by Lawrence Wittner | Mar 13, 2026 | Global Justice
The U.S. military attack upon Iran is but the latest indication that the system of international law―which provides guidelines for the behavior of nations in world affairs―is crumbling.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after thousands of years of violent international conflict, efforts to establish global norms for nations in connection with war, diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights accelerated. These efforts resulted in the founding of the United Nations (which develops, codifies, and enforces international law), the International Court of Justice (which settles legal disputes among nations and provides advisory opinions on legal questions), and the International Criminal Court (which investigates and tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community).
Of course, the current U.S. military attack on Iran flies in the face of the UN Charter, which, in Article 2, states that “all Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means” and that they “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Furthermore, contemptuous of the United Nations, Trump has withdrawn the U.S. government from dozens of UN agencies and blocked the U.S. government’s payment of billions of dollars in mandatory dues to the world organization.
Other nations are also clearly out of line with international law. The Russian government’s over four years of war and occupation of Ukrainian territory are flagrant violations of the UN Charter, as attested to by a ruling of the International Court of Justice and numerous overwhelming condemnations by the UN General Assembly. The Israeli government is also a prominent transgressor, having joined the U.S. military assault on Iran and conducted an illegal occupation of conquered Palestinian territory for decades while violating international humanitarian law in its treatment of the civilian population.
Disgusted by the ability of these and other nations to act with impunity, Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign policy advisor, remarked bitterly in 2025: “We are moving into a system where anybody can do whatever they like. . . . As long as you have the ability to wreak havoc, you can do it because no one will hold you accountable.”
This lack of accountability is striking. Within nations, there is usually effective enforcement of law. But, on the global level, law enforcement is weak, indeed. When the International Criminal Court announced warrants for the arrests of Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, a former Russian president threatened the judges with a hypersonic missile attack and the U.S. government imposed heavy sanctions on the judges. Meanwhile, Putin and Netanyahu remain at large.
Scornful of international law, some national officials openly champion a return to the traditional might-makes-right conduct of international affairs. “You can talk all you want about international niceties,” said Stephen Miller, Trump’s influential White House aide, “but we live in . . . the real world . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Naturally, officials of nations that are militarily powerful find a power politics approach appealing, as do people with militarist and nationalist views. Trump recently announced: “I don’t need international law.”
Conversely, officials of less powerful nations are dismayed by the resurrection of a might-makes-right standard, as are people with peace-oriented and internationalist views. They argue that what the world needs is not the abandonment of international law, but its more effective enforcement. Furthermore, they contend that a return to great power imperialism in a world bristling with modern weapons, including nuclear weapons, is a recipe for catastrophe.
But if effective enforcement of international law is preferable to a power politics approach to world affairs, can that effective enforcement be attained?
There are certainly feasible, small-scale actions along these lines that could be taken. One is to increase the number of nations that accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Currently, only 75 nations of the 193 UN member states do so. Another is to increase the number of nations that are parties to the statute of the International Criminal Court. The current number is 125, and does not include the United States, Russia, China, and Israel.
Even the use of the veto in the UN Security Council―employed most frequently by the U.S. and Russian governments―could be limited to some degree. One way is to simply enforce Article 27 in the UN Charter providing that a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting on that dispute. Another―championed by France and Mexico―is to exclude the veto in situations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Also, of course, deadbeat nations could be pressured into paying their UN dues―for example, by denying them their vote in the UN General Assembly.
More thoroughgoing action would be difficult to secure, but not impossible. Perhaps the leading obstacle to a substantial strengthening of the United Nations and the international law it seeks to develop and enforce is the provision in the UN Charter that all five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) must agree to any change in the Charter. Nevertheless, the Charter also provides that a two-thirds vote by the General Assembly and by any nine members of the Security Council can produce a Charter review conference. Consequently, there is now a significant campaign underway to call for one. And, if such a meeting is held, perhaps after the current crop of aging, reactionary officials has passed from the scene, who really knows what will occur?
Admittedly, the prospects aren’t good for halting the return of nations to their traditional practices of war and imperialism.
Even so, if people can create the scientific and technological marvels of the modern world, they might also be capable of developing ways to stop killing one another.
by David Oughton | Feb 20, 2026 | United Nations
Although the United Nations was created in 1945 with the goal of ending war and solving other global problems, in many cases, the international organization has been unable to fulfill its mission. Since that time, wars have been fought, unscrupulous national leaders have done whatever they can get away with, and numerous global problems remain unresolved.
The reason for the spotty record of the world organization is that many organs of the United Nations are weak and, therefore, unable to cope adequately with the enormous job that lies before the international organization and the world. The solution is to transform these UN organs by drawing upon Article 109 of the UN Charter, which lays out the method for making changes in the UN system.
Here are some of the major structural problems of key UN organs that could be solved if enough people and countries were committed to making the United Nations strong and effective.
Currently, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) can only pass nonbinding resolutions addressing how national governments should behave. Even if a nation votes for a resolution, it is not required to follow it. The UNGA is not democratic because each of the current 193 countries has the same one vote, regardless of the size of its population. A few countries have over a billion people, while some have only a few thousand. It is thus possible for a resolution in the UNGA to pass by a two-thirds majority that represents only 8 percent of the world’s population. The 65 least populous countries with a combined population below one percent of the world’s population can block the passage of a substantive resolution in the UNGA. The solution is to use a system of weighted votes based on population and other factors so that the General Assembly can pass laws regarding violations of human rights, relations among nations, and other global problems.
The UN Security Council has often been ineffective because any one of the five permanent members (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France) usually vetoes any resolution when it or one of its allies is involved in a dispute. Any permanent member can kill a peace resolution even if all of the other fourteen members on the Security Council vote for it. The solution is to have regional memberships on the Security Council using weighted voting so that no one nation can veto a resolution.
The UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) can only issue non-enforceable decisions. National leaders suffer no consequences for violating or for withdrawing from international treaties. Even though most nations abide by most of their treaties most of the time, national governments can violate or withdraw from treaties when they feel it is in their national interest without any concern for the common good. The solution is to give the ICJ the authority to require binding arbitration for disputes between nations or groups.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is based on a treaty that so far has been joined by only two-thirds of the world’s governments. One-third of the countries that have not joined the ICC treaty include Russia, China, the United States, and Israel. The jurisdiction of the ICC should become universal so that, in accordance with its charter, those individuals involved in genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression are prosecuted when national courts are unwilling or unable to do so.
The UN system must rely on dues from national governments, which are not always paid. The U.S. government, for example, owes billions of dollars in back dues to the world organization. Furthermore, the UN system, including its many specialized agencies, must do its important work on an extremely small budget. Almost every state in the United States has a larger annual budget than the UN system. One way to provide adequate funding for the UN system would be to charge a user tax on nations, corporations, and individuals for international travel and for exploring and using the resources of the common areas of our planet that are not part of any national territory.
These proposals will only be implemented when enough people from many countries vote for leaders who support strengthening the United Nations. Until then, wars, hunger, and disease will continue to plague our planet.
by Sovaida Maani Ewing | Feb 20, 2026 | Peace & Disarmament, United Nations
In 2011, the New START Treaty, which had been signed by the United States and Russia the previous year, came into effect. The Treaty aimed to restrict the number of nuclear warheads the two nations could deploy. It also provided for a verification system to ensure that both sides were complying with the Treaty rules by providing for on-site inspections of their respective nuclear sites. This month, the Treaty expired.
With the end of the New START Treaty, the nuclear arms race is likely to heat up again. This time, it will be more complicated and dangerous than it was during the Cold War, given that another big power China—has already vigorously entered the race. She has been determinedly and steadily growing her nuclear arsenal, particularly since 2012. Consequently, one of America’s great fears is that, instead of having to defend herself against Russia alone, she might have to face both China and Russia, especially if they choose to join forces.
The problem is that if, in anticipation of such danger, America starts to deploy more nuclear weapons, Russia will follow suit and China will likely step up her efforts even further, setting off a domino effect: China’s neighbor India, with which it has long had slow-burning border conflicts, is also likely to become nervous about a steady increase in nuclear deployments and so follow suit. Such a move would most probably trigger Pakistan to react in kind, to protect herself against her nuclear neighbor, India. And so the dominoes fall.
The problem will be compounded: those countries in Europe and Asia which have been relying on the American nuclear umbrella to shield them against aggression may well conclude that in an increasingly nuclear insecure world, the only effective way to bolster their own protection is to seek their own nuclear capabilities.
As smaller nations seek to acquire nuclear arms, their larger and more powerful neighbors may feel increasingly threatened and evince more aggressive tendencies to quash such nascent nuclear ambitions, leading to a world that is increasingly unstable and insecure.
We must act swiftly and decisively to arrest this dangerous descent into nuclear chaos, which can only result in a nuclear war that, however limited in geographic scope or duration, will have a devastating impact on the entire planet. The most effective path is for nations to create a world parliament that is democratically elected by the people of each country and therefore truly represents the interests of the collective whole. This parliament should be granted the authority to pass international laws on the basis of some sort of majority vote, that are binding on all the nations of the world. No nation can be allowed to opt out for any reason. The law must apply equally to all nations, great or small, powerful or weak. A suitable enforcement mechanism must also be devised and agreed upon, so that nations are suitably deterred from any temptation to flout the Parliament’s international law with impunity.
The time has come for humanity to take this next, inevitable step in its collective evolution. It is an idea whose time has come!
by Lawrence Wittner | Feb 17, 2026 | Peace & Disarmament
On January 27, 2026, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight―the closest setting, since the appearance of the clock in 1946, to nuclear annihilation.
This grim appraisal has impressive evidence to support it.
The New Start Treaty, the last of the major nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties between the United States and Russia, expired on February 5, without any serious attempt to replace it. New Start’s demise enables both nations, which possess about 86 percent of the world’s 12,321 nuclear weapons, to move beyond the strict limits set by the treaty on the number of their strategic nuclear weapons (the most powerful, most devastating kind), thus enhancing the ability of their governments to reduce the world to a charred wasteland.
Actually, a nuclear arms race has been gathering steam for years, as nearly all the governments of the nine nuclear powers (which, in addition to Russia and the United States, include China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) scramble to upgrade existing weapons systems and add newer versions. China’s nuclear arsenal is the fastest-growing among them. “The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world . . . is coming to an end,” observed Hans Kristensen, a highly regarded expert on nuclear armament and disarmament. “Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric, and the abandonment of arms control agreements.”
The U.S. government is currently immersed in a $1.7 trillion nuclear “modernization” program that President Donald Trump has championed and repeatedly lauded. As early as February 2018, he boasted that his administration was “creating a brand-new nuclear force. We’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” In late October 2025, to facilitate the U.S. nuclear buildup, Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare to resume U.S. nuclear weapons testing, which had ceased 33 years before. In line with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, signed by 187 nations (including the United States), no nuclear power (other than the rogue nation of North Korea) has conducted explosive nuclear testing in over 25 years.
Another sign of the escalating nuclear danger is the revival of implicit and explicit threats to initiate nuclear war. Such threats, which declined with the end of the Cold War, have resurfaced in recent years. When angered by the policies of other nations, Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin have repeatedly and publicly threatened them with nuclear destruction. According to the U.S. government’s Voice of America, the Russian government, in the context of its invasion of Ukraine, issued 135 nuclear threats between February 2022 and December 17, 2024. Although some national security experts have discounted most Russian threats as manipulative rather than serious, in November 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping thought the matter serious enough to publicly chide his professed ally, Putin, for threatening to resort to nuclear arms in Ukraine.
Underlying this drift toward nuclear war are the growing conflicts among nations―conflicts that have significantly weakened international cooperation and the United Nations. As the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put it, rather than heed past warnings of catastrophe, “Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic.” Consequently, “hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war.”
But this is not necessarily the end of the story―or of the world.
After all, much the same situation existed in the second half of the twentieth century, when conflicts among the great powers fueled a dangerous nuclear arms race that, at numerous junctures, threatened to spiral into full-scale nuclear war. And, in response, a massive grassroots campaign emerged to save the world from nuclear annihilation. Although that campaign did not succeed in banning the bomb, it did manage to curb the nuclear arms race, reduce the number of nuclear weapons by more than 80 percent, and prevent a much-feared nuclear catastrophe.
Furthermore, in the early twenty-first century, there have been new and important developments. The worldwide remnants of the nuclear disarmament movement regrouped as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and, joined by farsighted officials in smaller, non-nuclear nations, drew upon the United Nations to sponsor a series of antinuclear conferences. In 2017, by a vote of 122 to 1 (with 1 abstention), delegates at one of these UN conferences adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Although all nine nuclear powers strongly opposed the TPNW―which banned the use, threatened use, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, stationing, and installation of nuclear weapons―the treaty secured sufficient national backing to enter into force in January 2021. Thus far, it has been signed by 99 countries―a majority of the world’s nations.
In addition to the efficacy of public pressure for nuclear disarmament and the existence of a treaty banning nuclear weapons, at least one other factor points the way toward a non-nuclear future: the self-defeating nature—indeed, the insanity―of nuclear war. With even a single nuclear bomb capable of killing millions of people and leaving the desperate survivors crawling painfully through a burnt-out, radioactive hell, even a nuclear “victory” is a defeat. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is believed to have said, “the survivors would envy the dead.” It’s a lesson that most people around the world have learned, although not perhaps the lunatics.
Lunatics, of course, exist, and some of them, unfortunately, govern modern nations and ignore international law.
Even so, although we are on the road to nuclear war, there is still time to take a deep breath, think about where we are going, and turn around.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 25, 2026 | Global Justice, Peace & Disarmament
There is a widening gap today between global possibilities and global realities.
The global realities are quite grim.
Despite some advances in countering worldwide poverty, it remains at a startlingly high level. According to the World Bank, half of humanity lives on less than $6.85 per day per person, with over 700 million people living on less than $2.15 per day.
Moreover, economic inequality is vast and increasing. A recently-released World Inequality Report, produced in conjunction with the United Nations, found that, in almost every region of the world, the richest 1 percent is wealthier than the bottom 90 percent combined. Indeed, the richest 0.001 percent of the world’s population controls three times the wealth of the poorest half, and its wealth is growing at a faster rate.
As the charitable organization Oxfam has observed, there is no morally defensible justification for this state of affairs. “Extreme wealth is not accumulated simply as a reward for extreme talent,” it has noted. “The majority of billionaire wealth . . . is unearned, derived from inheritance, crony connections, and monopolistic power.” Moreover, billionaires and giant corporations are fostering greater economic inequality and misery by opposing labor laws and policies that benefit workers, undermining progressive taxation, employing modern colonial systems of wealth extraction in the Global South, and using monopoly power to control markets and set the rules and terms of exchange.
Furthermore, when it comes to respecting international law, the rulers of some powerful nations are behaving increasingly like gangsters.
Donald Trump is particularly flagrant in this regard. During his second term as President of the United States, he has already bombed seven nations (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen), threatened to invade or seize five others (Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, and Mexico ), blown up 33 foreign boats and their sailors, kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation (Venezuela), and announced plans to “run” Venezuela and take control of its vast oil resources. “I don’t need international law,” he explained.
Trump’s “America First” policy―redolent of traditional great power imperialism―is complemented by other measures showing contempt for key international institutions. Trump quickly withdrew the U.S. government from leading UN agencies like the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, refused to participate in the UN Relief and Works Agency, and announced plans to withdraw from UNESCO. On January 7, 2026, the White House followed up by announcing U.S. withdrawal from 66 international and UN entities. It has also withheld at least two years of mandated dues to the UN’s regular budget and has placed sanctions on the judges and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Clearly, Trump has other priorities. He dramatically increased U.S. military spending soon after he returned to power and, in January 2026, proposed raising military spending by another $600 billion to a record $1.5 trillion, thereby creating his “Dream Military.” Apparently, this dream does not include ending the menace of nuclear annihilation, for―asked about renewing the last nuclear arms control agreement remaining with Russia, scheduled to expire next month―Trump responded: “If it expires, it expires.”
Unfortunately, leaders of other nations are also working full-time to destroy what remains of international law and humanity’s hopes for the future.
Vladimir Putin has stopped at nothing to revive what he considers Russia’s imperial glory by waging nearly four years of war to conquer and annex his far smaller, weaker neighbor, Ukraine. Ignoring strong condemnations by the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, Putin has pressed on with an imperialist war that has reduced cities to rubble, damaged or destroyed thousands of schools and health care facilities, and sent 6 million Ukrainians fleeing abroad. The wounded or dead number hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and as many as 1.2 million Russian soldiers.
Nor is this the extent of Putin’s military interventionism. Until quite recently, he conducted a brutal bombing campaign for nearly a decade in Syria to prop up the Assad dictatorship against its domestic foes. He also employed the Wagner Group, a shadowy private mercenary army headquartered in Russia, to conduct military operations elsewhere in the Middle East and in numerous African nations.
Like Trump, Putin has scrapped nuclear arms control agreements and occasionally threatened nuclear war.
Other national rulers, enamored with military power and widening their realms, have also turned their countries into rogue nations. Kim Jong Un, despite offers from the South Korean and U.S. governments to improve diplomatic relations, has chosen instead to dramatically expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, threaten nuclear war, and dispatch more than 14,000 combat troops to help Russia subdue Ukraine. Benjamin Netanyahu, while constantly claiming Israel’s victimization, has in fact superintended a genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians, staged military attacks on numerous nations, and―in defiance of a ruling by the International Court of Justice―refused to end Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory.
And yet, the possibilities for reversing this sad state of affairs are enormous, for―thanks to a variety of factors, ranging from increases in knowledge to advances in economic productivity―it’s finally feasible for all of humanity to lead decent and fulfilling lives.
No longer is poverty necessary, for the enormous global economy can produce adequate food, goods, and services for all the world’s people.
Human health and longevity can be improved substantially, thanks to breakthroughs in science and medicine.
Education, communications, transportation, and culture have made huge strides toward enriching human existence and could finally be made available to all.
Meanwhile, the rise of the United Nations and of international law holds the promise of moving beyond the violent, bloodstained past and securing peace, human rights, and justice on the international level.
Although it’s tragic that powerful forces seem intent on building an unjust, lawless, and violent planet, let’s not forget that another world remains possible. Indeed, with an organized international effort, it could be a wonderful world.
by Lawrence Wittner | Dec 19, 2025 | Global Cooperation
Pundits frequently remark on the warm and friendly relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. In explanation, some suggest that Putin possesses compromising material on Trump. Others point to their autocratic style and their right-wing agendas.
But another factor plays a role in the Putin-Trump bromance: their embrace of great power imperialism.
For example, their aggressive policies toward Ukraine and Venezuela are remarkably similar. Putin began his takeover of Ukraine by charging that its government was controlled by “fascists” and, moreover, that its closer relations with Western Europe would irreparably damage Russian national security. Similarly, Trump has sought to overturn the Venezuelan government, arguing that it is controlled by drug traffickers and represents a significant menace to U.S. national security.
In fact, both national leaders seem to be driven by more traditional concerns. Before Ukraine’s recent independence, that land, for centuries, had been part of the Russian empire, and, through reconquest, Putin has sought to restore Russia’s imperial glory. As for Trump, the flimsiness of the drug trafficking charges and his obsession with military power and fossil fuels suggest that he is primarily concerned with using military power to oust a stubbornly independent regime and, thereby, gain control of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, the largest in the world.
Both Putin and Trump began gradually with a display of vast military might, hoping to intimidate these smaller nations and secure their goals. When Ukraine resisted capitulation, a full-scale invasion ensued. The same pattern appears to be playing out in U.S. relations with Venezuela.
Meanwhile, like sophisticated mob bosses, Trump and Putin are attempting to avoid conflict with one another by staking out different territory.
In accord with this approach, the Trump administration’s official National Security Strategy, released on December 4, promotes an arrangement for the two great powers to focus on separate imperial spheres. Avoiding any suggestion that Russia is a threat to the United States, the document instead criticizes European officials for blocking U.S. efforts to end the Ukraine War on terms advanced by Putin. It also prioritizes reestablishing “strategic stability with Russia.” Europeans, it adds disparagingly, face “civilizational erasure” thanks to the immigration of non-white people, and should support Europe’s right-wing, “patriotic” parties, which follow the Russian line on European affairs.
Having more or less abandoned Europe to the Russian imperium, the Trump National Security Strategy allocates Latin America to the United States. Invoking what it calls the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, the document declares that “the United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity―a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.” This assertion, the document explains, includes the use of “lethal force.”
Naturally, the Russian government is pleased by Trump’s new National Security Strategy. “The adjustments we’re seeing…are largely consistent with our vision,” declared the Russian regime’s official spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov. “We consider this a positive step.”
Thus far, the Venezuelan conflict, like its Ukrainian counterpart, is being managed within this collaborative framework. Although the Russian government has provided substantial military aid to the Maduro government in the past, it has rejected Maduro’s more recent and pressing request for military hardware to fend off a U.S. military invasion. Instead, Russian support for the embattled regime has been reduced to statements, by lower-level officials, expressing alarm and concern. “We hope that the Trump administration will refrain from further escalating the situation,” observed Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister on December 7, and “we urge it to do so.”
The tepid nature of this support for Venezuela might reflect Russia’s preoccupation with the demands of its military invasion of Ukraine. But it might also result from Putin’s acceptance of the Trump administration’s proposal that, when it comes to empire, the Western Hemisphere belongs to the United States, while Europe belongs to Russia.
Of course, this relapse into the crude great power imperialism of the past comes as a shock to a world that has witnessed the gradual development of international law and attempts at its enforcement. Are we really condemned to live on a planet where military might makes right?
Not necessarily, for there is an alternative for coping with the stormy world of international relations: democratic global governance.
Nations have been working to develop a less violent, more equitable world for more than a century and, as a result, there are now international institutions in existence that have begun the slow, painstaking process of building it. These include the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Now, given the revival of retrograde behavior, it’s necessary to empower them further.
A key measure along these lines would be to break the disproportionate influence of the great powers in the UN Security Council. Article 109 of the UN Charter provides a procedure for amendments through convening a Charter Review Conference. This conference could democratize international security operations by ending or modifying the veto in the Security Council. Or it could simply abolish the Security Council and transfer its responsibilities to the General Assembly, where majority rule prevails.
Other reform measures include adding a UN Parliamentary Assembly, with representatives chosen by the people rather than by governments, and increasing the jurisdiction and use of the International Court of Justice.
Democratic global governance could also be enhanced by increasing the number of countries ratifying the Rome Statute of the ICC. At present, only 125 nations are parties to the ICC, with some of the most powerful, such as the United States, Russia, China, India, and Israel, remaining holdouts―one additional illustration of how the great powers manage to operate with impunity in the realm of international affairs.
Great power imperialism can be ended. But it will take a major effort on the part of people and nations.
by Donna Park | Dec 19, 2025 | Peace & Disarmament
Given my long-term interest in international affairs, I went to see the recently released movie, “Nuremberg,” to revisit the issue of how a court of law can be used to convict those guilty of war crimes. As a result, several parts of the film left me uneasy and looking for a better way to govern our world.
A statement in the film made by Hermann Goering, one of the most powerful leaders of Germany’s Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, particularly struck me. He told the American psychologist whose job was to get to know him and keep him alive for the trial: “I am a prisoner because you won and we lost, not because you’re morally superior.” Goering suggested that if the Germans won the war, the Americans could have been brought to trial for dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan in August 1945.
Although, of course, Goering was a monster, his suggestion that the war’s victors were also responsible for war crimes has a disturbing element of truth to it. According to the K=1 Project, Center for Nuclear Studies at Columbia University, within the first few months after the bombing between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the force and excruciating heat of the explosions as well as deaths caused by acute radiation exposure.
Indeed, the preparations for the Nuremberg war crimes trials were closely interwoven with the atomic bombings. The London Charter that created the International Military Tribunal for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals was signed on August 8, 1945―two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and one day before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
It’s also worth pondering what would have happened to the war crimes trials of Nazi leaders if the four major Allied powers―the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union—had not all agreed to them. Would the trials have occurred at all?
In fact, the world lacked an institutional structure to hold an individual accountable for war crimes until the Rome Statute, an international treaty, was adopted at the Rome Conference on July 17, 1998. Effective beginning July 1, 2002, the Rome Statute created the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to its website, the ICC “investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts.”
Despite this breakthrough, the ICC is facing serious difficulties. Only 125 nations have ratified the Rome Statute, with the non-signers including China, Russia, Israel, India, Iran, and the United States. Furthermore, the U.S. government, under the presidency of Donald Trump, has recently imposed damaging economic sanctions against several members of the ICC. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has refused to surrender to the ICC for investigation of war crimes, while Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to submit to the court’s authority in connection with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Holding individuals accountable for the gravest crimes should be a high priority of our world. We should not accept a world in which individuals can commit genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression with impunity. But officials of major powers continue to obstruct the operations of the ICC and to act with impunity.
How can we move forward to creating a world in which international law and its obligations receive proper respect?
We can do so by looking back to San Francisco and the promises made there in 1945 during the creation of the United Nations (UN). As World War II was ending, representatives of 50 countries gathered in that city from April 25 to June 26 to draft and sign a Charter for the UN in the hopes of fostering international security and preventing another world war. There were many compromises made in the initial Charter, the biggest being the veto in the Security Council granted to the 5 permanent members. But this veto was balanced with a promise to revisit the Charter in no more than 10 years.
Accordingly, Article 109, paragraph three of the Charter promised a vote in the UN General Assembly by 1955 on whether to hold a conference for all member states to review the Charter. This decision only requires a majority vote of the 193 members of the General Assembly and any seven members of the 15-member states in the Security Council. There is no possibility of a veto in connection with this vote, so it can pass even if all five permanent members oppose the conference.
Unfortunately, no such vote has ever been taken at the General Assembly. We are now 70 years past the promised date. The multi-dimensional crises facing our world, including our inability to hold individuals accountable for the gravest crimes against humanity, demand such a vote, followed by the strengthening of the UN Charter and the international law it is supposed to enforce. Our world should be governed using the rule of law, not military might.
The recently formed Article 109 Coalition is now working towards a conference to review and strengthen the UN Charter. Concerned Americans should learn more about it and take action to support it. There is a better way to govern our world and to keep humanity safe and secure from military threats and crimes against humanity. Let’s move forward with it!
by Lawrence Wittner | Nov 25, 2025 | United Nations
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 (formerly seven) 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 Movement/Institute for Global Policy; 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, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu) 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 Inácio 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.”
by Lawrence Wittner | Oct 30, 2025 | Peace & Disarmament
Early this year, legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate introduced resolutions that call upon the U.S. government to lead a global effort to halt and reverse the nuclear arms race. Co-sponsored by 36 members of the House and 5 members of the Senate, H. Res. 317 and S. Res. 323 urge the U.S. government to pursue nuclear disarmament, renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, end sole presidential authority to launch them, cancel plans for new, enhanced nuclear weapons and delivery systems, maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing explosions, and provide a just economic transition for impacted communities.
The context for these antinuclear measures is an escalating nuclear arms race that is rapidly spiraling out of control. In recent years, Russia and the United States, which together possess 87 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, have scrapped nearly all their nuclear arms control agreements. The only exception is the New Start Treaty, which is scheduled to expire in February 2026. Meanwhile, all nine nuclear powers (Russia, United States, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) have committed themselves to dramatically upgrading their nuclear arsenals. The U.S. government, for example, at the enormous cost of $1.7 trillion, is currently engaged in revamping its entire nuclear weapons complex and building an array of new, more devastating nuclear weapons.
This worldwide nuclear weapons buildup has been accompanied by a revival of public threats by the leaders of nuclear-armed nations to initiate nuclear war―threats that have been issued, repeatedly, by Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin. Not surprisingly, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists currently stands at 89 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.
The House and Senate resolutions seeking to halt and reverse this race toward catastrophe are primarily the product of the Back from the Brink campaign. Founded in 2017 by the leaders of two U.S. national organizations, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists, Back from the Brink has emerged as an impressive coalition of organizations, individuals, and public officials working together to create a world free of nuclear weapons.
At this point, the Back from the Brink campaign has secured the endorsement of a significant number of additional national organizations, including peace and disarmament groups like the American Friends Service Committee, the Federation of American Scientists, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, and Veterans for Peace, religious organizations like the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the United Church of Christ, environmental groups like 350.org, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club, political activist groups like the Hip Hop Caucus and Indivisible, and governmental organizations like the United States Conference of Mayors.
In addition, the campaign has attracted the support of hundreds of local peace, academic, civic, environmental, health, policy, religious, and other organizations, as well as endorsements from 78 municipalities and counties, 8 state legislative bodies, 488 municipal and state officials, and 53 members of Congress.
Despite this array of support, Back from the Brink’s immediate prospects are not good. Its antinuclear resolutions, now awaiting action by the Republican-controlled House and Senate, seem unlikely to pass, as not a single Republican legislator has signed on as a co-sponsor of them thus far. Nor is it likely that President Donald Trump, who seems enamored with U.S. military “strength,” will champion halting, much less reversing, the nuclear arms race.
Longer term, however, the prospects are brighter. Unlike the Republican Party of recent decades, the Democratic Party has championed a variety of nuclear arms control and disarmament measures. Thus, if the Democrats do well in the 2026 midterm elections and, thereby, retake control of the House and the Senate, there is a reasonable chance that they will pass Back from the Brink’s antinuclear resolutions. Also, if the Democrats hold on to Congress and win the presidency in 2028, it’s quite possible that nuclear arms control and disarmament will appear once again on the U.S. government’s public policy agenda.
Of course, even if there are public policy advances along these lines, as there have been in the past, it will not end the immense danger of worldwide nuclear annihilation―a danger that emerged with startling clarity in 1945 with the advent and use of nuclear weapons to obliterate two Japanese cities. Ultimately, a secure future for civilization will be attained only when these weapons of mass destruction are abolished.
Is that feasible?
It’s certainly a possibility. After all, when directly confronted with the issue of human survival, most people have displayed an appropriate concern for it by demanding an end to the nuclear menace. And that goal could be attained by seeing to it that all nations sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. That landmark treaty, which was hammered out painstakingly at the United Nations in 2017 and which entered into force in 2021, has already been signed by 95 countries (a majority of the world’s nations) and ratified by 74 of them.
Admittedly, the nine nuclear powers, still clinging doggedly to their nuclear weapons, are not among them. But, if there were a mobilization of substantial public pressure and the development of international security guarantees enforced by a strengthened United Nations, the reluctance of these holdouts could be overcome and a nuclear weapons-free world established.
Meanwhile, to provide us with the time it will take to get to this state of affairs, we do need to focus on turning back from the brink of nuclear war.
by David Gallup | Oct 14, 2025 | Human Rights
More than 120 million people have been displaced from their homes due to war, climate change, political instability and oppression in the past few years, a figure that has doubled in the last decade. Millions more are living in vulnerable situations as stateless individuals, frequently unable to exercise even their most basic rights.
The population of displaced persons is larger than that of more than 220 countries and dependent territories. In other words, only 12 countries in the world have a population larger than 120 million people. As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees explains, “one out of every 67 people on the Earth” is displaced from their homes. More than “20 people are forced to flee every minute of every day” according to the International Rescue Committee. These figures do not even account for the day-to-day oppression that millions, if not billions, face but who are unable or reluctant to leave to seek a safe haven.
Most refugees in the world are either internally displaced in or are fleeing from the following countries: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen.
As violence, war, and climate destruction affect more countries and regions of the world, the growing numbers of refugees and migrants could put a strain on social systems. National governments have responded to immigration flows in different ways, some limiting immigrants from entering their claimed territories and others welcoming newcomers. Just five countries — Iran, Turkey, Colombia, Germany, and Uganda — have welcomed almost 40% of the world’s refugees and others fleeing persecution and war.
The nation-state system has created the “refugee” and “stateless person,” as well as the severe problems associated with being considered outside the law or without “legal” status. All human beings are legal and have rights that should be respected wherever they live. Yet, due to violations of their human rights frequently perpetuated by or ignored by national governments, thousands of people flee their homes and countries every day trying to find safety, stability, and asylum.
By dividing up the world into 200 or so different countries, we have created “in” and “out” groups, with some achieving dignity, acceptance, inclusion, and rights fulfillment, and others being treated as less than human, unable to meet their basic daily needs. This disparity of treatment destabilizes society.
Why should our fellow humans have to flee to have their rights and basic needs upheld? Why are millions stuck in refugee camps with inadequate food, housing, healthcare, education, and opportunity?
To have the kind of world in which the rights reaffirmed in various declarations and treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights are fully met, we should all be able to claim, and then exercise, our rights no matter where we happen to live on the planet. Human rights and duties are not bound by territory; they are not dependent upon the nation-state in which one happens to be born or where one happens to live.
Human rights are innate and unalienable; we are born with them, and we cannot give them up. We have them simply by being human.
What if we were to claim a citizenship that inherently affirms our rights wherever we find ourselves on planet Earth?
If everyone had citizenship everywhere, statelessness would no longer exist, and only natural disasters would forcibly displace people. With world citizenship, if we do not like where we live, if we do not like the politics or the rulers, then we could choose to live somewhere else, rather than being forced to flee for our safety and livelihood.
World citizenship, as a valid and legal citizenship beyond any other status that someone may carry, would ensure that everyone has at least one citizenship which, in its inclusiveness, upholds our concomitant rights and duties.
Requiring all governments to respect world citizenship status legally is the next step – a step that will support millions of displaced persons, by ensuring that governments will begin to fulfill their obligations to respect refugees, stateless and displaced persons’ innate and unalienable rights. To promote respect for this highest citizenship status, global institutions of law, such as World Court of Human Rights and a World Parliament of the people, must be established.
World citizenship, as the highest level of allegiance, empowers us to focus on equity, justice, sustainability, unity, and harmony with each other and the Earth.
As long as we, the people of the world, allow the nation-state system to maintain the arbitrary and exclusive borders that divide humans from one another, immigration will continue to be viewed as a problem rather than as an educational, economic, political, and social opportunity. When we respect each other, our rights and duties, as world citizens, the entire earth will be a sanctuary of peace and safety for all.
