Last weekend I rewatched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 dark comedy masterpiece. The film stars Peter Sellers (in three very different roles) and George C. Scott, and features also a memorable early performance from James Earl Jones. Part cinema of the absurd, part deadpan portrayal of the practice of mid-20th century realpolitik, Dr. Strangelove grapples with the strange problem of managing, and fumbling, weapons that can in mere moments destroy much of humankind.
The story (based on the 1958 novel Red Alert) illustrates the immense hubris inherent in the idea of nuclear “warfare.” And the message—really, the warning—of the film largely holds up: The risk of accidental or wrong-headed nuclear warfare remains, even if certain deep-Cold War U.S. protocols governing the control of nuclear weapons have wisely been improved upon. The global proliferation of these weapons has only increased the chances of something, somewhere, going wrong with “the bomb,” sometime in the future.
I chose to rewatch Dr. Strangelove at this particular juncture primarily because I knew that come Monday, June 14th, I'd have an essay coming out related to the nuclear war discussion, and I wanted to see how the classic film might square with—or unsettle—the tentative conclusions I’d laid out in the forthcoming piece.
In fairness, Dr. Strangelove probably wasn't the right film to do that. If I’d wanted to subject my views to a true Millian stress test by examining them in the light of the best possible arguments from the other side, I would have needed to choose a film or another work that supports the idea of nuclear warfare. But as most readers probably know from previous viewings, Dr. Strangelove is not such a film.
Nevertheless, this black-and-white tale of “Loving the Bomb” still provides viewers—your humble correspondent included—with a lot to think about, given that we (will) remain in a nuclear age. (As the editors of this volume stress, the science and technologies required to design and manufacture nuclear weapons are publicly available and relatively simple.) One question strikes me as unavoidable upon viewing this film. When war goes nuclear, can anybody win?
This question was on my mind already in the days before I rewatched the film, as I had been reading, and then writing a review of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, by former Marine officer Elliot Ackerman and retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis. As you might guess from the title, this book, too, has something to tell us about nuclear war and its immense costs. You might even call it the modern-day cultural equivalent of Dr. Strangelove—a cautionary tale of what might lie ahead, if we aren’t careful.
I hope you will have the chance to read my full review essay at Econlib. Writing it took me to some uncomfortable, perhaps even out-there places. Among the questions implicitly asked is, “If the People’s Republic of China moves militarily on Taiwan in the future, to what extent should the United States militarily intervene or respond?”
Should nuclear weapons be on the table?
When war goes nuclear, can anybody win?
Fifty-seven years on, Kubrick’s question challenges us still.