After decades of progress in reducing nuclear arsenals through arms control and disarmament agreements, all nine nuclear powers are once again busily upgrading their nuclear weapons capabilities. They can plunge ahead with their nuclear arms race and face the terrible economic and human consequences. Or they can take the path of sanity in the nuclear age and join other nations in building a nuclear weapons-free world.
Last year was a terrible time for vast numbers of people around the globe, who experienced not only a terrible disease pandemic, accompanied by widespread sickness and death, but severe economic hardship. Even so, the disasters of 2020 were not shocking enough to jolt the world's most powerful nations out of their traditional preoccupation with enhancing their armed might, for once again they raised their military spending to new heights.
Given the fact that nuclear war means the virtual annihilation of life on earth, it's remarkable that many people continue to resist building a nuclear weapons-free world. But there is a way to reduce the opposition to nuclear weapons abolition significantly.
The uniform opposition by congressional Republicans to measures that serve the common good, such as the recently-enacted American Rescue Plan, is in striking contrast to the Constitution of the United States, which declares that a key purpose of the U.S. government is to "promote the general welfare." Furthermore, promoting the general welfare is the usual reason that people around the world support some sort of governing authority. After all, if a government doesn't promote the welfare of its people, what good is it?
In the midst of the multiple crises that beset today's world, the gathering obsolescence of the nation in addressing global issues suggests the need to take another look at strengthening global governance and what it might accomplish.
Popular pressure resulted in nuclear arms control and disarmament measures that curbed the nuclear arms race decades ago. Nevertheless, the nuclear arms race has gradually resumed. Given international rivalries, it remains unclear whether even the limited disarmament initiatives pursued by the Biden administration will proceed or restrain the nuclear ambitions of the nuclear powers.
The nine nuclear powers have refused to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force on January 22, 2021. Instead, they have continued to engage in a nuclear arms race and to threaten nuclear war. Even so, the advent of the Biden administration offers some hope for a return to the abandoned process of nuclear disarmament.
Nationalism has seen a remarkable revival over the past decade, with the the passage of a referendum in Britain calling for withdrawal from the European Union and the surprising rise and election of rightwing, chauvinist politicians. Nevertheless, there are recent indications that the nationalist surge is waning as nations confront problems that can only be tackled on a global basis.
During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, he denounced the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and promised to restore them. Four years later, campaigning for re-election, he boasted that he had "brought back" 700,000 factory jobs. But, in reality, U.S. manufacturing employment declined substantially during Trump's presidency, leaving behind thousands of embittered American workers.
Back in July 1962, I was in the Deep South, working to register Black voters. It was a near-hopeless project, given the mass disenfranchisement of the region's Black population that was enforced by Southern law and an occasional dose of white terrorism. But I learned a lot about voter suppression, which -- despite the breakthrough provided by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- has been revived in recent years by Republicans in the states and in the nation.
