Unclear and Present Danger - By Dawn’s Early Light

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

In this episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John discuss the 1990 made-for-TV movie “By Dawn’s Early Light.” Their conversation centers on the politics of nuclear weapons, what they mean for constitutional democracy, and how fear of nuclear weapons has been a potent political tool since the end of the Second World War.“By Dawn’s Early Light” is available to stream for free on Amazon and YouTube, and is available for rent on iTunes.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times frontpage for Saturday May 19, 1990.Trailer for “The Day After”Trailer for “Threads”

We are under attack. We certainly wouldn't fire a missile with the Soviet Union. Now who the hell did? Four people. Oh my God! Three minutes. If we don't hit them hard and hit them now, we may never get the second chance. On this one, sir, there are no military geniuses. Two choices. The fate of this planet may be riding with you.

One Chance for Survival. An all-star cast in the HBO original movie by Dawn's Early Light. Premiers May 19th. Welcome to Episode 7 of Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times Opinion Section. I'm John Gans. I write a column for Gawker. I have a newsletter called On Popular Front, and I'm working on a book about American politics in the 1990s. Today we are talking about the movie by Dawn's Early Light, released in 1990. The movie is a movie. is an HBO television movie.

This is back on the era where television movies are pretty common. And this one had a pretty stacked cast. It starred Powers Booth, Rebecca DeMorne, James Earl Jones, Rip Torn, Martin Landau, just a ton of very impressive actors. It was directed by Jack Scholder, who I had never heard of until I looked at his filmography. and he was mainly a horror director. He directed Alone in the Dark, one of the best.

He also directed one of the best movies in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, which is the sequel, Freddy's Revenge, which is a weird, you know, these days it's considered sort of like a very queer-coded horror movie, totally worth watching. And he directed Wishmaster 2, Evil Never Dies. So this is a bit of a departure for him. But that was his background in the movie, if you have not watched it. And as we always say, you should watch the movie before you listen to this discussion.

I had to rent this on iTunes. I don't think it was available for streaming on HBO, but I also didn't look very hard. I found it on Amazon Prime free. Weirdly enough, it just popped right up on the screen. There you go. So available on Amazon Prime, and you can rent it as well. here's a very quick plot summary a nuclear warhead launched by Soviet insurgents protesting the waning Cold War destroys the Ukrainian city of I can't which one is it what is it D-O-N-E-T-S-K

Donetsk Donetsk Donetsk yeah Donetsk I think that's it okay yeah a nuclear warhead launched by Soviet insurgents protesting the waning cold war destroys a Ukrainian city. The destruction sets off a race between American and Soviet politicians to prevent a nuclear Holocaust. Very much in the tradition of your fail safes, you know, obviously strange love is much more satirical, but also kind of similar to strange love in that sense, kind of a classic Cold War nuclear Holocaust, averting a war kind of movie. Critical reception. what's very positive, as far as I can tell, most critics thought this was pretty well done, but again, it's a television movie. It looks like a television movie. If you watch this,

the quality of the transfer is not going to be great. It's very clearly from a VHS or a laser disc or something. This is more, in a lot of ways, this is like a forgotten film. And I'd be shocked if it ever found a more, a higher quality release. Having said that, I liked it quite a bit. what do you think john yeah you know okay so my thoughts on the movie are basically like it's a little unfair to hold it to to too high a standard because it is a made-for-television movie cable was sort of in its infancy or it's toddlerdom at this point and you know it was trying new things and i think people kind of like critics sort of like responded to it with that in mind which was like well this is a cable movie but it sort of like has good actors and was trying to do

something serious so they but yeah I mean they're and I have a kind of fascination with TV movies because I watched a lot of them as a kid like when I was home sick so there's there's a nostalgia factor to me or just kind of wanting to you know return and see what they actually are like now that I'm older but to me you know like it's a dated is a kind of a dated film its budget precludes I mean it the premise of the me movie is, you know, this sort of, you know, global disaster and the budget kind of precludes showing too much of it and kind of keeping everything in these chamber drama scenes and on airplanes and in offices, which usually wouldn't bother me, but I kind of conspicuously being

like, yeah, they don't have the budget here. But yeah, I mean, there are a couple interesting things about the movie, I think that the performances, these are all really fine actors, like Jamesville Jones is in the movie, Martin Lando's in the movie, Powers Booth. Don't think he gives a great performance here, but he was like he's really good in Tombstone, which comes out not too long after this, I think. And yeah, Rebecca Dormorne also, I think it's also just like maybe their script, they're directing, wasn't world class and like they could have done more but yeah like i would say for a tv movie of this era it's probably a pretty good product and it's it holds up against our last movie

the fourth war which we compared to a tv movie um so yeah i mean i wasn't enthralled but i was like yeah this is it's kind of cool to return to this era's television movies and get it get a hit off the atmosphere. But, yeah, I wasn't like, this is great. So before we go further, we have to look at the New York Times front page for the day this movie was released, which was this movie was released March, sorry, not March 19, May 19th, 1990. And so I think we both have our New York Times up.

And in terms of the Cold War, again, I mean, at this point, all these movies are released as the Cold War unraveling as it's coming to its end. And so a lot of the foreign policy headlines are just going to deal with the attempts to get a handle on what's happening with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although in this case, there's not that much of this. There's really just one, you know, very relevant, to the big sense that there's anything relevant here. related to Iran Contra. Oh, no, no, I miss that. There is a Cold War relevant headline. So I'll just hit the two that are

germane to the podcast. The first in the top left is Baker, that Secretary of State, James A. Baker, said to ask Villeneas to suspend Independence Act. This is in, this is in Lithuania, I think. Yeah. this was kind of brewing in the last remember in our last episode they had a there was a there was a headline about the same crisis right right the the first that the lead is secretary of state james a baker urged the lithuanian prime minister today to consider suspending her republic's declaration of independence as a way of opening a dialogue with moscow what the winning officials said yeah that's interesting i mean you know

What this makes me think of, you know, we think about the end of the USSR as being, you know, something that the United States straightforwardly desired and worked for, and we have this triumphal narrative. But, like, you know, the Bush foreign policy doctrine was quite realist and I think quite concerned at times about the dissolution of the USSR for stability. so they were kind of in this case asking the Lithuanians who are declaring independence to kind of put the brakes on I think because the whole process of the USSR unraveling was so such a giant deal and so destabilizing that I think it's interesting to see like the United States not being like yeah declare independence

it's over like everybody should be free but actually being like oh maybe you want to take this a little slower right yeah and it says Mr. Gorbachev's impending being with Mr. Bush has injected a new note of real politics into a sovereignty conflict that's marked by pride and unbending principle on both sides yeah I think like it's funny because we think of Bush one as being like the pre-neocon presidency but actually like most of the decisions were including in Iraq

were like these very you know one could say cynical or one could say realist approaches to foreign policy and not ideological approaches to foreign palsy, something he was actually criticized for at the time by even Nixon, who, you know, famously sort of realists for not being supportive enough of democracy efforts in the East and so on and so forth.

So it's kind of interesting to be like America wasn't so unambiguously enthusiastic about the breakup of the USSR. Right. I mean, this is sort of a thing. theme of the podcast, but the USSR was a source of a kind of stability in the world for as much as it wasn't ideological rivals. So the breakup of this massive empire, right, this huge geopolitical unit is just going to cause a lot of grief for the United States and his allies. The other headline here is Iran-Contra panel opens new inquiry on Reagan's AIDS, Bush's

role still unclear, new grand jury. is convened, the second portion of Oliver Nort's notebooks is released, and the lead is a new federal grand jury today began a criminal inquiry into the Iran-Contra affair that has expected to censor on the activities of mid-level Reagan administration officials, government officials said. Yeah, I mean, you know, this story lasted into the 90s, as we can see, and basically towards the end of the Bush administration William Barr

was brought in to sort of clean this up and Iran-Contra kind of faded from I wouldn't say fade from historical memory but like it's full implications weren't fully dealt with

and you know you can see it's still front page news in 1990 so it was a serious scandal but I think it's complexity combined with the real efforts to cover it up and to obfuscate it sort of has made its impacts hazy. No, I mean, this is a little off topic, but I'm very firmly of the belief that Iran Contra is kind of like a skeleton key to modern American politics, that the fact that

Reagan violated the Constitution in a very significant way, right, to. of bypassing Congress entirely on questions of funding, trying to set up this independent funding stream, and then nearly covered it up, and Bush, George H.W. Bush, would end up pardoning a bunch of the participants, essentially closing the door on further investigation, is this sort of example of impunity that I think carries forward into the George W. Bush administration with the torture scandal and certainly into the Trump administration, kind of an idea that Republican president should be allowed to break the law without any real consequences.

Well, it's just, it's Nixon's, it's not illegal when the president does it, turned into an actual doctrine. Right. Yeah. The way I've always understood someone like William Barr is sort of his life's work is, as you said, to make, make that kind of the standard for Republican presidents. To make, to let, to open space. for a Republican president to do a water gate and get away with it.

Well, I mean, this is why, I mean, he even has a theory of it of this executive, what is it called executive, uh, the unitary executive theory. They even have a theory about the, about, you know, basically turning, turning the presidency into this, you know, highly unaccountable, um, you know, sovereign body. Um, yeah. So I agree with you. I think they're, you know, I mean, I don't want to go too much on a tangent, but just one more thought about that is that, you know, usually we think of the conservatives as constitutionalists and we think as progressives and liberals and leftists and that there's so many problems with the Constitution. But, I mean, they're willing to violate the Constitution when it serves their political ends, and we've seen that, you know, several times.

So I think this image of the, of the conservatives as constitutionalists and progressives as opponents to the Constitution. or desiring major reforms the Constitution, you know, needs a little bit more context with stuff like this. I think that's right. And the way I tend to understand it is that conservatives are fans of the Constitution and so far that it kind of enables anti-majoritarianism and so forth that it enables the protection of certain privileges and hierarchies. but those elements of the Constitution which run intention with that,

they're happy to discard. There's still, I mean, we're, you know, we're, this is the 21st century, but there's still a real suspicion of lowercase our republicanism, much less lowercase deed democracy. Yeah, I agree. To the extent that you're going to make a distinction between those two things. Yeah. So to the movie, the thing that struck me about watching by Don's early light

was how anachronistic it felt, given that it was released in 1990, it felt much more like something from 10 years earlier, like the day after, which was the big, I think, ABC Network television movie about the aftermath of a nuclear exchange from the perspective of civilians. My ninth grade social studies teacher had us watch that in class in it. No exaggeration. It totally fucked me up because there's a scene. there's a much larger budget for that there's actually a scene of a nuclear detonation happening

and you see people get vaporized and it was like very very disturbing to me as a 13 year old but it's much more reminiscent of that there are there's a similar movie from the UK whose name I cannot remember but it is notoriously very brutal and very kind of depicts the

lead up and aftermath of a nuclear exchange. And so I don't know, it was weird watching this because for as much as I find it compelling and I do find these sort of these closed door kind of like people throwing jargon at each other talking about, you know, geopolitics kinds of movies. I love that shit. I find it extremely compelling. It also felt a little out of time, sort of like a last nightmare of the Cold War.

Yeah. Getting a final hearing before, before you move on to new nightmares. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I was thinking about similar things when I was watching it. So, yeah, I was like kind of thinking about it in this almost psychoanalytic way where I was like, they're having trouble giving up on the fantasy of nuclear annihilation because it's like this was such a, it's not that anybody wanted this to happen, but it was such an ever-present fear. And, you know, it's not. I mean, maybe it should be. There's still nuclear proliferation. But for some reason, the threat of nuclear annihilation is the main nightmare in people's minds has been replaced with, I don't know, climate change and things like that.

So, you know, it's interesting to see the last, yeah, as you're saying, like the kind of last hurrah of nuclear Holocaust fantasy and why it's sort of faded. I mean, like, right now, we're in a kind of crisis situation with Ukraine. in Ukraine and we're sort of facing off with Russia and there's a possibility there's war. I mean, not direct war between the United States and Russia, but, you know, like it's a tense global situation. And there is no sense, I think, you know, this kind of face off in the Cold War would have always had nuclear exchange hanging over it. And there's just, that's just not, I mean, a possibility here.

You know, maybe it's something that should be contemplated or maybe it's somebody, policymakers on a high level are contemplating, but the imaginary atmosphere or whatever you want to call it about a nuclear war just isn't present in this conversation. And it's interesting when you look at this movie to see like the fear, the anxiety it, it, it, um, evinces is like, well, we're almost out of it, but what if something goes wrong at the, what if something goes wrong? because it's like, oh, the U.S. and the United States are, you know, sort of having this detentee and, and, you know, the Cold War seems to be ending. But then some hardliner, it's the same thing in one of the earlier movies, like the package, like, what if, what if some crazy hardliners? What if something goes wrong?

And, you know, that was always kind of a present theme in the Cold War, which was like, it was always like nobody, except for movies like Red Dawn. stuff like that for the most part like nobody thought normal people would do this like it was always these nuclear annihilation movies often were like some crazy official goes you know goes wild or there's an accident like the right the the the the the fail safe thing and this movie combines both of those tropes because it has ripped horn as the crazy guy who's like encouraging so the there is a this this missile explodes in Ukraine the Russians the Soviets think that we shot it so they start to shoot nuclear missiles at the US

but it's only a limited strike and they send the president a letter that says look we're sorry these are coming but like we give you the following options either just like take the damage or fire back an equal amount so we can just make this equal and politically that will help you and your people think that you're supplied and then we'll just make a peace deal or like we can just do this basically and you can fire your nuclear and we'll fire all our nuclear weapons and that's and it's on so it's like this is a there's an accident but then there's there's people in the there's generals in politicians who just are like well this is we don't we can't trust them or this is our chance who really want to fight this nuclear war like in dr strangelove yeah my thought watching this movie was like this is dr strangelove but not funny so like it's like a non satirical Dr. Strangelove, so first time is far, second time as tragedy kind of thing. But, like, the, yeah, it was interesting to me.

Like, the worry of the movie was like, look, we're still not out of this yet. Like, something could go wrong, some hardliner, some accident. Like, the persistence of this fear is interesting. But now, even when nuclear proliferation is probably a serious issue, like, it's not good that, you know, not only the two superpowers have nuclear weapons, but many regional powers have nuclear weapons. It's less of a, it's less of a preoccupation with people, and I wonder why. Because, like, they're still scary. Yeah, that's the thing.

Watching this, the scene where the Soviet president sends a message, and you never see him, so it's the American officials reading the counteroffer. a counteroffer is, as you said, you can, you know, we can just, we retaliated, you can accept the damage and we move on. You can launch a strike that would be equal in damage. And then we would have to respond as well, so everything's equal. And he was like, you know, that would be 6 million to 9 million casualties on both sides. And I think it's easy to forget in an era where we're not thinking about nuclear weapons all the time just with the destructive power of these things are that the United States and Russia have thousands of them, other

states, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, you know, lots of places have these things. Israel, even though they say they don't. Right. They don't say by the way. Lots of countries have these things. and a single one of them could level a city and kill millions in an instant. And it is wild that no one really, we don't really think about this anymore. Not only do we not think about it anymore, there are, right, this was the case over the last four years in the U.S.,

there is a push to sort of modernize and increase the quantity of nuclear weapons in the United States, as if this was something that we needed to do. I'm thinking about what we just said about Iran-Contra and the unitary executive, there's this thing, right, in which the unitary executive theory grows in part out of the immense influence the presidency gets after the second world war, right? The presidency kind of really becomes the center of the operation of the American government in a way that it wasn't before. in a way that it wasn't designed to be. And I think you can attribute that really to the fact that the authorization for the use of nuclear weapons was put into the hands of the president, not into the hands of congressional leaders, not into the hands of some kind of council involving congressional leaders and the president and maybe other officials. But really, it is the president's final authority whether or not you can, the United States can use nuclear weapons. weapons. And that sort of, if you're going to basically give a single person and be power to

end life on earth, power is going to concentrate around that person in a very sort of like natural and organic way. And that's, that's sort of what, what happened, right? And so it would make sense then that over time, you would get theories of, of, of politics, of government organization, which would argue that this is actually what was intended because otherwise what you are looking at what you are looking at in the concentration of that kind of power in the presidency is something that is truly extra constitutional and maybe even anti-constitutional right sort of something that kind of really cuts against lowercase our republican intuitions about the concentration of power about the concentration of authority right like if you went back in time and grab james madison

and if i went back in time i was like james madison first of all i'm not a slave uh long story there but second of all uh we have these weapons that could destroy the entire country with in an instant and only one person can, uh, has the legal authority to say we could, whether we could use them. I think, I think he would like lose his mind. Right. Yeah. I, I, I think that there's grave challenge. I mean, a lot of people have written about the grave challenges to, to democracy that, you know, came out of the, the Cold War national security state, which is basically, as you were saying, but first of all, there is the, the need to organize the state around this threat of destruction and its existential, you know, opposition to this other

power that has the similar weapons. So the whole thing is like, oh, these bunkers and secret systems and so on and so forth, which are, you know, they're not transparent. They're highly Byzantine and rely on state secrets. And then there's also just the need to. But came up with, you know, this fear of democracy that these architects of the Cold War security state had because they're like, well, these things are highly sensitive. They need to be kept out of the public eye. So you just have, you know, part of this is the intelligence bureaus, which we talked about in the show, but part of it is, you know, the infrastructure of nuclear weapons and military.

secrets and so and so forth. So you have this, yeah, creation of a giant, unaccountable secret state, which, you know, people have created probably a lot of paranoid fantasies about, but the paranoid fantasies are understandable, considering that, you know, like how little we actually know and how, you know, how little control the American public actually has over it. And I think this movie, now that I'm thinking about it a little more seriously, sort of is like, well, look, you know, imagine if the present, the normal president gets incapacitated and, uh, for part of the movie and then like the secretary of the interior becomes the president because he's the last person remaining in the, in the line of succession.

And then he's under the influence of this crazy general played by Rip Torn. But I think, yeah, the movie is like, look, you know, there is very, little in between, like, it's just a single faulty human decision between something, you know, really catastrophic. I mean, something has already catastrophic happened in the movie. But yeah, I think it's very, you know, we have these very 18th and 19th century ideas of the way our government works, which is through deliberation, part of which takes place in public and is, you know, put to public scrutiny when in fact you know much of the most consequential things that the government can do um are never put to public scrutiny and and you know there's arguments to say they

should never be put to public scrutiny so you know i think that this this movie in the sense that i think it does have interesting stuff to say like does bring up the fact that you know like you know this stuff is really not under any it's barely under anybody's control you know an accidents can happen and you know some the all the human imperfections that you know there's this vast apparatus but like you just need one or two crazy or incompetent people and then you know bad things can happen so right i mean the fact that in the movie it's the you know there's the retaliatory strike i get the exact i get the exact i get the exact order of things mixed up. But after there's a second strike on American soil that

presumably that injures the president. The president's trying to get to a secure place in a helicopter in Marine One. And the strike ends up severely blinding and severely injuring him. And he's sort of out of the picture for somewhat. And so under the presumption that the president is dead and there's no, no one's been able to get a handle on the vice president or the secretary of state or the speaker of the house or anyone else in the line of succession. they find the secretary of the interior in Louisiana and make this guy he's this guy is now the president and the thing about that right is that when when you go to vote right like when I went to when you go when you who's the secretary of the interior right now no I have no idea we of all

people should know that yeah I actually do know it's Deb Holland right because she's the first Native American first Native American yes um when I voted last year for Joe Biden my cast my ballot. I did not cast my ballot thinking in my head, oh, are the likely candidates for Secretary of the Interior going to be able to handle some high-level foreign policy crisis? But like, given how things are structured, maybe that is something you have to have in your head. And kind of the troubling thing about the movie in terms of the picture it paints is that you nominally, the fact that you elect the person who can use nuclear weapons is kind of the democratic control over all of this, but because the president is responsible for staffing

an entire executive branch, because the executive branch includes this cabinet full of people who, some of whom may be capable politicians and experts, some of them may just, some of this may just be basically patronage for political allies. You have to sort of take it on faith that the people that are being put in these offices are going to be capable of handling some sort of serious crisis should various folks be incapacitated. And it was just, it was an interesting thing. It was an interesting thing to think about. Right.

Like, I don't know, it was, it was interesting to think about what, because part of the dilemma in the movie is that the Secretary of Interior, as you said, is under the influence of a riptorn, who is sort of a very much like a kill the bastard, it's a kind of guy. And you have other, you have generals, you have other admirals, you have other, you have military officials who are like, we can't, we can't launch a full school nuclear strike. That's insane. That's irresponsible. We can't do it. And the Secretary of Interior, there's a scene when they're on one of the Air Force One, but the plane that's now designated Air Force One, where he's like, well, I'm the president.

so this is an order you have to you have to do it and i don't know it's like well do you right i mean you're i mean you're you're you're legally the president but what what kind of legitimacy do you have beyond the fact that you happen to be this guy right here and i kind of i don't know for me it raised this question of kind of of of it raises question of what what are the actual standards of democratic legitimacy in this sort of extreme context. Like, can there even be really be such a thing? Like, is there any real way to handle this according to lowercase our Republican principles? And is that kind of the ultimate problem here, right?

That because there's no way to do it, that the mere existence of these weapons is a corrosive effect on you know democratic institutions yeah I think it is because there is no first of all I mean like it's an emergency situation where which calls for like immediate decisions there's not as I said there's not time for deliberation and it also invest somebody with powers probably beyond the kinds of limited powers that we expect of officials in like a democratic republic so i think there it is just like it's just a fact that it's corrosive because like the institutions required for it to persist are not accountable and the types of thought are highly anti-democratic in that this this is a power that must by necessity be invested in a single person and you know there is no practical way

to dispute that and you know yeah it uses all this very like state of exception state of emergency um thinking which is that like you know the idea is like you're ridiculous if you would even say like we need to subject um nuclear weapons to democratic control because or deliberation because it's a it's such an emergency a single person has to make a decision has to make a decision to to to strike and if you if you if you dilly dally you're putting us in danger that's a that's a theme in the movie it's like if you if you deliberate if you think you're putting us in danger like you need to make a decision and you need to make a radical decision. So yeah, and that's highly not conducive to, I mean, we have an executive who makes

decisions. But, but yeah, like to use this cliche, the decider that that Bush came up with, you know. So, yeah, it inserts the entire, both institutionally in terms of, in terms of the type of thought that is required. Like, yeah, nuclear weapons, like insert an anti-democratic cancer. in the midst of our country. And, you know, it's kind of like what you've talked about in past, about standing armies, but, but, but like a billion times more where it's just like, this is a, this is something that's fundamentally intention

with some of the principles of living in a democratic society. And, you know, or, or even just a republic. So it was kind of like always, you know a question about the wisdom of having a standing army but like the nuclear weapons are like standing army times a hundred like it's the same there's a lot of the same issues but but magnified a great deal um so uh what was i going to say oh i actually was wrong i i take back what i said earlier about like the the worries about nuclear weapons because that came up with trump's Trump that's right

because everyone was like oh he's so crazy can you imagine giving this person control over nuclear weapons it's a reasonable I think he is too much of a coward he's not that kind of crazy so I was never yeah there'll be no one to applaud him afterwards

no exactly and I think he's afraid of it growing up in the Cold War I think he's afraid of it he's got a healthy fear of nuclear weapons I never that was never what I was worried about with Trump I never thought the nuclear weapons thing was weird but I will say that one thing really scary happened with nuclear weapons, which

I've kind of blocked out, was that do you remember when there was that fake, it was that an accident of the Hawaii defense like alert system that said it wasn't a drill? I was on Twitter when that happened and I saw these tweets coming in in real time. I said, oh shit,

they fucking did it. Like, I don't know I got scared, shitless. I think it was, you know, residual stuff from imbibing all these movies and books about the scenarios, but it was like, oh, this is not a drill. And I was like, I couldn't even imagine who did, like, why would North Korea launch one nuclear weapon at, at Hawaii? But I wasn't even thinking in the moment.

I was just like, I really thought for about 45 seconds a nuclear war had started. And I was like, you know, in the, in the crazy early period of Trump, where it seemed like the ambit of possibilities had increased a great deal and there was a lot more crazy things. It didn't seem like it was impossible. So I would say, yeah, I take it back. It's not like a nuclear war is completely out of the public imagination or the kinds of fears that we have. It was kind of reinserted with the whole like, oh, Trump could could, you know, shoot the nuclear missile because he's angry or he's crazy.

I never thought he was that kind of crazy. I think that he's mostly more of a danger to domestic. domestic affairs and some foreign affairs things but yeah there was there still are aftershocks of nuclear worry and I can't entirely you see this is an effect of the whole the whole opacity of the of the subject is that I can't say with certainty how much of we should be worried about these issues how much of this is a Cold War, a Cold War fantasy and paranoia that we've rightly moved on about, or rather, like, we don't think enough about nuclear proliferation. We don't think about enough about

nuclear weapons anymore. Like, it is still a big problem. So, like, I just don't have an answer to those questions. It's a, it's a, I'm sure there are people who have expert levels of it, but it's just not something that I, you know, I've, I don't think I've committed a lot of thought to. I think it's, it's just so, and maybe this is, you know, it's just so horrible to think about. It's just not, you know, it's just, it's a little like climate change and that, you know, some, it's so overwhelmingly terrible to think about it. I think it can kind of paralyze, you know, constructive thought on it from time of time.

But, you know, basically the answer, anytime you say, well, shouldn't we nuclear disarm is, well, we can't do that because the other guys won't. And, you know, it's kind of true. I mean like you can't just you can't just drop them I guess but it's also like are we just going to live for the rest of history with with the possibility of nuclear war hanging over our heads I guess so yeah yeah I guess so one thing I've been thinking about just in terms of sort of nuclear fear and sort of how it manifests there was there was there was the thing around Trump, and I have very clear memories of Marco Rubio and a former incarnation saying, you know,

do you want to give this guy the nuclear codes? But also during the early years of the war on terror, fear of nuclear terrorism, fear of nuclear attack was very much part of the conversation. And there's this, to go back to this point about how the mere existence of these weapons is kind of corrosive to democracy because they do require, um, they, do require, you know, instant non-deliberative action to use, quote, unquote, effectively. There is this way, right, that the, you know, a nuclear weapon detonated by, you know, some splinter group in an American city. I'm describing the plot up the sum of all of years right now. Right.

is not is not on the same order of catastrophe as a nuclear exchange between two states yeah but because because nuclear exchange between two states is the context in which we've all been primed to think about these things evoking the fear of nuclear weapons in that way you know with talk of a dirty bomb you know kind of these viruses we don't need the evidence to be a mushroom cloud right can be part of a rhetorical strategy to like concentrate more power in the hand of the executive to act unilaterally right sort of like precisely because we have this there's this catastrophic possibility and precisely because we know that in the event of this catastrophic possibility we need to be able

to act quickly you should just sort of like acquiesce to what the executive wants and I think it's possible right to sort of like you know draw a continuum um draw a line that connects sort of like fear of fear of terrorism, fear of nuclear terrorism. And then, I mean, sorry, I don't even have to say you have to draw a line because this is what they did, right? Like fear of nuclear terrorism becomes justification for black sites for torture for these gross abuses of executive power. And it's interesting that in the years since Bush, you know, there hasn't really been a big public conversation or public fretting about kind of nuclear terrorism or dirty bombs or what have you um but the path you know of the of the of the of the accumulation

of um unilateral power to inflict death right in the hands of the executive is only it's only kind of increased right you had the drone you have the drone wars under Obama and Trump um those have decline, but, you know, President Biden still claims unilateral authority to use force pretty much whenever, and whenever he pleases. And it's, it's, I don't know, I don't know if, I don't, I don't know how coherent this is, but it's just, it's interesting to think about all this stuff as a consequence of just like the existence of this, of this one form of webbed, this one technology. I have a friend who has said to me before that kind of like, that Truman authorizing use of the bomb in 45 on Hiroshima set into motion in unresolved constitutional

crisis and I kind of think that's the case yeah that's really that's fascinating I think yeah that's you know I think what you could say also is like you know we've been we talked a little bit last time about like animating myths of American politics or politics in general. I think like the animating myth of the executive since the war is the myth of not to say I don't mean before listeners freak out like I don't mean it can't happen or it's not a real problem or it's nothing to be really afraid of. I'm using it in a different sense. But the myth of nuclear war is like an animating idea that structures the way we believe the executive should work and the executive believes people who staff and theorize and, you know, create the executive.

Like, it's the image of the U.S. and this precipice and having to face a decision like this is sort of like a really powerful structuring principle of the way, you know, we proceed around these questions. So not to say that, again, not to say that, like, nuclear war isn't. a true possibility, but its imaginative potential is a, is something that like, you know, continually, even though I, you know, it perhaps is not on the front of our mind so much, it still sort of like structures the way we've organized our government and the way we organize, you know, our political system in general. So, yeah, I think that it is been a kind of a

constitutional crisis and it's just sort of like this has forever changed. the way states interact and the way even domestic politics works yeah yeah to go back to the movie uh real quick that so we we haven't gotten to how all this ends in the movie so in the movie what happens is there's uh escalating nuclear conflict and then the soviet union um is able to get control over its nuclear weapons the americans mistake a soviet launch against against the Chinese who had, for reasons unexplained. No, because of some sort of alliance. They had a secret agreement with the U.S.

that they would strike the USSR if the USSR attacked us. Right, right. So the U.S. mistook the Russian retaliatory launch against the Chinese for a launch against the United States, which leads our secretary of the interior and ripped horn to want to authorize a full-scale, you know, full-scale nuclear launch against the Soviet Union. So the kind of last 30 minutes of the movie are the attempt to kind of keep this from happening.

And it resolved itself not through deliberation or negotiation or whatever, but by a basically that the actual president is found, he recovers, he is in communications with which sort of the aerial communications array for strategic air command. And it's resolved when this aerial communications array with the president decides to RAM the new RAM Air Force One and kill everyone on board. And they end up being able to do this with the assistance of the pilots of Air Force One who see what's about to take place and decide to put their plane on course for a collision with this other plane and that kind of that collision ends the threat and and and ends the

movie right um and in the context of our discussion i mean it does you know it does raise this this question of um to to to pull back from the effects of the existence of nuclear weapons on constitutional government will that ever be accomplished through the mechanisms of constitutional government or much in the same way that this was um this is sort of like i wouldn't take an accident but kind of like something that no one really like planned ahead for is this going to be like an ad hoc thing like do we do is at some point in the american future do we have some you know you know the optimistically some sort of like constitutional convention held outside of the confines of the requirements for one

that then like imposes itself on the political order on the not so optimistic side is there like civil conflict but but is that you know is that how we resolve the the question and problem of nuclear weapons for um you know democratic government like through some way um outside of existing structures i don't know i think eventually like I think it's just like they just become less relevant to the way the strategic interests of the states and the way that those issues are like as we said like it's just not terribly relevant in the present context you know of our fight with the Russians the nuclear part of the question is not really there I mean I could imagine, you know, you can imagine something going really wrong and getting out of control and the confrontation getting very tense. But, you know, it's just not as for, for, for, I imagine a number of reasons, just not as relevant to the way that we like, the great power issues are dealt with

these days and the sphere of influence issues are dealt with these days. They seem to be kind of negotiated in a kind of almost like even pre-World War II way but with like great nation competitions not like ideological powers facing each other so I don't know like I mean my real fear with nuclear weapons is less the United States and Russia or China who I think you know have you know a leadership that is relatively even though nasty often realistic and and rational um i mean you know the in the subcontinent it's just like you have these two really like wildly nationalistic regimes that uh i mean you know a nuclear exchange with them between those two countries would hurt like they're too close to each other

for this to to to really be successful anyway but like you know modi is really really frightening almost fascist figure and the government of Pakistan is also a mess. So, I mean, you know, the fact of nuclear proliferation to like these regional nationalist conflicts and not just like is also disturbing. I mean, you know, I guess this is also the justice, but this is like, you know, okay, speaking of nuclear fear as a justification, I mean,

Look, Israel's, I think, rather inflated policies of hostility towards Iran are based on, like, well, what if they get a nuclear weapon? I mean, fair enough. I mean, Iran basically does say things like, we're going to wipe Israel off the map. So there's some basis in fact, you know, how seriously that should be taken, I don't know. But, and Israel's extremely bellicose, you know, and, you know, justifies its assertions. this but again is another situation where you know the presence of a nuclear existential threat creates an entire political order and entire justifies an entire regime of of of of of behavior and and political conduct and a really bad one because you know like you have this

conflict between um uh Israel and Iran and now Israel's getting closer to the the Gulf state powers and it's just highly um disableizing is not the the right word exactly but it creates all these perverse and uh terrible political incentives and it also just like makes it impossible to imagine um you know peace in the middle east at this point because there's all these justifications for continued hostility um because of Iran and because of so on and so forth so So, yeah, I mean, like nuclear weapons, I guess when I'm just going to end up saying something not very insightful, continue to be a really big problem. And I think we don't think enough about how not only are they a real threat, but their potentials and they're what they allow to be justified because of how horrible they are. like the the politics of fear around nuclear weapons is also just like and it's a very power like as you're saying it's just an extremely powerful rhetorical tool because how can you argue because the prospect even if it's a 1% chance right of nuclear annihilation it's just like yeah well i don't want that to happen so do whatever you need to do to stop that i mean like how can you it is it is it is a dishonest or or manipulative rhetorical tactic but there is a rational

basis in the sense that, yeah, like the possibility of nuclear, you know, of a nuclear war or not having nuclear deterrence and being attacked with nuclear weapons is really horrible. So I think it might be better for the world, not to say we should have nuclear proliferation. But I wonder if it is a positive thing that the fears, that the Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation are fading and feel less realistic because of their perverse and negative effects on both international relations and just having a functioning democracy. And even if, not to say we should be irresponsible, but like these, it's maybe time to let this one go and to be like, we don't live in the Cold War anymore.

Like the nuclear annihilation myth creates more problems than it solves. so I don't know just thinking out loud yeah yeah yeah that makes sense sort of yeah like while recognizing that these things do pose real danger sort of like ridding ourselves of the existential fear um uh for the sake of maybe a more sane political approach to them I don't know I don't know I think that but then I also you know I watched the dead zone again last year and I was like oh what if we get like a Greg Stilson in office then Uh, uh, uh, you know, someone, go ahead, go ahead. I think that this is where, okay, so, but, uh, this is, uh, I'm, I'm arguing with myself a little here.

I think like this is where liberal tyrannophobia is like there's, there's sort of like opponents of getting very upset about Trump who make versions of this argument, which is like, liberal tyrannophobia is actually holding back democracy. and we shouldn't be so skittish about crazy people getting into office because that's a classic tool to like discipline transformative politics. And so I was saying, so my thinking about it is just like, you know, this constant like, well, it would actually be very bad if the nuclear power, you know, fell into the hands of somebody unqualified. but this whole unqualified business creates an issue for democratic governance because what you're saying is either we can only select our politicians from a really select elite from a small elite or actually the real mechanisms of war making have to be

out of the hands of politicians that might come outside of that elite so that is just like basically justifying some sort of actual deep state, which I don't think you can, if you believe in democracy, which I think both you and I do, I don't think you can really say, I mean, obviously we know there's a civil service and a military and we have bureaucracies and specialized things, but something this serious is one of the, and so political is not something that we say like, oh, well, we'll give it forever the real control over this to some unaccountable shadowy group of bureaucrats. Yeah.

And I think that there is a point at which, I mean, this is why it's such a difficult issue, is that the arguments are kind of rational. They're not purely manipulative. They are, like, there is a manipulative, like in all politics, there's a manipulative dimension. There's a propaganda dimension. But I think it is a real concern, as you were saying, like, yeah, well, what if a lunatic did get control? Like, and then you can't just say, well, it's not really a situation.

serious possibility, because even though I would never thought, you know, Trump was a serious threat with nuclear stuff, it's clear that a certain kind of like extremely wacky nationalism is, you know, among the various things feeding the contemporary GOP. And, you know, I don't want someone like, I don't know. But this also goes, like, with Curtis LeMay when he ran for president with uh with with wallace and you know right you know and those kinds of crazy people have been in the like you should see some of the people who staffed the regan admission i mean like this got like they're just real nuts we're there so i don't really know the answer to this question i'm just trying to think out loud and i i don't have a i don't have a satisfying

answer to any of it but yeah like i i share both concerns i share both concerns yeah yeah i mean i don't think i don't think we will come up with the interest with this, but I'm glad this movie was able to spur some sort of conversation. It wasn't actually anticipating going this direction with this movie, but I'm glad we did. Yeah, me too.

And since I feel like that that kind of encompasses our final thoughts, I feel comfortable saying that that is our show this week. Sounds good. If you are not a subscriber to Unclear and Present Danger, please subscribe.

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We get a good, a decent amount of feedback and I think I've said this before, one of these days we will do a feedback show. Great. Episodes come out every other Friday, and so we will see you in two weeks. Every time I forget to pull a movie up. Forget to pull the next movie.

up so we will see you in two weeks let me vamp here where I find the list with a hidden agenda that movie not the Russia house no I know it's always it's always it's eventually we'll get to the Russia

Hidden agenda is really cool I think I think we're going to have a really fun discussion about that one another IRA movie great and it stars it stars Brian Cox and Francis McDormand so yeah that's in Brad Durr wow so I'm excited to watch this so we'll be we'll be back

two weeks for hidden agenda, and then two weeks after that is the Russia House. It's the fabled Russia House. So we'll get to that very soon. For John Gans, my name is Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. You're going to be able to be.