Brilliant Cold War satire

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2000)

This movie stands as the finest satire of American Cold War military policy. Stanley Kubrick used this film to show the illogicity of nuclear deterrence. Deterrence relies on the idea that sane men will not launch a nuclear attack, because the retaliatory strike would surely destroy all of mankind.
However, effective deterrence requires that a nuclear response system be flexible in its launch. There will be situations when someone besides the president will need the ability to launch a nuclear strike. This structure allows the extension of launch capabilities to more and more people, who may or may not be sane. Also, the culture of deterrence requires a distrust of the enemy, a distrust which must be fed by the state, news media, and the leaders of the nation. This acts to build irrational thought in people, to produce people who are paranoid and perhaps insane.
Kubrick's movie follow the humorous but horrific chain of events that occur when a rogue general, driven insane by his paranoid delusions of Soviet attacks on the essence of the American people decides to take matters into his own hands.