Fail-Safe Political Analysis
In the 1960’s, computer technology was just starting to dominate much of modern life and this new technology raised concern about whether humans had command over certain important functions like the control of nuclear weapons. The movie Fail-Safe addresses these fears by portraying a technology doomsday scenario where a malfunction by a computer causes a nuclear bomber group to be deployed against Moscow. Along with showcasing issues relating to technology, and its limitations, Fail-Safe portrays several political aspects of the cold war including the paranoia felt by both sides, the strict training of the military, the politics supporting a first strike and the inferiority beliefs by some of the other side, and an over-inflated sense of patriotism by others.
Toward the beginning of the movie Fail-Safe Congressman Raskob raises his fears over the power of machines and gets the response that “machines are developed to meet situations.” To this he responds “Then they take over, they start creating situations.” The Generals there retorted that this is highly unlikely and state that “We have checks and counterchecks on everything.” The central political issue that leads to all others in Fail-Safe is Raskob’s response “Who checks the checker?” Since no person was checking or controlling the machine that malfunctioned, there was no way to prevent the machine from creating the situation that lead to the doomsday scenario of nuclear holocaust in New York and Moscow. By establishing such a shocking scenario, the movie seems to suggest that in one way or another, all unmonitored machinery has the potential to make something go disastrously wrong.
The attempts to fix the situation caused by the accidental attack order show another point in the movie that problems caused by technology can’t always be fixed by technology. One example of this is the order to shoot down the bombers with our own fighter planes. This completely failed because the fighters didn’t have enough of a gas capacity and speed advantage to catch up to the bombers. The other big example is with the Russian Air Defense. The Russians had thousands of miles in air distance, hundreds of fighter planes, and hundreds of anti-aircraft missiles and guns to shoot down the 6 bomber planes but failed to anyways even with all the information about how the bomber’s defense worked.
Other technical issues presented in Fail-Safe are more mundane but nearly as important. The biggest of these is the fact that with the new reconnaissance satellites up in space (shown in the nerve center scene), everything in the world can be monitored consistently at frequent intervals. This makes it much harder to launch surprise attacks like Pearl Harbor because the preparations can be witnessed. The satellites also lower the need for reconnaissance flights which could become potentially embarrassing diplomatic incidents when shot down because the flights were essentially acts of war due to the violation of airspace. Being able to monitor anyplace at nearly anytime is great for US security, but as Congressman Raskob states (when hearing the satellites will be able to see people), it brings up an issue of privacy because people like him don’t want “some thing up there” knowing that they’re balding and because nations have the right to hide certain things from others (technology that could create economic growth for example).
What prevailed throughout the Cold War was overwhelming paranoia about what the other side was doing (in the movie it was mostly what the Soviets were doing). This developed as a result of being in near war with the Soviets for so many years that tensions matured into that paranoia. What the paranoia does is wreck any sense of harmony in the movie’s discourse between the US and Russia because each side doesn’t completely believe in what the other side was saying. The paranoia was also partially the cause of the disastrous end of the movie because the lack of harmony it caused between both sides lead to a non efficient usage of time in shooting down the bomber aircraft.
On the Russian side, the paranoid belief held by many of their Generals in the movie was that the US was just using the story of a malfunction to cover up a much larger (but really imaginary) attack being made by bombers flying under the radar. This belief caused their Generals to waste time arguing with the Premier of the Soviet Union about his trusting of the President. Additionally, Russian paranoia came into play in the film with the UFO aircraft incident over Canada. Since the Russians feared so much about getting caught off guard by a US nuclear attack, they set up a computer that picked through statistics what was going to be a real attack. This computer decided only through probability rather than facts that the UFO incident was going to be the real attack on Russia and jammed the American radios because of it. Since the planes couldn’t be called back due to the jamming, the Russian paranoia behind the technology was partially responsible for Moscow’s destruction.
On the American side, the paranoid belief held by many of the characters was that the Russians were somehow manipulating the US radar to show the affected bomber group heading into Russia when it was really heading back to its normal position. This unjustified belief lead to widespread hesitancy to follow orders and the creation of conflict among the military personnel all of which cost time. The biggest example of this hesitancy and tension is when the Russians contacted Strategic Air Command to ask if the missiles on the bombers have both infrared and radar homing capabilities. Colonel Cascio is ordered to answer, but fails to in a timely manner because he is held back by the thought in his mind that what he was doing was treason and essentially would be supporting the Soviets in their supposed plot. Furthermore, a Major responded in a similar fashion along with a Sergeant who only eventually responded because he could be easier bullied by the General giving the order. Afterwards, the paranoia felt by Colonel Cascio lead him to advocate a first strike, and by doing so, he went so far as to ask the General in command to launch it without the President’s authorization (which is tantamount to advocating treason). This was followed up by Cascio attacking his commanding officer when he was about to respond to a Russian request. When Cascio was arrested, he claimed the General in command would kill us all, but instead in the movie it was partially his fault that millions died because he along with others would not comply with orders (which took away precious time).
At any time during the Cold War, World War III could have broken out and because of this, strict training of military personnel was required. For the Air Force, the purpose of this training was to improve its member’s performance and efficiency at carrying out bombing raids; it was also designed to improve their discipline to the extent that they would resist any possible deception by the enemy. The last part of the training (that taught personnel to resist deception) was the problem because it left little margin for errors such as the failure of the fail-safe machine caused by Russian jamming. In Fail-Safe, the jamming that prevented communication with the bombers made it so the strict anti-deception training was also a partial cause of the nuclear disaster. This was so because the training instructed bomber crews to not accept orders from their superiors after a certain point and the jamming was blocking communication until after that point was passed. Since their training was so strict, they would not even accept orders from the President or even listen to their wives because the point they were supposed to receive orders had passed and they thought that the Soviets quite possibly could simulate their voices. In addition to this, the movie also portrays the fact that the bomber crews are so well trained that they will not even respond to signals by American planes.
“These are Marxist fanatics, not normal people,” Professor Groteschele states in the movie. “They do not reason they way you reason, General Black. They're not motivated by human emotions such as rage and pity. They are calculating machines.” In this quote, the professor portrays a view held by many conservatives of the time that the Soviets were almost subhuman. This view was quite similar to views of opponents in other actual wars such as in World War II when the Japanese were viewed frequently as animals. The Professor’s logic in his arguments about the Russians is skewed however as most stereotypical arguments are because of the obvious. What he argued is that the Russians will surrender in event of a first strike because they all believe spreading communism is their most important goal as a country and to do that, they need their country to survive. This scenario can easily be seen as overly idealist because most of Russia’s generals were not going to be extreme Bolsheviks but rather standard military men who would attack when attacked by someone else. This would mean that instead of no one being hurt on our side, the casualties would be more like 50 million because the Russians would launch a full scale nuclear attack. This argument falls so into the absurd that even he eventually abandons it.
Later on in the movie, the Professor calls for a first strike because there would be “minimal casualties” on our side. This was a complete change of political philosophy because before he was saying that only a few aircraft would be required to cause them to surrender but now is saying that a full strike would be required to win (winning by annihilation rather than surrender because he mentioned there would actually be US casualties from the few nuclear weapons not hit). He justifies this through an over inflated sense of patriotism by saying that they are our mortal enemy and must be beaten. When he calls for the attack, he is told that the US does not do surprise attacks because they were done to us at Pearl Harbor. Groteschele counters that the Japanese were right to do it and would have won the war if they could have completed the job of destroying our Pacific forces. In addition to this the Professor states that by attacking first, the US has the power with nuclear weapons that the Japanese did not to complete the job of destroying Russia’s military in one strike. Afterwards, when he is confronted by General Black who states this is murder, he states that you murder to not get murdered yourself. This response is followed up General Black asking the Professor what makes us worth surviving, “that we are ruthless enough to strike first?” To this, Professor Groteschele gives a Darwinian style response that “those who can survive are the only ones worth surviving.” For the Professor, moral character means nothing because it does not make one any more fit to survive.
Fail-Safe portrays many of the political aspects of the Cold War from the issues developed by new modern technology to the suspicions felt by both sides and to the rational of those who supported a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia. What it also does in contrast to the movie Thirteen Days or Doctor Strangelove is show that not all (just some like Colonel Cascio) of the military leadership actually wanted war. General Black (the leading military officer) himself was shown to be one of the most if not most firmly anti-nuclear war person in the movie while the civilian professor was the least. Its this that seems to make Fail-Safe’s plot feel realistic because only the situation and not the characters are as outlandish as General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.