Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb gets all the attention, but there are other great cinematic period pieces about the Bomb.
My suggestion for wonkish Netflix lists is Seven Days in May (1964).
Frederic March plays a wise and tired President – think of Ike, but without military service – up against a politically ambitious, spell-binding Burt Lancaster, wearing four stars. The President has somehow gotten the Senate to consent to a treaty eliminating nuclear weapons – artistic license, given that President Kennedy struggled mightily to persuade two-thirds of the Senate merely to stop atmospheric testing — an act that Burt Lancaster and his allies believe to be treasonous. Kirk Douglas plays the executive officer torn between his admiration for Lancaster’s wartime heroism and his duty to the Constitution. Ava Gardner plays the sloshy but somehow noble love interest. I loved the screenplay and the book, both by Fletcher Knebel and Chuck Bailey.
A treaty or convention banning nuclear weapons is not in the cards. Its pursuit adds more resistance than lubrication to the goal. Setting a time limit for this end state is like dictating levels of precipitation. Dates and numbers matter in this business, but trend lines matter more, and the trends that progressively devalue nuclear weapons the most are the absence of battlefield use and testing. I have long advocated the pursuit of zero nuclear weapons – without the hubris of setting an end date. We have a long way to go before reductions increase, rather than decrease, nuclear dangers. The pursuit of zero will therefore remain, for a good, long while, far less dangerous than the pursuit of larger nuclear arsenals. Those who argue that deep cuts engender proliferation also argue the exact contrary proposition – that outliers will go for the Bomb regardless of what those with a surplus of nuclear weapons choose to do. You can’t have it both ways unless you are implacably opposed to nuclear arms control.
A naturally regulating, atomic Archimedean principle seems to be at work here: nuclear reductions proceed to levels permitted by intertwined political and security concerns. False buoyancies will produce impermanent and disappointing results. The hard work involved in moving toward zero is never ending. Rewards include reducing nuclear dangers along the way and providing essential glue that maintains the global nonproliferation regime.
The most recent wave in support of zero has crested, leaving behind an altered nuclear landscape. The Gang of Four deserves heartfelt thanks. Messrs. Shultz, Kissinger, Nunn and Perry have much to be proud of. They have walked a fine line undermining nuclear theology without trashing nuclear deterrence, and they have encouraged lots of high-credentialed company. This wave provided President Obama the running room he needed to champion zero and to secure New START despite a Republican caucus in the Senate that sees little value in treaties. Zero will always be in the picture now, with periodic reminders like that given by the President to the British Parliament on May 25th: “And while we hold others to account, we will meet our own obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and strive for a world without nuclear weapons.” The difficult agenda that lies ahead is far less about zero as an end state than about the incremental, near-term steps required to get there.