The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you KEEP IT A SECRET!

Way back in 2005, I was 18 and sitting in an International Relations class in my very first semester of college. At the time the idea that one could learn political lessons in films had not yet occurred to me; I just liked films as entertainment (oh such a simpler time!). It was in this class and during a discussion of nuclear deterrents that my Professor kept referencing a film called Dr. Strangelove (the full title: Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). Now, I grant you, the political themes aren’t exactly subtle in this film, and undoubtedly the intention behind it is to make a political point. I don’t want to spend time talking about the specifics of the Cold War or the specific commentary on US Cold War policy in the film; I do, however, want to discuss this film, in particular, in the context of nuclear diplomacy, as this was my first introduction to both the film and the idea that political concepts can be demonstrated with movies.

“Everything there is to know about nuclear strategy can be learned from Dr. Strangelove.”

-John Pike, former director of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists (Lindley, 2001)

Dr. Strangelove is a satyrical comedy where a U.S. General goes off the deep end and orders B-52 bombers to deliver their nuclear packages to the Soviet Union. Unbeknownst to the General, and the U.S. at large, the Soviet Union built a Doomsday Device that has the power to totally destroy the world. While the Doomsday Device itself is fictional it can be viewed as akin to the strategy, Mutually Assured Destruction. At that point the events in the film are all startlingly realistic.

We see in the film that the U.S. has a fleet of bombers constantly in the air, never landing, not even to refuel, toting around a nuclear payload. We see that individual commanders have authority to order the use of those weapons. This may lead the discerning observer to wonder why; why were forces on constant alert and ready to launch an attack at a moment’s notice, and the answer to that question must always go back to the nature of deterrence.

What is Deterrence?

“Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack”

-Dr. Strangelove (55:09)

The idea behind creating a deterrent is to convince your enemy that the cost of an attack will outweigh any possible benefit, and most often the best way is to create fear; fear of repercussions. Creating fear can be more difficult than first believed. The ability to create fear depends not only on your own resolve and ability but also on the enemy. If your enemy is unafraid of the death and destruction you threaten, then your threat is not a credible deterrent.

Credibility is the linchpin of any good deterrent, and it relies on three things: capability, resolve, and communication. For your opponent to take your threat seriously, they must first believe that you can achieve what you threaten, and that you will carry out the threat. This issue came up at the end of World War II when the U.S. sent its ultimatum to Japan: surrender unconditionally or risk total destruction. The Japanese did not respond to the threat, in part, because they did not believe that the U.S. had such a weapon that could effect such an outcome; no such weapon had existed before this moment. At that point resolve had to step in; we had to show we were willing to carry out this threat. There were those in the U.S. that, having seen the capability of the weapon in tests, did not want to use it against people. However, having issued that threat we could not at that point go back as it would risk the credibility of any future threats.

Finally, credibility must rely on communication. Consider the clip from Dr. Strangelove below:

The Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove published by sunyatajack

Dr. Strangelove points out that, “the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!”(3:46)

Basically, if your enemy has no idea that are making a threat, you aren’t. It’s like Schrödinger’s Threat, you are making a threat, in that you know you can and will destroy your enemy, and at the same time you aren’t making a threat, in that they don’t feel threatened because they don’t know about it. So the key to a successful deterrent is to shout it from the mountain tops.

The “Logic” of Nuclear Deterrence

The purpose of a strategy like Mutually Assured Destruction (here after referred to as MAD, quite appropriately I might add) is that once achieved, using nuclear weapons becomes illogical, because your destruction, and everyone else’s, once you launch your attack would be assured. If you receive a first strike, under this idea, there is little you might gain from retaliation; by this point deterrence has failed and retaliation only risks further strikes and greater death and destruction. Because of this MAD actually becomes illogical as a deterrent, because the fallout from the first strike must be so devastating, that the threat becomes less credible because it is hard to convince an opponent that we would essentially undertake our own destruction in launching the first attack. Launching any attack under these circumstances would be suicide, and generally humans are hard wired to avoid our own destruction and so the threat looses its credibility.

So now credibility must be restored, and there are two possible ways to do this: the first would be to introduce illogic and uncertainty to the scenario (we won’t concern ourselves with this option right now) or automate the system, the Dr. Strangelove method.

Automation

Automation restores the credibility of the threat, by taking people, or “human meddling” as Dr. Strangelove describes it, out of the equation. People are soft. We like living and generally we want to continue to do so, and thus it is difficult to bring ourselves to the notion of killing ourselves to prove a point (so much so that suicidal thoughts are a key symptom of a mental disorder). Most people are not and will not be “ride or die” when it comes right down to it. A device like the Doomsday Machine rules out “human meddling” and makes the incredible threat of suicide, ride or die, credible. The automated response is, as Strangelove describes, “terrifying. It’s simple to understand. And completely credible, and convincing.” It is, obviously, not fool-proof, as the film shows us, and thus we arrive at the American (in the film) method for reintroducing credibility to the system.

Uncertainty

One major hurdle with something like a Doomsday Machine is that it requires a government to cede control of its nuclear arsenal to computers. Many of us aren’t even comfortable ceding control of our cars to computers, so this seems an unlikely method for most people, and so we must find a way to make an incredible threat credible again and the answer the Americans come up with in the film is uncertainty; to reintroduce a bit of illogic into this chain of reasoning and thus make the outcome of the system difficult to predict.

Delegating to base commanders the authority to issue a strike decentralizes the military control and makes a system like MAD much less logical. Now we cannot be reasonably assured that retaliation is off the table because more people must come to this conclusion, and while retaliation remains the less reasonable option, people are not always reasonable creatures and we make dumb decisions on the regular. In a system where authority is spread out the chance that everyone with decision-making power will all reach the reasonable decision is reduced and with it the chance that someone authorizes and all out nuclear retaliation is increased. It is the introduction of this chaos, this illogic into and otherwise logical system that reaffirms the notion of a credible threat.

The Fallout

Ultimately, all nuclear strategy is playing with fire and there is no such thing as a fool-proof or perfect strategy, or for that matter perfect safety where nuclear war is a possibility. We live with the perpetual knowledge, that our world leaders have their hands over the triggers and that certain doom is no more than a few coded messages away. Deterrence is the strategy we’ve chosen to combat this constant threat, not by removing that threat, but rather by enhancing it. It makes the threat more threatening, but it also raises the stakes. At this point, all we can really do is sit back and laugh at our own inevitable demise at the hands of a possibly unhinged military commander and a man who likes surprises just a little too much.

Discussion of nuclear war and total annihilation is not exactly “fun” so we’ll end on a “high” note; in the same style as Dr. Strangelove, I give you Tom Lehrer and We Will All Go Together When We Go…

Tom Lehrer – We Will All Go Together When We Go published by The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel

 

References:

A. Andrew, J., Rowena A., P., & Stacey L., S. (1993). The Macroeconomics of Dr. Strangelove. The American Economic Review, (1), 43.

Lindley, D. (2001). What I learned since I stopped worrying and studied the movie: a teaching guide to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. PS: Political Science & Politics, 34(3), 663-667.