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Showing posts sorted by date for query Lawrence S. Wittner. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Thursday, November 20, 2025

A Bold Campaign to Confront Global Crises

Although the world is experiencing severe global crises, there are new efforts underway to create a more effective means of coping with them.

The crises are clear enough. They include vast slaughter in horrific wars, worldwide climate catastrophe, massive population displacement, and deepening poverty.

Moreover, these disastrous situations are likely to worsen in coming years. Modern wars are fought with increasingly devastating weapons, and preparations for nuclear war have escalated to the level of global annihilation. Similarly, time is running out for saving the planet from an environmental cataclysm, which will surely lead to heightened displacement and poverty.

There is, of course, a global organization formally tasked with tackling global problems: the United Nations. And the officials of that international entity do frequently make admirable recommendations for how these problems can be solved. Indeed, there is a consensus among most of the UN’s 193 nations about what should be done to preserve a decent future for humanity: end the wars; foster nuclear disarmament; sharply reduce the burning of fossil fuels; assist refugees; promote social progress; and feed the hungry.

The problem is that the United Nations, despite its virtues, remains at the mercy of the major military and economic powers that created it. And they are not only frequently at odds with one another, but are usually determined to see to it that their national interests―as they define them―prevail over the interests of the world community.

When it comes to international security, each of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States) can veto UN action―and all too often do so.

When it comes to UN efforts to address climate change, the situation is not much better, for the great powers continue to burn and (as in the case of Russia and the United States) extract and profit from selling vast quantities of fossil fuel. Consequently, they weaken or sabotage UN-sponsored climate agreements.

Another way the great powers hamstring the United Nations is by abandoning its operations and reducing its meager funding. The U.S. government, under Donald Trump, is particularly flagrant in this regard, pulling the United States out of key UN agencies and slashing voluntary contributions and mandated dues payments to the world organization. As of this October, the United States has compiled a debt of $1.5 billion in mandated funding to the United Nations, followed by China ($192 million) and Russia ($72 million).

Frustrated by the UN’s inability to adequately handle global challenges, a network of civil society organizations, scholars, policy experts, and diplomats took action on September 22, 2025 to launch Article 109, an international coalition to mobilize public opinion, social movements, and national governments to activate a UN Charter Review conference.

When the UN Charter was signed in 1945, the document’s drafters provided for its evolution through Article 109, which states that a Charter Review Conference can be launched by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly and any nine members of the Security Council. As today’s Article 109 Coalition observes, this conference could update and empower the United Nations by enacting structural changes (e.g., reforming the Security Council, creating a UN Parliamentary Assembly, and establishing a Climate Council), as well as by making normative upgrades (e.g., supporting gender equality).

More than 40 civil society organizations are now part of the Article 109 Coalition. They include global campaigning organizations like Oxfam International, Democracy Without Borders, the Global Governance Forum, and the World Federalist Association; regional organizations in Africa and Latin America; think tanks like the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; and national organizations like EYC (which empowers youth in Cambodia) and Citizens for Global Solutions (which organizes in the United States). The Club de Madrid, a recent endorser of Charter review, is a forum that brings together more than 100 former Heads of State.

Indeed, recent heads of state and current government officials participated prominently in the September 22 launch event. Mary Robinson, former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, delivered the keynote address. She was followed by Alexander De Croo (former Belgian Prime Minister), Helen Clark (former New Zealand Prime Minister and UN Development Program Administrator), and Ambassador Muhammadou Kah (The Gambia’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva).

UN Charter review has several potential drawbacks. For example, it could end up producing an amendment that reduces the purview of the international organization. Furthermore, the process will be lengthy. The Article 109 Coalition envisions a UN vote in 2027 to authorize a Charter review conference to convene in 2030. Finally, any amendment to the Charter must be ratified not only by two thirds of the UN membership, but by all permanent members of the Security Council―the five great powers that have helped enfeeble the world organization.

But these obstacles could be overcome. If there is a major campaign to strengthen the UN among members of the public, organizations, and nations, an amended Charter is likely to produce a more robust international institution. In addition, delaying a review conference until 2030 will provide the Article 109 campaign with the time to gather momentum and, also, increase the likelihood that some or all the world’s most stridently nationalist rulers (e.g., Trump, Putin, and Netanyhahu) are no longer in office. Indeed, who really knows what kind of reforms the leadership of the Security Council’s five permanent members would be willing to accept in the future, especially if global conditions worsen and there is substantial worldwide pressure for action?

Farsighted national leaders, at least, are ready for the challenge and, like Brazilian President Luiz InĂ¡cio Lula da Silva, are busy organizing for UN Charter Review. Addressing the September 2025 launch of the Article 109 campaign, Ireland’s Mary Robinson spoke out decisively for UN empowerment, proclaiming: “The moment has come, and we need to be brave.”

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.

Monday, October 13, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Although Albert Einstein is best-known as a theoretical physicist, he also spent much of his life grappling with the problem of war.

In 1914, shortly after he moved to Berlin to serve as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, Einstein was horrified by the onset of World War I.  “Europe, in her insanity, has started something unbelievable,” he told a friend.  “In such times one realizes to what a sad species of animal one belongs.”  Writing to the French author Romain Rolland, he wondered whether “centuries of painstaking cultural effort” have “carried us no further than . . . the insanity of nationalism.”

As militarist propaganda swept through Germany, accompanied that fall by a heated patriotic “Manifesto” from 93 prominent German intellectuals, Einstein teamed up with the German pacifist Georg Friedrich Nicolai to draft an antiwar response, the “Manifesto to Europeans.”  Condemning “this barbarous war” and the “hostile spirit” of its intellectual apologists, the Einstein-Nicolai statement maintained that “nationalist passions cannot excuse this attitude which is unworthy of what the world has heretofore called culture.”

In the context of the war’s growing destructiveness, Einstein also helped launch and promote a new German antiwar organization, the New Fatherland League, which called for a prompt peace without annexations and the formation of a world government to make future wars impossible.  It engaged in petitioning the Reichstag, challenging proposals for territorial gain, and distributing statements by British pacifists.  In response, the German government harassed the League and, in 1916, formally suppressed it.

After the World War came to an end, Einstein became one of the Weimar Republic’s most influential pacifists and internationalists.  Despite venomous attacks by Germany’s rightwing nationalists, he grew increasingly outspoken.  “I believe the world has had enough of war,” he told an American journalist.  “Some sort of international agreement must be reached among nations.”  Meanwhile, he promoted organized war resistance, denounced military conscription, and, in 1932, drew Sigmund Freud into a famous exchange of letters, later published as Why War.

Although technically a Zionist, Einstein had a rather relaxed view of that term, contending that it meant a respect for Jewish rights around the world.  Appalled by Palestinian-Jewish violence in British-ruled Palestine, he pleaded for cooperation between the two constituencies.  In 1938, he declared that he would “much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state.”  He disliked “the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power,” plus “the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks.”

The most serious challenge to Einstein’s pacifism came with the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933 and the advent of that nation’s imperialist juggernaut.  “My views have not changed,” he told a French pacifist, “but the European situation has.”  As long as “Germany persists in rearming and systematically indoctrinating its citizens in preparation for a war of revenge, the nations of Western Europe depend, unfortunately, on military defense.”  In his heart, he said, he continued to “loathe violence and militarism as much as ever; but I cannot shut my eyes to realities.”  Consequently, Einstein became a proponent of collective security against fascism.

Fleeing from Nazi Germany, Einstein took refuge in the United States, which became his new home.  Thanks to his renown, he was approached in 1939 by one of his former physics students, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee who brought ominous news about advances in nuclear fission research in Nazi Germany.  At Szilard’s urging, Einstein sent a warning letter to President Franklin Roosevelt about German nuclear progress.  In response, the U.S. government launched the Manhattan Project, a secret program to build an atomic bomb.

Einstein, like Szilard, considered the Manhattan Project necessary solely to prevent Nazi Germany’s employment of nuclear weapons to conquer the world.  Therefore, when Germany’s war effort neared collapse and the U.S. bomb project neared completion, Einstein helped facilitate a mission by Szilard to Roosevelt with the goal of preventing the use of atomic bombs by the United States.  He also fired off an impassioned appeal to the prominent Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, urging scientists to take the lead in heading off a dangerous postwar nuclear arms race. 

Neither venture proved successful, and the U.S. government, under the direction of the new president, Harry Truman, launched the nuclear age with the atomic bombing of Japan.  Einstein later remarked that his 1939 letter to Roosevelt had been the worst mistake of his life.

Convinced that humanity now faced the prospect of utter annihilation, Einstein resurrected one of his earlier ideas and organized a new campaign against war.  “The only salvation for civilization and the human race,” he told an interviewer in September 1945, “lies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law.”  Again and again, he reiterated this message.  In January 1946, he declared: “As long as there exist sovereign states, each with its own, independent armaments, the prevention of war becomes a virtual impossibility.”  Consequently, humanity’s “desire for peace can be realized only by the creation of a world government.”

In 1946, he and other prominent scientists, fearful of the world’s future, established the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists.  As chair of the new venture, Einstein repeatedly assailed militarism, nuclear weapons, and runaway nationalism.  “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking,” he said, “if mankind is to survive.”

Until his death in 1955, Einstein continued his quest for peace, criticizing the Cold War and the nuclear arms race and calling for strengthened global governance as the only “way out of the impasse.”

Today, as we face a violent, nuclear-armed world, Einstein’s warnings about unrestrained nationalism and his proposals to control it are increasingly relevant.


Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).Email

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Lawrence ("Larry") Wittner was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and attended Columbia College, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in history in 1967.  Thereafter, he taught history at Hampton Institute, at Vassar College, at Japanese universities (under the Fulbright program), and at SUNY/Albany.  In 2010, he retired as professor of history emeritus.  A writer on peace and foreign policy issues, he is the author or editor of twelve books and hundreds of published articles and book reviews and a former president of the Peace History Society.  Since 1961, he has been active in the peace, racial equality, and labor movements, and currently serves as a national board member of Peace Action (America's largest grassroots peace organization) and as executive secretary of the Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.  On occasion, he helps to fan the flames of discontent by performing vocally and on the banjo with the Solidarity Singers.  His latest book is Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (University of Tennessee Press).  More information about him can be found at his website:  http://lawrenceswittner.com.

Saturday, August 23, 2025


Trump’s Assault Upon the United Nations is at Odds with U.S. Public Opinion


by Lawrence S. Wittner / August 21st, 2025


If one examines Donald Trump’s approach to world affairs since his entry into American politics, it should come as no surprise that he has worked to undermine the United Nations.

The United Nation is based on international cooperation, as well as on what the UN Charter calls “the equal rights … of nations large and small.” It seeks to end “the scourge of war” and to “promote social progress” for the people of the world.

By contrast, Trump has advocated a nationalist path for the United States. Campaigning for the presidency in 2016, he proclaimed that “America First” would “be the major and overriding theme of my administration.” In his 2017 inaugural address, he promised: “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.”

Indeed, “America First” became his rallying cry as he championed an unusually aggressive nationalism. “You know what I am?” Trump asked a crowd in Houston. “I’m a nationalist, O.K.? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist!” Sometimes, his displays of superpatriotism―which appealed strongly to right-wing audiences―included hugging and kissing the American flag.

Given this nationalist orientation, Trump turned during his first administration to dismantling key institutions of the United Nations and of the broader system of international law. He withdrew the U.S. government from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He also had the U.S. government vote against the Global Compact on Refugees, suspend funding for the UN Population Fund and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and impose sanctions on a key international agency, the International Criminal Court, which investigates and prosecutes perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.

Nevertheless, many of these Trump measures were reversed under the subsequent presidency of Joseph Biden, which saw the U.S. government rejoin and bolster most of the international organizations attacked by his predecessor.

With Trump’s 2020 election to a second term, however, the U.S. government’s nationalist onslaught resumed. In January 2025, U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, assailed the world organization, and promised to use her new post to promote Trump’s “America First” agenda. “Our tax dollars,” she argued, “should not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests.” Joining the attack, Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the committee chair, sharply criticized the United Nations and called for a reevaluation of every UN agency to determine if its actions benefited the United States. If they didn’t, he said, “hold them accountable until the answer is a resounding yes.” He added that “the U.S. should seriously examine if further contributions and, indeed, participation in the UN is even beneficial to the American people.”

Simultaneously, a new Trump administration steamroller began advancing upon UN entities and other international institutions viewed as out of line with his “America First” priorities. At his direction, the U.S. government withdrew from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, refused to participate in the UN Relief and Works Agency, announced plans to withdraw from UNESCO, and imposed new sanctions on the International Criminal Court. In the UN Security Council, the U.S. government employed its veto power to block a June 2025 resolution demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and release of all hostages―a measure supported by the 14 other members of that UN entity.

The Trump administration has also worked to cripple the United Nations by reducing its very meager income. In July 2025, rescissions legislation sponsored by the administration and passed by the Republican-controlled Congress pulled back some $1 billion in funding that U.S. legislation had allocated to the world organization in previous budgets. This action will have devastating effects on a broad variety of UN programs, including UNICEF, the UN Development Program, the UN Environment Program, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the UN Fund for Victims of Torture.

Moreover, the administration’s fiscal 2026 budget proposes ending UN Peacekeeping payments and pausing most other contributions to the United Nations. Although U.S. funding of the United Nations is actually quite minimal―for example, dues of only $820 million per year for the regular UN budget―the U.S. government has now compiled a debt of $1.5 billion (the highest debt of any nation) to the regular budget and another $1.3 billion to the separate UN Peacekeeping budget.

The Trump administration’s hostility to the United Nations is sharply at odds with the American public’s attitude toward the world organization. For example, a Pew Research Center poll in late March 2025 found that 63 percent of U.S. respondents said that their country benefited from UN membership―up 3 percent from the previous spring. And 57 percent of Americans polled had a favorable view of the United Nations―up 5 percent since 2024.

Furthermore, a University of Maryland public opinion survey in June 2025 found that 84 percent of Americans it polled wanted the U.S. government to work with the United Nations at current levels or more. This included 83 percent supporting UNICEF, 81 percent UN Peacekeeping, 81 percent the UN World Food Program, 79 percent the World Health Organization, and 73 percent the UN Environment Program.

Nor was this strong backing for a global approach to global affairs a fluke. Even when it came to the International Criminal Court, an independent international entity that the U.S. government has never joined and that Trump had roundly denounced and twice ordered sanctioned, 62 percent of Americans surveyed expressed their approval of the organization.

Trump’s “America First” approach can certainly stir up his hardcore followers. But most Americans recognize that life in the modern world requires moving beyond a narrow nationalism.

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.

Saturday, July 19, 2025

 

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

At a time when international cooperation provides the key to preventing a variety of global calamities―including nuclear war, climate catastrophe, and massive starvation―it’s tragic that major nations, ruled by nationalist, rightwing parties, are on a collision course with the organizations that represent the international community.

Chief among these international organizations is the United Nations, with a Charter that bans “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Nevertheless, ignoring this ban, the Russian government has engaged since February 2022 in a massive military invasion and occupation of Ukraine, the Israeli government has continued a brutal occupation and military bombardment of Gaza, and the President of the United States has ordered the bombing of Iran and talked glibly of seizing GazaGreenland, and the Panama Canal.

These same nations have refused to comply with or stymied the mandates of numerous key international organizations.

The Russian government has refused to abide by the February 2022 ruling of the International Court of Justice that Russia cease its military invasion of Ukraine immediately, has defied repeated votes by the UN General Assembly condemning its invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine, and has rejected compliance with an International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his regime’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children. In the UN Security Council, Russia used its veto to frustrate international denunciation of its war on Ukraine and condemnation of Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory.

The Israeli government has spurned vast numbers of UN General Assembly resolutions calling for fair treatment of Palestinians and an end to Israeli occupation of their land or to honor the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes against humanity in Gaza.

For its part, the U.S. government, under the new administration of Donald Trump, belittled the United Nations, pulled the United States out of the World Health Organizationabandoned the UN Human Rights Councilsuspended U.S. payment for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and announced a review of its membership in the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It also employed its veto to block passage of a UN Security Council resolution demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

The fervent resistance of these governments to international authority is illustrated by their vehement responses to the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a global juridical entity endorsed by 125 nationsIn Russia, the government opened criminal cases against the prosecutor and judges of the court, while former President Dmitry Medvedev publicly threatened to target the court with missile strikes. In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu fiercely denounced the ICC warrant for his arrest as an “antisemitic act” by a corrupt prosecutor and biased judges. In the United States, President Trump issued an executive order in early February 2025 imposing economic and travel sanctions against the ICC prosecutor, establishing a framework for imposing additional sanctions on ICC officials, and directing the U.S. officials to submit the names of other individuals to be targeted.

Indeed, the Trump administration has launched an all-out attack on the work of international institutions, especially the United Nations. In February, Trump ordered a six-month review of U.S. membership in all international organizations, conventions, and treaties with a view toward reducing funding, ending funding, or simply withdrawing from them. This review included a critical examination of the United Nations, with the result that the administration’s 2026 budget proposal reduced UN funding by 87 percent. This draconic UN budget cut will drastically undermine the World Food Program, assistance to children (e.g. UNICEF), refugee, migration, disaster relief, family planning, and economic development programs, the International Court of Justice, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and UN peacekeeping missions, with disastrous consequences. Global starvation, for example, is now widespread, with acute hunger confronting 343 million people in 74 nations.

Meanwhile, in Congress, Republican legislators have introduced bills in the Senate and the House to terminate U.S. membership in the United Nations and affiliated institutions. Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a MAGA stalwart, declared that it was time to dissociate the United States from “this corrupt globalist organization.”

Despite these attacks and a retreat from international responsibility by other nations, it remains possible that international organizations can weather the rightwing, nationalist storm. At the United Nations, Secretary-General AntĂ³nio Guterres has been working to modernize and streamline the UN system’s structure, priorities, and operations to meet the new challenges it faces. Nevertheless, given the need to reduce the UN core budget by 20 percent, his new UN80 reform plan does call for thousands of job cuts.

A more promising solution to the problems created by nationalist ideologues in major nations is for other nations to pick up the slack in supporting international institutions. The European Union (EU) is particularly well positioned to assume this role, for it generally favors multilateral action to address global challenges. And it also possesses substantial financial resources. Together with Britain and some potential non-Western partners, such as Japan and South Korea, the EU could substitute for the United States in bolstering the United Nations and other organizations that now provide the rudiments of cooperative global governance.

In addition, it’s certainly possible that, given the inability of governments with a narrow nationalist approach to effectively address contemporary global problems, they will sooner or later be replaced by governments better able to cope with the modern world.

Of course, the League of Nations and the hope of international cooperation were destroyed in the 1930s thanks to the rise of rightwing, hyper-nationalist regimes, and a comparable process might be unfolding today.

Even so, with the onset of World War II, most people finally realized that narrow nationalism had to give way to global cooperation. Let’s hope that it won’t take another world war or comparable catastrophe to convince people again.


Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

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Saturday, July 05, 2025

 

Greed: The Survival of a Primitive Emotion



Congressional passage of Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” provides the latest evidence that human greed, despite its primitive nature, remains alive and well.

Perhaps most noticeably, the legislation provides for over $3 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and their corporations. This largesse is facilitated by slashing over $1.4 trillion in healthcare and food assistance for low-income Americans and increasing the national debt by $3.3 trillion. Estimates reveal that at least 16 million Americans will lose health care coverage and 7 million people (including 2 million children) will lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. Meanwhile, according to the Yale Budget Lab, the nation’s top 0.1 percent―people with an annual income over $3.3 million―will receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average. Condemning the legislation, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared simply that it “takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.”

Other measures in the legislation supporting the wealthy and their businesses at public expense include financial subsidies for coal, oil, and gas companies, the opening of opportunities for oil and gas corporations to drill on public lands (including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve), and the reduction of royalty fees for such fossil fuel drilling.

Of course, this kind of class legislation and the greed that inspires it are nothing new. Throughout history, some people have amassed great fortunes, often with the assistance of governments and other powerful entities. Kings, princes, and their courtiers provided themselves with castles, vast landed estates, and other perquisites of wealth, while millions of their subjects lived in miserable huts and dug a few potatoes out of their fields in a desperate effort to survive. In later years, this situation was replicated to some extent as business titans garnered great wealth by exploiting workers in factories, mines, and fields.

Although this pattern of economic inequality was viewed as immoral by every great religious and ethical system, it did have a brutal logic to it. After all, in these situations of overall scarcity, some people would be poor and some would surely die. By contrast, growing rich helped guarantee survival for oneself and one’s family.

But with the advent of the industrial revolution, these tragic circumstances began to dissipate, for human beings increasingly possessed the knowledge, skills, and resources that had the potential to produce decent lives for everyone. Indeed, as science, technology, and factory output advanced and produced unprecedented abundance, there was no longer any morally justifiable basis for the existence of hunger, homelessness, and mass sickness.

In these altered conditions, avarice has become increasingly irrational―the driving force behind irrational men like Donald Trump and his billionaire friends, who, even as millions of people live and die in poverty and misery, seek to wallow in great wealth.

Gandhi put it concisely when he declared, decades ago: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Fortunately, over the course of human history, humane thinkers, social movements, and political parties have worked to rein in untrammeled greed in the interest of a better life for all humanity. In recent centuries, they have recognized the fact that sharing the wealth is not only a moral stance, but a feasible one.

Let’s hope, then, that despite this brazen and regressive move by the Trump administration to bolster economic privilege at the expense of human needs, the forces favoring human equality and compassion will ultimately prevail.

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.