmental power last year thanks to a political upheaval — revealed that its predecessors had lied for more than four decades about one of the most hallowed principles in Japanese public life:  Japan’s nuclear-free status.

    In 1968, Japan’s ruling conservatives — the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — under enormous pressure from an antinuclear public, had proclaimed Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles:  the government would not manufacture, own, or allow the entry of nuclear weapons into Japan.  Ever since that time, there has been considerable controversy over whether U.S. warships in Japanese harbors were armed with nuclear weapons.  As it was hard to imagine how U.S. nuclear warships could dispose of their nuclear weapons before entering Japanese harbors, massive antinuclear demonstrations erupted in Japan’s port cities.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government refused to confirm or deny that its warships carried nuclear weapons, while the Japanese government swore that they did not.

    In recent years, although occasional statements by U.S. government officials indicated that nuclear weapons were probably entering Japan aboard U.S. warships, the Japanese government clung to its lies.  The latest denial was by Taro Aso, the last LDP prime minister before the new Democratic Party of Japan administration revealed the long record of deception.  A Foreign Ministry official told the Associated Press that he and other high-ranking officials of the past feared that disclosing the agreements with the American government to bring nuclear weapons into Japan would have created massive upheaval in Japanese life and, perhaps, toppled the prime minister.  “The political costs were too great,” he explained.

    Actually, in the case of nuclear weapons, the Japanese government had been playing a double game for years.  During the 1950s, Japanese officials issued numerous protests against nuclear weapons testing that were designed less to halt the testing than to soothe public opinion.  In May 1956, the Japanese ambassador explained that his government’s protests were “largely a public opinion matter inside Japan.”  The following day, secretly apologizing for delivering a diplomatic note calling for a halt to U.S. nuclear testing — and “off-the-record,” expressing his disagreement with it — the second in command at the Japanese embassy depicted it as an attempt to woo parliament and public opinion.

    Much the same policy continued in subsequent years.  In 1957, explaining his government’s critique of nuclear testing, the Japanese foreign minister told U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and other U.S. officials that “the Japanese people, old and young, are very sensitive on this question.”  Thus, “the Japanese government was placed in a position where it had to lodge a protest.”  He added, apologetically, that if the government failed to criticize nuclear testing, “the very existence of the Liberal Democratic Party might be endangered.”

    In the early 1960s, when the U.S. government resumed underground and, later, atmospheric nuclear testing, the Japanese government again assailed nuclear tests, but as in the past accompanied such statements with private assurances to U.S. officials that the protests had been made “to offset domestic political pressures.”  Secretly, some Japanese officials went so far as to remark that they favored Japan’s development of nuclear weapons.

    Thus, the Japanese government’s duplicity in connection with the Three Non-Nuclear Principles should not come as a total surprise.

    Of course, lying about nuclear weapons has not been limited to Japanese officials.  The French government argued for years that it was developing nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes — until it abruptly moved forward with its nuclear weapons program.  The Indian government denied that it had conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1974, when it set off a “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion.”  Meanwhile, the Soviet government, while posing for decades as a fierce foe of nuclear weapons, developed the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.  As for the U.S. government, it lied for years about the dangers of nuclear testing, downplayed the ability to detect nuclear testing and development abroad, and made nuclear disarmament offers based on their propaganda value.  One of the more interesting nuclear gambits has been pursued by the Israeli government, which has never admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons — although that government had Mordechai Vanunu kidnapped, tried, and locked in prison for eighteen years (eleven of them in solitary confinement) for the “crime” of publicly revealing their existence.

    In addition, one might ask what has been done to honor the pledge, made at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference of 2000, for an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals”?  At the moment, there remain more than 23,000 nuclear weapons, 96 percent of them in the hands of Russia and the United States.

    But this outrageous record is only part of the story.  Over the years, intense pressure from disarmament organizations and the general public has forced reluctant governments to abandon their foremost nuclear ambitions.  Indeed, numerous non-nuclear nations have decided to forgo the nuclear option, while nuclear nations have scrapped roughly two-thirds of their nuclear weapons and have backed away from plans for nuclear war.  And this May, when the 2010 NPT review conference convenes at the United Nations, there will be a massive public outpouring of people from diverse nations demanding that long-promised — but never delivered — nuclear-free world.  Good luck to them!  They certainly deserve better than further nuclear lies and duplicity.