Vieques is a small Puerto Rican island with some 9,000 inhabitants.  Fringed by palm trees and lovely beaches, with the world's brightest bioluminescent bay and wild horses roaming everywhere, it attracts substantial numbers of tourists.  For about six decades, it also served as a bombing range, military training site, and storage depot for the U.S. Navy, until its outraged residents rescued their homeland from the grip of militarism.

Trump's nationalist approach to the world involves walking away from cooperative agreements with other nations and relying instead upon a dominant role for the United States, undergirded by military might, in global affairs.  Nevertheless, as numerous recent opinion polls reveal, most Americans don't support this policy.

In recent weeks, Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes have denounced their political opponents as "socialists" who will inevitably transform the United States into a land of dictatorship and poverty.  But, over the centuries, socialism has meant different things to different people, and democratic socialism -- like the substantial public sector in the United States -- has been perfectly compatible with free societies and vibrant economies.

The Trump administration's campaign to topple the government of Venezuela raises the issue of whether the U.S. government is willing to adhere to the same rules of behavior it expects other nations to follow.  The U.S. government helped draft the charter of the Organization of American States, which declares that no nation "has the right to intervene directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state."  The charter of the United Nations, also crafted and ratified by the U.S. government, says much the same thing.   Nonetheless, the Trump administration demands the installation of a new, unelected president in Venezuela and insists that "all options are on the table" to implement this action.

In early February 2019, the U.S. and Russian governments announced their pullout from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and plans to build nuclear weapons previously banned by it.  Together with earlier actions taken by the two leading nuclear powers, this action signaled their resumption of the nuclear arms race.  But the history of the development of this treaty and of other nuclear arms control measures indicates that public pressure can force reluctant governments to accept nuclear disarmament.

The problem that government officials have faced when engaged in nuclear weapons buildups and nuclear threats is that the public fears such behavior could lead to a disastrous nuclear war.  Consequently, to soothe public anxiety about nuclear destruction, they have argued that nuclear weapons deter war and that technology can wall their countries off from a nuclear attack.  But  the reality is that nuclear deterrence and missile defense do not guarantee national security.

The world's billionaires keep increasing in number and, especially, in wealth.  Having derived their vast fortunes from exploiting workers, they use it not only to engage in profligate spending, but to promote rightwing public policy, take personal command of major nations, and (occasionally) engage in the kind of philanthropy that promotes their interests.  Overall, as the world's wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, most people around the world are clearly the losers.

When it comes to military power, the United States reigns supreme.  If, however, one considers education, health care, and the environment, the United States lags considerably behind many other nations.  As roughly two-thirds of the U.S. government's discretionary spending goes for war and war preparations, this discrepancy is not entirely surprising.  

Although a widespread environmental movement has developed to save the planet from accelerating climate change, no counterpart has emerged to take on the rising danger of nuclear disaster.  The Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the 1980s provides us with a useful example of how to build a large and effective movement.

In July 2017, by a vote of 122 to 1, with one abstention, nations from around the world attending a UN-sponsored conference voted to approve a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.  But this treaty has been sharply rejected by the governments of the United States and the other nuclear powers.  Indeed, the Trump administration's obsession with building nuclear weapons and threatening nuclear war underscores its unwillingness to join other governments in developing a sane nuclear policy.