Military Madness

 According to the Doomsday Clock we are only 100 seconds from nuclear catastrophe – the shortest point for which this disaster has been predicted in the 70 years since scientists started the Doomsday Clock.

Last week I viewed for a second time the 2000 remake of the original 1964 Fail Safe film made by Sydney Lumet. The black and white tones of the remake helped its impact as well as its focus on 3 basic locations - the control room where representative of the industrial complex strutted, Harvey Keitel and a Dr Strangelove lookalike initially disputed and the miscommunications drama played out; President Richard Dreyfuss and an interpreter made telephone contact with their Russian counterparts; and the cockpit of George Clooney’s plane as he zeroed in on Moscow. 

An article in today’s Guardian about a journalist’s experience with a nuclear attack simulation is a powerful read  

I could kill up to 45 million if I chose the more comprehensive of the alternatives laid out on three pieces of paper, but it was hard to focus on the details because there were people shouting at me through my earpiece and from the screens in front of me. 

I was experiencing what a US president would have to do in the event of a nuclear crisis: make a decision that would end many millions of lives – and quite possibly life on the planet – with incomplete information and in less than 15 minutes.

In the real world, I was in a meeting room in a Washington hotel, but with virtual reality goggles strapped on. I was sitting behind the president’s desk in the Oval Office. The television news was on and there was a report about Russian troop movements, but the volume was muted and someone was telling me the national security adviser was running late aimed at our meeting.

 It took me back to the mid 1980s when I sponsored a public showing of a famous documentary The War Game by Peter Watkins which had been banned for 20 years – and when we expected the police to move in at any moment. Google tells me that in Sept 1984 a documentary called Threads was aired on BBC – but I have no recollection of that one. 

The American military is completely out of control – with its political class giving it $25 billion more than it actually asked for. Even Scientific American is arguing that this has to stop.