When Stanley Kubrick’s released upon the public Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb after a much anticipated release in 1964, his savage, wildly imaginative satire, envisioned with novelist Terry Southern, of Cold War nuclear doctrine was dismissed by military thinkers as gross exaggeration.

Yet, pushing seven decades later, as “America First” USSTRATCOM doctrines–distinguished by “hair-trigger” alerts, akin to President Trump’s famous hair-trigger temper, autonomous AI command-and-control systems, and the uncanny logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) still brought to deterrence theory–continue to describe AI-reliant global security.

The film’s “absurd” fiction looks more like a Trump Home Collection mirror, with over-the-top, low brow Pete Hegseth a “dead ringer”for George C. Scott, playing the role of General “Buck” Turgidson. Characterized by dramatic gestures, aggressive, theatrical certainty, and brazen focus on America’s “lethality”–by negotiating with bombs and perhaps “letting one out ” at the podium by accident– the US “War” Secretary closely mirrors the unhinged, “cartoonish” jingoism of Scott’s role as unsavory Gen. Turgidson brought to the screen.

By probing the terrifying space between rational deterrence and human fallibility, and easily best personified by members of the Trump administration’s own callous indifference to life, favoring warmongering, zealous bureaucratic leadership, America by default embodies the satire built for laughs of its purely theatrical Cold War military leadership made anew.

And with that, Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove remains the essential, “go-to” guide for grasping the perennial existential risks of nuclear escalation, making it one of the most important movies ever made.

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” With this ironic plea, Kubrick the storyteller perfectly encapsulated the schizophrenic absurdity of 1960s nuclear strategy, where rational politicians, looking out for #1, and insane generals danced on the broadloom carpet of doom. And with those dance steps devotedly cherished, Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove remains the essential “classic” for perceiving the enduring cycles of nuclear........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)