Addicted to War: The Seductive Myths of Militarism

Deepening militarization threatens to hollow out democracy and leave the United States isolated and bankrupt, morally and economically.

Unlike the current US president, George Washington wasn’t naive about the use of military power. In his farewell address, the general-turned-politician issued a warning that would be wise to reconsider as the nation pursues a foreign policy driven by whims and based on so-called “preventive wars” — from past crusades to spread “democratic capitalism” to the current use of force to decapitate regimes, extract resources and project global dominance.

Citizens should be wary, the first president explained, of “those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.” 

While he considered a respectable army essential to national well-being, Washington believed that an overgrown military in the New World would replicate the errors of the Old one. Unfortunately, this concern – considered superfluous in 1796 – has been largely ignored for more than two centuries, a period that has seen the United States transform itself from a revolutionary experiment into a rogue superpower. 

As Andrew J. Bacevich argued in The New American Militarism more than twenty years ago, the roots of the change go deep and can’t be blamed on a single political party or administration. Yet the problem was intensified by disorientation following the Vietnam War, as well as illusions about the invulnerability provided by technology and the extreme right argument that military power provides the “indispensable foundation” for the nation’s unique role in the world. 

Coming from a left-leaning writer, such insights would not be surprising. But Bacevich is a West Point graduate, veteran of Vietnam, and former Bush fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. As such, he watched the evolution of what he described as an “ever-deepening militarization of U.S. policy” that threatened to hollow out democracy and leave the country isolated and bankrupt, both morally and economically. Recent history supports his analysis.

Around the same time, conservative pundit Pat Buchanan made a similar case in Where the Right Went Wrong, a 2004 book on how the far right hijacked the Bush presidency. Calling the post 9/11 Bush Doctrine “democratic imperialism,” this New Right prophet warned that foreign adventurism would “bleed, bankrupt, and isolate this republic. This overthrows the wisdom of the Founding Fathers about what America should be all about. This is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, wherein Moscow asserted the right to intervene to save Communism in any nation where it had once been imposed. Only we Americans now assert the right to intervene anywhere to impose democracy.” 

However, while Buchanan considered Ronald Reagan a real conservative who would not have countenanced “regime change” and preventive war unless the evidence of an imminent attack was absolutely solid, Bacevich charged that Reagan nevertheless romanticized the military to boost defense spending, confront the Soviet Union, and set the stage of further militarization. More than anyone else, he charged, Reagan “conjured up the myths that nurtured and sustain present-day American militarism” and made military might “the preferred measure for gauging the nation’s strength.” 

On the other hand, the shift was underway even before Reagan. Bacevich sees Jimmy Carter’s failures – including his pleas to end the U.S. addiction to imported oil and urge a turn toward self-sufficiency, as well as a disastrous covert mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran – as inadvertent persuasions. They convinced people that a weak military was intolerable and thus played into the agenda of the emerging new right movement. 

After Reagan, Bill Clinton aided the project by backing military enhancements like “smart weapons” and “flexible power projection capabilities,” as well as intervening “with great frequency in more places for more varied purposes than any of his predecessors.” 

Although modern right-wing nationalism can be traced back to 1960s attacks on the New Left and counterculture by Norman Podhoretz and others, it didn’t gain much traction until the Reagan years. The argument begins with the assertion that “evil” will prevail if those who confront it flinch from duty. It’s an existential threat, many often claim.The primary example before 9/11 was appeasement of Hitler by Britain and France, combined with U.S. isolationism before World War II. The only effective response is military power, not vague and unrealistic international negotiations. By this logic, the United States has no choice but to assert global leadership. And the mission is open-ended. There’s no room for pessimism or doubt; in fact, such thinking close to treasonous. 

At home, right-wing nationalists defined a set of related threats, among them sexual license, vulgarity (that is, until Trump!), lack of standards, and the decline in respect for authority. In response, they felt compelled to challenge and discredit 1960s legacies such as multiculturalism, affirmative action, feminism, and gay rights, while promoting “traditional values” and so-called beleaguered institutions, notably marriage and the nuclear family. Some extended the list to most of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Furthermore, the movement claimed that the crisis was permanent and dire, and the only antidote a heroic form of leadership Bacevich defined as a “weird homegrown variant of the Fuehrer Principle.” He held back from using the word fascist. But as Willhelm Reich explained in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933/1946), identification with a “Fuehrer” forms the psychological basis of national narcissism. In pre-war Germany, “The structure of the fascist proved to be characterized by metaphysical thinking, piety, and the belief in the abstract ethical ideas and the Divine mission of the ‘Fuehrer’,” Reich explained. “These traits rested on a basis of a strong authoritarian fixation to a Fuehrer-ideal of the nation.” 

In the United States, other factors assisting the rise of a fascist-leaning militarism included Hollywood and evangelical religion. The entertainment industry’s early contributions included a series of influential films that etched a romanticized vision of the military into popular consciousness. Bacevich focused on three: An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), which suggested that becoming an officer was the way to move from a dead-end existence to status and respectability, “up where we belong;” the Rambo series (1982-88), which argued that soldiers aren’t given the respect they deserve at home and should be set loose to win battles abroad by any means; and Top Gun (1986), a feature-length recruitment poster that made combat look clean, technologically sophisticated, and cool. 

Since then Hollywood’s war narrative has become slightly more complex, but no less rose-colored. Dozen of major war films and TV series have been released in recent decades, many looking back at World War II as a violent crucible that nevertheless reflected noble national ideals. Others support arguments about the dangers of a half-hearted response to evil and how political considerations threaten essential missions. 

As far as religion is concerned, Bacevich began a chapter titled “Onward” with the bold statement that the United States remained, “as it has always been, a deeply, even incorrigibly, Christian nation.” At the time up to 100 million people defined themselves as evangelicals, he claimed, and tended to be conservative and vote Republican. The number may have dropped slightly since, but about 24 percent of Americans still embrace the evangelical label. It’s not a majority, but a crucial bloc.

The trouble is that evangelical Christians also celebrate the military as a bastion of the values needed to stop the current slide toward perdition, which provides religious sanction to militarization. This links up nicely with authoritarian logic, offering support for the idea of striking the first blow. Books like The Church and the Sword and One Nation Under God replace the “just war” idea with a “crusader theory of warfare.” As Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, argued, “The Bible supports building a powerful military force. And the Bible is telling the U.S. to be strong again.” 

With evangelicals leading the charge, both within the military chaplaincy and the GOP, “Conservative Christians have conferred a presumptive moral palatability on any occasion on which the United States resorts to force,” Bacevich concluded. “They have fostered among the legions of believing Americans a predisposition to see U.S. military power as inherently good, perhaps even a necessary adjunct to the accomplishment of Christ’s saving mission. In doing so, they have nurtured the preconditions that have enabled American infatuation with military power to flourish.” 

So far, Trump’s current conflict with Iran is

 one of the least popular in American history

. Most previous U.S. wars enjoyed high initial public approval. World War II reportedly had up to 97 percent backing. Even the 2001 Afghanistan invasion initially saw major support. In contrast, the new Iran conflict began with only 40 percent approval and dropped in the first month. Opposition to “endless wars” and Trump’s royalist ambitions is growing.

Bacevich has also proposed that the world is already in the midst of World War IV, and defined it bluntly as a battle to guarantee U.S. citizens “ever-increasing affluence.” It began, he claimed, when Jimmy Carter declared in January 1980 that, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” This was called the Carter Doctrine.

Once this "Doctrine" became a widely accepted assumption, Reagan ramped up the military’s ability to actually wage the new world war, thus cocking the trigger that George W. Bush ultimately pulled. What allowed the crusade to proceed, Bacevich added, was a combination of self-induced historical amnesia and a momentum for militarization that had been building since the “national trauma” induced by defeat in Vietnam. 

And the country may be stuck with this “misbegotten crusade,” Bacevich predicted. But at least he offered a set of alternative principles that might help mitigate the effects. They include restricting military actions to those that truly reflect what the U.S. Constitution calls “common defense.” This could force Congress to exercise oversight and renounce preventive war, relegate force to a last resort, limit U.S. dependence on foreign resources, reorganize the military around defense rather than power projection, base the military budget on what other nations spend (rather than a fixed percent of GDP), and increase funding for diplomacy to better communicate with the rest of the world. Considering where things stand, a tall order but worth keeping in mind.

He finished with three ideas for reforming the military itself. Favoring the idea of “citizen soldiers,” Bacevich suggests that the current all-volunteer force should better “mirror society” rather than becoming increasingly “professionalized.” Specifically, he calls for shorter enlistments, more generous signing bonuses, flexible retirement options, and free college education for anyone who serves. If the military is rooted among the people, problems that develop in any future interventions are more likely to be identified early and corrected. At least that's the hope.  

Bacevich also called for a reexamination of the role of the National Guard, along with its expansion. “We need more citizen-soldiers protecting Americans at home even if that means fewer professional soldiers available to assume responsibility for situations abroad.” At least that sounds better than the current para-military drift of ICE. And finally, he urged an end to the current painful and dangerous separation between the military profession and the rest of society. As a former military man, he views war as part of the human condition. But he wants to bind the profession to the “outside world” rather allowing it to keep the world at bay.

An earlier version of this essay was posted March 17, 2016, with material from a first draft in 2005. 

Facebook Logic: From anti-vax to the fog of war

Posted Dec. 2021 — March 2022

12/17/21: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." So said Lenin when he was in exile before the Russian Revolution. For the US, the weeks leading up to the siege of the US capitol last January are a clear example. We are still feeling the impacts, and do not yet see how fundamentally they have changed the country’s direction. 

An older example suggests the scope. On December 10, 1898, a peace treaty between the US and Spain was signed, ending the Spanish-American War. Spain gave Cuba, their prize possession, its independence. In reality, this placed it under US  control for the next 60 years. 

The emerging empire also acquired most of Spain’s remaining imperial possessions. That included Puerto Rico, parts of the West Indies, Guam and the Philippines. In less than two months the US had defeated one of the so-called “great powers” and acquired significant colonial possessions. It became one of few nations with the ability to project power far beyond its borders. Eventually, it would be labeled a “superpower,” a handy euphemism to avoid mentioning its imperial status. 

A year ago, that empire officially entered an era of decline that is unlikely to be reversed. In weeks, its basic ideals were shattered, its capitol was attacked and vandalized by its own people, and its “rule of law” failed. A return to “normal” is no longer possible. Millions have lost faith and too much has changed. Perhaps the worst can still be avoided. But the barbarians are inside the gates.

1/3/22: Vaccination & Its Discontents

Suspicions about vaccines and inoculation are almost as old as the scientific innovations themselves. In the West, two physicians first proposed “engrafting” people with smallpox pustules in 1714. They had seen it done in Instanbul. Among the earliest patients were the diplomatic class and royalty — Maria Theresa of Austria, Louis XVI, Catherine II of Russia — and their children! A safer approach was eventually developed using cowpox to vaccinate; credit for this goes to Benjamin Jesty, a farmer, in 1774, and more widely, to Edward Jenner, who performed his first vaccination about 20 years later.

As Naill Ferguson explains in Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, European royalty and educated Americans like Cotton Mather were ready to accept the risks of the practice. However, local folk were sometimes skeptical. During an epidemic in Boston, for instance, town meetings passed resolutions charging that a schoolmaster, Samuel Danforth, had “endangered the town” by inoculating people and wanted to “remove such inoculated persons” from their midst. A novel approach to quarantine.

Greg Guma

Smallpox vaccination became compulsory in Massachusetts in 1809; Sweden followed seven years later. By 1874, England, Scotland, the Netherlands and Germany had joined the list. But in the US, vaccination became and remains a divisive issue. By 1930, compulsory vaccination had been prohibited in Arizona, Utah, North Dakota, and Minnesota. In 35 states, regulation was left to local authorities. 

Only nine states and the District of Columbia followed Massachusetts’ example. In those places, fines were imposed and only vaccinated children could attend school. That approach was backed by the US Supreme Court in 1905. But nothing has quelled the resistance. Instead, vaccine opposition has grown, with fewer seeming to accept the advice of scientific authorities today than did a century ago. 

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud argued that aggression was the greatest threat to humanity. It stemmed, he theorized, from our primitive, subconscious and perhaps self-destructive urges. These days willful ignorance and knee-jerk suspicion add more fuel to humanity’s deep unrest. The combination can be lethal.

1/12/22: The denial virus

How can it be shocking that tens of millions embrace wild conspiracies and comforting lies when we have known for so long that almost half the population (40% in recent Gallop and other polling) also believes the earth is only around 10,000 years old? This suggests another virus is rapidly becoming a pandemic — denial. And given its extension to thinking about the environmental crisis, rumbling toward us like a Tsunami, the prospects look grim. 

This virus also distorts how we handle immediate problems, like preserving what remains of democracy across much of the world. In the US, for example, we persist in believing that negotiation and compromise remain possible with those who simply do not believe in it. We also deny that this group extends beyond what we call conservatives, the Right or disciples of Trump. 

Long before they decided that regime change (by any means necessary) was justified, even noble, this was the belief of revolutionaries and many on the Left. They avoid the issue today, but not so long ago it was an article of faith. Faith in an inevitable overthrow of capitalism that would replace “bourgeois democracy” with the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In other words, control of society by the working class. 

This dictatorship was meant to be a temporary arrangement, a comforting type of wishful thinking. And it was short-term in many places where attempted. But what followed mostly has been one-party and gangster states. 

The response to that: let’s not talk about it.

1/16/22: What could go wrong? Here's how Sinclair Lewis imagined the inauguration and first days of a president much like Trump: 

"Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, 'My fellow citizens, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we're all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us -- and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!'

      

“That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet...

      

“His third, in his role of Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men (gangs of supporters) be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers...

“Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress, demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform -- that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do.

       

“By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 p.m. on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the "present crisis," and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested..."

       

And Lewis was writing 80 years ago. So, things COULD be worse.

1/20/22: How the Koch network hijacked the response to COVID and has continued to supplant public health experts 

The authors of a new report, Walker Bragman and Alex Kotch, point out that "when COVID began its spread across the United States in early March 2020, states responded by locking down to varying extents. All 24 Democratic governors and 19 of the 26 Republican governors issued weeks-long stay-at-home orders and restrictions on non-essential businesses. Lockdown measures drove down cases in the U.S. and likely saved millions of lives globally."

However, the decline of in-person shopping and work, combined with factory shutdowns, disrupted the economy. "One sector in particular that took a big hit was the fossil fuel industry. Oil demand fell sharply in 2020, placing the global economy on uncertain footing.

"Before long, business-aligned groups — particularly those connected to fossil fuels — began targeting the public health measures threatening their bottom lines. Chief among them were groups tied to billionaire Charles Koch, owner of the largest privately held fossil fuel company in the world.

"The war on public health measures began on March 20, 2020, when Americans For Prosperity, the right-wing nonprofit founded by Charles and David Koch, issued a press release calling on states to remain open.... To fight its war, the Koch network also relied on the astroturf roadmap behind the anti-government Tea Party movement, using its dark money apparatus to coordinate anti-lockdown protests.

"Participants for a number of anti-lockdown rallies were recruited by FreedomWorks, a dark money group tied to Charles Koch instrumental in organizing Tea Party protests in 2009. Several of the 2020 rallies were also promoted by the Convention of States Action, a group founded by an organization with ties to the Koch network and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer that wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution."

2/3/22: Defining Trumpery

We often hear that Orange Julius Caesar says the “quiet part out loud.” In fact, it’s right there, in the family’s chosen name. Here’s the official definition, from the Oxford English Dictionary. Understanding what it means might have saved the world much time and trouble. 

As the OED explains, Trumpery is, 1) deceit, fraud, imposture, trickery; 2) a., something of less value than it seems; hence, trifles, worthless stuff, trash, rubbish; applied to abstract things like beliefs, discourse and writing, rubbish; applied to religious practices and ceremonies, idle or superstitious; showy but unsubstantial apparel, worthless finery; in gardening, weeds or refuse that hinders the growth of valuable plants; applied to a person, trash; 2) b., of little or no value, trifling, paltry, insignificant, worthless, rubbishy, trashy. 

Take your pick and spread the word.

2/9/22: Have you been following the Canadian trucker protests? First off, there were nowhere near 50,000 trucks. Second, Ottawa cops didn’t quit en masse. Third, the Canadian and Ottawa governments didn’t instruct hotels to refuse protesters. The misinformation goes on. One photo, labeled as being from Ottawa, is actually from Moscow in 1991. Another, supposedly taken of the 2022 convoy, is actually of a 2018 convoy in support of the... oil and gas industry. 

Recent investigative reports also show that there’s more to these protests than meets the eye. The entity behind some of the largest Facebook groups supporting the protests is an unknown source who used the Facebook account of a Missouri woman. She says her account was hacked and stolen. 

In short, this “siege” is no organic grassroots event. Rather, it’s an escalation on the information war against civil society.

2/13/22: Vermont in the news — but not in a good way

Drug overdoses now kill more than 100,000 Americans a year — more than vehicle crash and gun deaths combined. Sean Blake was among those who died. He overdosed at age 27 in Vermont, from a mix of alcohol and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. He had struggled to find effective treatment for his addiction and other potential mental health problems, repeatedly relapsing.

“I do love being sober,” Blake wrote in 2014, three years before his death. “It’s life that gets in the way.”

Blake’s struggles reflect the combination of problems that have allowed the overdose crisis to fester. First, the supply of opioids surged. Second, Americans have insufficient access to treatment and other programs that can ease the worst damage of drugs. Experts have a concise, if crude, way to summarize this: If it’s easier to get high than to get treatment, people who are addicted will get high. The U.S. has effectively made it easy to get high and hard to get help.

No other advanced nation is dealing with a comparable drug crisis. And over the past two years, it has worsened: Annual overdose deaths spiked 50 percent as fentanyl spread in illegal markets, more people turned to drugs during the pandemic, and treatment facilities and other services shut down.

2/18/22: Realignment anyone? Many polls say that support for the Democratic and Republican parties is about equal, but more people lean Independent. Maybe they’re really uncomfortable with the current choices. In Vermont we also have Progressives. But they look (and vote) like left-leaning Dems, and often run on that party line. 

There’s another take, one that breaks politics six ways. Personally, I lean toward the “outsider left,” though I am engaged, older and vote. We don’t have a party — yet — but it could happen. And Vermont’s upcoming races — from local boards to Secretary of State and Lt. Gov. — might be the place to start. Another Way Is Possible. Think outside the two-party box.

2/18/22: Slouching toward war

The ancient Greeks had many great stories — today we call them myths — some of which also served as warnings about the high price of exclusion, revenge, vanity, and quarreling over who is the best, the most deserving of love and respect.

Take Eris, known as the goddess of chaos, strife and discord. Some say she was the daughter of Zeus and Hera; others claim she was birthed alone by Nyx (dark night). Her opposite was Harmonia. Eris also had a son, known as Strife, whom she brought along when, accompanied by Ares, she rode her chariot to war.

As one story goes, all the Olympians — except for Eris — were invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, destined to become the parents of Achilles. Why was Eris snubbed? The gods knew about her tendency to cause fights. Leaving her out seemed like a way to avoid one.

But the gods had miscalculated. Being excluded instead made Eris want to seek revenge. Her plan was simple: dropping a golden apple — henceforth known as the Apple of Discord — into the exclusive party. Inscribed on it were just four words — To The Fairest One. 

The results were predictable and tragic. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite immediately began quarreling over who should get the apple. That brought vanity into the equation. When applied to countries, you might call it national pride. 

Looking for a way to resolve the dispute, Zeus appointed Paris, Prince of Troy. Assuming he could be bribed, however, the goddesses offered him various gifts. It worked. Paris eventually chose Aphrodite, who promised him the most beautiful woman in the world. That was Helen, who happened to be the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. 

What resulted was catastrophe — the Trojan War and destruction of Troy. So, you might say that trying to avoid a fight by excluding an unpleasant person led to resentment and made thing much worse. The moral: perhaps that it’s better to air our differences than conveniently repress them.

2/25/22: TOP STORY…

Russia launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine early Thursday. As AP reported, “Vladimir Putin deflected global condemnation and cascading new sanctions — and chillingly referred to his country’s nuclear arsenal. He threatened any foreign country attempting to interfere with ‘consequences you have never seen.’” NATO held an emergency session after the Baltic nations and Poland, which border Russia, triggered Article 4 of the alliance’s treaty that allows members to hold consultations when they feel their territorial integrity is under threat. 

Nevertheless, the Fox-Trump right, as well as some on the left, blame NATO for the invasion and charge that its expansion since the 1990s forced Putin act and liberate Ukraine from a neo-Nazi regime. For them, AP and most media, along with both political parties, are all part of a global cabal that is hiding the real story, one which only they can see.

3/3/22: I should send the following summary to old friends who think Russian media is more reliable than CNN, but sometimes I think their heads are so far up their own behinds that they can no longer process anything but self-serving lies. Garbage in, garbage out. They’ve been quiet since Putin invaded Ukraine. But no doubt they’ll be back soon. Meanwhile, consider this:

On Wednesday morning, as Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine entered its seventh day, RT— the Russia-controlled network that has recently been banned in Europe and dropped by TV carriers across the world — continued its disinformation. Founded in 2005, and operating multiple channels including RT America, it has served as one of Putin’s largest megaphones, revealing how he would like to portray the world and Russia’s role in it.  

 

RT hosts and personalities brazenly mislead its audience and deflect from the issues at hand. The main thrust presents Russia as a mere victim of western aggression, a country forced to launch a limited “military operation” after its hand was forced by a high-and-mighty NATO that showed no interest in taking Moscow’s security concerns seriously. Here's a brief breakdown:

 

Peter John Lavelle, the host of RT’s signature talk program, "Crosstalk," put it like this yesterday: the failed "liberal order" implemented by the West is to blame. "It is so irritating," Lavelle said. "The way it is being framed: Ukraine’s democracy. Well, it has nothing to do with Ukraine’s democracy — if you can say it even has one. ... This is about security … There is only security for other countries." 

 

On its news programs, RT’s on-screen graphics blared breaking news alerts supporting that notion: "RUSSIA: NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS LEFT NO CHOICE BUT TO START MILITARY OPERATION." Another read, "RUSSIA SAYS ITS GOALS IN UKRAINE TO DEMILITARIZE & DENAZIFY THE COUNTRY." 

 

According to RT, Russia wasn’t even the aggressor. The channel at times claimed that Russia was a "liberator," essentially freeing people from the menacing forces in Kyiv. "MILITIA SAYS 40 TOWNS AND VILLAGES NOW LIBERATED IN CURRENT OFFENSIVE," a chyron declared.

 

One package the network repeatedly ran characterized life under Ukraine as unbearable for those who lived in the Lugansk region. Another focused on damages to residential buildings in the Donetsk region.

 

Noticeably left out was a focus on how unbearable life has been for Ukrainians whose cities are under attack by Russian forces. Little coverage showed the damage they have caused as they try to seize control of the country. Or the residents of cities who live in terror and sleep underground in bomb shelters. Or the hundreds of thousands fleeing the country for their safety. Those are inconvenient facts. Also left out are the ramifications that the West's sanctions and other actions are having on Russia's economy.

 

On the other hand, RT did find time to portray Russians who aren’t even in the war zone as victims. One segment focused on how Russians "face hostility in western countries" over the "situation" in Ukraine. It quoted a man in the UK who said that he is "not ashamed" to say he is Russian, but "afraid" and "worried that society will have this perception that all Russians are bad."

 

RT portrays Russia as a country that cares deeply about humanitarian issues. The network aired a story yesterday on how Russia has welcomed school kids displaced by the war: "RUSSIAN SCHOOLS WELCOME HUNDREDS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN FROM DONBASS." With uplifting background music, the segment featured interviews with several children expressing how thankful they were and saying Russia is willing to welcome many more kids. 

 

Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine and its role in promoting dishonest talking points has been exposed, RT is being cut off in some places. But its propaganda has aired across the world unfettered for years, coloring the minds of untold numbers of people, many who distrust western news outlets — sometimes with good reasons. But It apparently took a war to get some corporations to realize that the programming they beam into homes matters. Russia's real-world war started last week, but it's information war started long ago.

Nukes on the Screen

 Seven Decades of Atomic Danger

Numerous films, some of them based on novels, feature nuclear war, its potential impacts, and the extreme threat these weapons pose. One of the first was Godzilla, a 1954 Japanese production re-released in the US two years later with Raymond Burr in a key role. The title monster is widely considered an analogy to the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan. But films about the danger of nuclear weapons actually began to appear years before with a fictionalized docudrama. The Beginning of the End (1947) focused on the Manhattan Project and nuclear bombing of Hiroshima — which had happened only two years earlier.

The mutant monster genre’s beginnings coincided with the McCarthy era, a time when paranoia wasn’t an unreasonable response to what was happening. Nuclear-spawned giant ants prowled the Los Angeles sewers in Them, while The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen, revolved around a dinosaur thawed from frozen hibernation by a atomic test in the Arctic Circle. 

        The most effective film of that genre’s early years may have been The Incredible Shrinking Man, based on a novel and featuring groundbreaking effects. The 1957 movie opens with the irradiation of Scott, an average guy vacationing with his wife when a strange mist covers him. This sets off his gradual descent into a very different and threatening world. Scott does ultimately experience an existential liberation at sub-atomic size. But the Japanese fisherman whose irradiation by a bomb test inspired the story wasn’t as lucky.

        The treatment of nuclear weapon detonation turned more serious as the decade ended with On the Beach. Based on a popular 1957 novel, the film, released in 1959, was an effective melodrama with A-list stars that followed the travails of nuclear war survivors in Australia as they confront death and the end of humanity. 

       In the 1960s, films began to seriously address how a nuclear conflict could start and how people might react. In Panic in the Year Zero (1961), starring Ray Milland, a family on a camping trip flees a nearby nuclear attack, encountering looters and other violent people as society breaks down. Released the same year, The Day the Earth Caught Fire suggests that nuclear tests could throw the Earth off course. The planet is doomed unless scientists figure out how to reverse the change. Spoiler: the outcome isn’t clear. The final sequence shows two newspaper front pages. One declares "World Saved," the other "World Doomed." 

Two of the most enduring films about the possibility of ending up in a nuclear war by accident were released in 1964. Both were based on novels. Fail-Safe takes an intellectual approach, chronicling how politicians, scientists and the military handle the accidental bombing of Moscow when command and control systems fail. To save the rest of the world, the US president, sympathetically portrayed by Henry Fonda, decides to balance the scale of tragedy by nuking New York. 

Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), directed by Stanley Kubrick, opted for black comedy. Based loosely on Red Alert, a 1958 novel, it features the idea that a hypothetical Doomsday Machine would be beyond human control. It also suggests that sexual and mental problems could put the fate of humanity in the hands of one deranged general.

Around the same time, the James Bond franchise was launched, and subsequently used the threat posed by nuclear weapons falling into the “wrong” hands as the super-spy’s motivation in ten films over three decades. Some focus on theft or threatened use by criminal groups, others on a showdown between the superpowers. Bond always saves the planet, of course. But Polaris missiles are used to destroy a stolen nuclear sub in The Spy Who Loved Me. Defying both science and reason, only the bad guys are killed.

In Goldfinger (1964), the gold-obsessed villain plots the collapse of the West’s economy to enrich himself, with Chinese and North Korean accomplices, by irradiating the gold reserve at Fort Knox. In Octopussy (1977), another installment with convenient Cold War villains, a renegade Soviet general joins forces with Afghan and Indian smugglers to derail disarmament talks and invade Western Europe by detonating a nuke at a US base in Germany.  In Goldeneye (1995), the threat is a hypothetical nuclear satellite weapon that can disable electronics with an EMP attack.

Other Bond films with plots involving nuclear weapons include Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World is Not Enough (1999). By this time, using nuclear weapons as a plot device had become so common that Mike Myers’ spy spoof Austin Powers turned it into a punchline. Assessing various criminal options, Bond-like villain Dr. Evil eventually settles on the obvious. "Let's just do what we always do,” he proposes, “steal a nuclear bomb and hold the world to ransom."

        Fact-based accounts have been more rare. But the Manhattan Project was soberly dramatized in Fat Man and Little Boy and Day One, both released in 1989, while The Missiles of October  (1974) and Thirteen Days (2000) explore the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In 1983, The Day After, made for television, sparked a national debate by realistically showing the effects of nuclear weapons. It depicts both how a war could happen and the potentially devastating aftermath.

Nuclear films by the decade

The 1950s also included Split Second (1953), in which an escaped killer and his partners hold people hostage in a ghost town slated to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb; and The Atomic Kid (1954), focusing on a man in the danger zone of a nuclear test when the bomb is activated.

Beyond Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe, the 1960s featured Ladybug, Ladybug (1963), also set during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis; A Carol for Another Christmas (1964), in which the Ghost of Christmas Future provides a tour of the ruins of a once-great civilization that looks like Hiroshima; and The Bedford Incident (1965), based on a 1961 novel, depicting a stand off in the North Atlantic between a destroyer and a Soviet submarine caught violating Greenland’s territorial waters. The novel ends with the destroyer accidentally firing a missile at the submarine, and the Soviet submarine responding with four nuclear torpedoes. In the film, the final image is a mushroom cloud.

The War Game (1965), a BBC release, was a mockumentary about the effects of nuclear war on England after a conventional war escalates. And let’s not forget the Planet of the Apes franchise, which also launched in the 1960s. It is set in a future ruled by apes, who take over after a nuclear war destroys mankind. Beginning as a novel, the original film spawned four sequels, and more recent remakes that shift the cause of the ape takeover to biotechnology.

        Battle Beneath the Earth (1967) posits a discovery that Communist China, using futuristic vehicles, has tunneled under the US to place nuclear bombs in strategic locations, resulting in a struggle to foil the plan. In the black humor category there is The Bed Sitting Room (1969), an absurdist, post-apocalyptic, satire set in the ruins of London and featuring John Lennon. 

The 1970s started slowly, but eventually produced some memorable additions. Two were released in 1977. Damnation Alley, adapted from a Roger Zelazny short story, features a chilling launch and destruction sequence. After the surprise attack, it follows the efforts of some California survivors to reach another group in New York. And Twilight’s Last Gleaming follows a renegade Air Force general who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana. Once there he threatens to launch missiles and jump-start World War III unless the president reveals a secret document about the Vietnam War. 

Two years later The China Syndrome had a significant real world impact. A gripping drama about the dangers of nuclear power, its effect was intensifed by a real-life nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island plant only weeks after the film opened. Jane Fonda plays a TV reporter who personally witnesses the risk of a meltdown (known as the "China syndrome") at a local nuclear plant. Tragedy is averted by a quick-thinking but troubled engineer. The film suggests that corporate greed and cost-cutting have led to potentially deadly faults in the plant's construction. Less serious but equally popular, the Mad Max franchise also began in 1979, leading to four more film in which a heavily-armed loner patrols a bleak post-nuclear wasteland.

        The 1980s could be called the golden age of nuclear movies, marked by dozens of popular productions. The decade began with two memorable 1982 films. The Children’s Story, based on a 1960 short story by James Clavell and originally aired on TV, is a short film depicting the indoctrination of an elementary school classroom by a new teacher when a totalitarian government takes over the country. Another is The Atomic Cafe, which effectively explores 1940s and 1950s government propaganda films that were supposed to reassure audiences that nuclear weapons weren’t a threat to their safety.

The next year was even bigger. Special Bulletin was a made-for-TV movie about anti-nuclear activists who detonate a home-made nuke in South Carolina. It’s shot in a live breaking news style. War Games featured a young computer hacker who nearly starts World War III when he inadvertently breaks into a fictional NORAD supercomputer to play the latest video games. In The Dead Zone a teacher, played by Christopher Walken, acquires psychic powers, then learns that a political candidate, portrayed by pre-West Wing Martin Sheen, will order a nuclear strike at some point in the future. Testament, from PBS, depicts the after-effects of a nuclear war in a town near San Francisco. Silkwood, inspired by the true story of Karen Silkwood, who died in a suspicious car accident, dramatizes her struggle to investigate wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant where she worked. And Barefoot Gen is an anime film depicting the terror of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath from the perspective of a child. 

Nuclear paranoia went big time in 1984 with the start of The Terminator  franchise, featuring a post-apocalyptic future in which artificial intelligence becomes self-aware, identifies humans as a threat, and uses the world’s nuclear arsenal to destroy mankind. All of James Cameron films from 1986 to 1994 featured nuclear explosions. Just as paranoid but more right-wing, Red Dawn revolves around an invasion and occupation of the US by Soviet, Nicaraguan and Cuban forces after a surprise limited nuclear strike. 

  The docudrama Countdown to Looking Glass dramatizes an international incident, the breakdown of diplomacy, and the escalation of international tensions leading up to a nuclear crisis. One Night Stand, an Australian film, focuses on four teenagers in the Sydney Opera House when news breaks of a US-Soviet conflict in Europe that goes nuclear — first in Europe, and soon in Australia. And Threads, a 1984-85 BBC production based on a British government exercise, shows the effects of an all-out nuclear war on the town of Sheffield. 

        In 1986, Manhattan Project wasn’t actually about the bomb’s invention, but instead about how, using stolen plutonium, a high school student builds an atomic bomb for a science class project. Two other significant productions that year were When the Wind Blows, an animated film about an elderly British couple in a post-nuclear war world, and The Sacrifice, a philosophical Swedish drama about nuclear war.

In 1987, The Fourth Protocol, Frederick Forsythe’s 1984 novel, was adapted for film. It follows a plot by extreme Soviet elements to encourage unilateral British disarmament. Meanwhile, they smuggle the components of a tactical nuclear bomb into the country for eventual detonation near a US nuclear base the week before an election. Other 1987 releases include Project X, dealing with the testing of lethal exposures to nuclear radiation on how specially-trained chimpanzees perform in computerized flight simulators — based on a real Air Force biomedical research program; Amazing Grace and Chuck, in which a 12-year-old boy becomes anxious after seeing a Minuteman missile on a school field trip and protests by refusing to play baseball; and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, in which the Man of Steel rounds up all the nuclear weapons and hurls them into the Sun, resulting in unintended consequences.

As the decade ended, Miracle Mile (1988) followed a musician who visits the famous Los Angeles shopping zone, gets a wrong number phone call, and overhears a conversation about an imminent nuclear attack. Struggling against fear, denial and panic, he scrambles to save himself and a woman he just met. 

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, By Dawn’s Early Light (1990) dramatized an accidental limited nuclear exchange between the two Superpowers after a "false-flag" attack on Soviet territory. Rogue Soviet military officials frame NATO in order to spark a full-blown nuclear war. Based on Tom Clancy's 1984 bestseller, The Hunt for Red October was released the same year, and involves a Soviet naval captain who wants to defect with his crew and his country’s most advanced nuclear missile submarine.

A few years later Matinee, which is mainly a comedy, revisits the Cuban missile crisis, showing the fears of Americans who think they are about to meet their doom. As the Cold War faded, films like Crimson Tide (1995) and Broken Arrow (1996) turned back to the threats posed by human error and private greed. In the former, the problem is mutiny on a nuclear sub; in the latter, it’s the theft of two thermonuclear weapons by a rogue bomber pilot. The Peacemaker (1997) combines emerging concerns about rogue Russian officers with access to nukes and Eastern European terrorists who want the US to suffer as they have. In Deterrence (1999) the possibility of dropping of a nuclear bomb on Baghdad is dramatized.

        In the last 20 years, the threats dramatized on film have ranged from terrorists to tornados. In The Sum of All Fears (2002), also based on a Tom Clancy novel, neo-Nazis attempt to spark a nuclear war between the US and Russia by detonating a nuke during a baseball game attended by the president. In Dirty War (2004) radioactive material is smuggled into England, turned into several dirty bombs, and detonated in London. Dirty bombs are also detonated in Right at Your Door (2007), a thriller set in Los Angeles after their use. On the other hand, it’s just a close call in Atomic Twister (2002) when a automated nuclear power plant is in the path of a tornado.

A few recent films have revisited actual events. K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) covers the actual Soviet submarine nuclear accident, and Chernobyl (2019), an HBO mini-series, details the 1986 disaster. Others opt to speculate. In The Divide (2011), survivors of a nuclear attack struggle to survive in the basement of their apartment building as fears and dwindling supplies undermine their behavior and relationships. In Outside the Wire (2021), a near future story, a drone pilot sent into a war zone must work with an android officer to stop a nuclear attack.

Nuclear weapons even play a role in modern superhero sagas. All of Gotham City is held hostage in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), part of the recent Batman series, when mercenaries take control of an armed neutron bomb. And in Watchmen (2009), based on a DC comic book, a super-powered Dr. Manhattan acts as America's nuclear deterrent in an alternative 1985, while a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan takes the world to the brink of nuclear conflict. 

Some things don’t easily change.