About Lawrence S. Wittner

Throughout my career, I have researched and written on the history of
Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).

U.S. foreign policy, international history, and the history of peace movements. In recent years, I have written about the impact of the worldwide nuclear disarmament movement upon nuclear weapons policies. Given these areas of expertise, I teach courses dealing with the history of U.S. foreign policy, international history, and the history of U.S. social movements.

What Will the Democratic Left Do in 2012?

gene mccarthy

Lawrence Wittner: Contrasting the administration’s all-out effort to save Wall Street with its indifference to Main Street, many progressives wonder if they have gained anything worthwhile with Obama’s election.

Is Mitt Romney Ready for the World?

mitt romney

Lawrence Wittner: Mitt Romney seems likely to become the Republican candidate and the next president, so we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address

Kansas City, Here It Comes: A New Nuclear Weapons Plant!

nuclear weapons protest

Should the U.S. government be building more nuclear weapons?  Residents of Kansas City, Missouri, don’t appear to think so, for they are engaged in a bitter fight against the construction of a new nuclear weapons plant in their community. The massive plant, 1.5 million square feet in size, is designed to replace an earlier version, [...]

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How to Save $250 Billion: Axe “Missile Defense”

hostage-wide

Lawrence Wittner: By scrapping plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” and for national missile defense—programs that are both useless and provocative—the United States would save $271 billion (well over a quarter of a trillion dollars) in the next ten years.

Militarist Madness

military might

Lawrence Wittner: Despite the vast rivers of blood and treasure poured into wars over the centuries, the nations of the world continue to enhance their military might.

The Peace Movement Today

codepink_interns-wide

Lawrence Wittner: Despite the President’s rhetorical support for nuclear abolition, it looks like the United States and other nations are on a very slow track to ridding the world of the nuclear menace.

It’s Still the Same Old Story—from Guns to Nukes

gun culture

Lawrence Wittner: Are we safer with more firepower or less? Despite the propaganda of the gunslingers, the arms manufacturers, and the military enthusiasts, it does seem that the world would be a lot safer with fewer guns and fewer nuclear weapons.

The “Golden Rule” Will Sail Again

golden rule

Lawrence Wittner: And so it appears that the “Golden Rule” will resume the long journey it began more than half a century ago. Rebuilt by U.S. military veterans, it will “renew Bigelow’s and Veterans for Peace’s mission — to abolish war and promote peaceful diplomacy.”

Will Senate Republicans Produce Another International Disaster?

start-treaty

Lawrence Wittner: As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote this December on ratification of the New START Treaty, Republican legislators appear on the verge of producing an international disaster.

Public Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free World

atomic bomb explosion

Lawrence S. Wittner: One of the ironies of the current international situation is that, although some government leaders now talk of building a nuclear weapons-free world, there has been limited public mobilization around that goal—at least compared to the action-packed 1980s.

America’s Runaway Military Spending

Lawrence Wittner: When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran.

BP’s Other Gifts to America—and to the World

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Lawrence Wittner: At this point, we might well wonder if it was such a good idea to overthrow a democratic, secular nationalist like Mossadeq to preserve the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now renamed BP). Indeed, given the sordid record of BP and other giant oil companies, we might wonder why we tolerate them at all.

What’s Next for the Nuclear Disarmament Movement?

Lawrence Wittner: Reflecting on the contrast between the Obama administration’s nuclear abolition rhetoric and its record, Kevin Martin, executive director of America’s largest peace organization, Peace Action, concluded that supporters of a nuclear-free world needed to wake up to the reality that the administration’s nuclear disarmament activities were going to be quite limited without very substantial movement pressure.

Rand Paul Could Use a Lesson from My Father on Discrimination

rand paul tea party

Lawrence Wittner: In one way, Rand Paul is quite right. Anti-discrimination laws do turn the tables on businessmen, who find that they can no longer mistreat employees and customers on the basis of race, religion, national origins, or gender. And isn’t that ban on discriminatory behavior a good idea?

Replacing International Oppression with International Aid

President John F. Kennedy urging University of Michigan students to support and join the Peace Corp in 1960.

Lawrence Wittner: So why should humanitarian aid be extraordinary? Why not make it routine? Long before the earthquake, Haitians were the poorest people in the hemisphere, suffering from widespread hunger, disease, and illiteracy. Could not the United States — the richest nation in the world with a public whose major anxieties (to judge from the vast attention given to weight loss) seem to result from over-eating — manage to share a bit of its affluence by regularly providing food aid to starving Haitians?

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