film

Alex Massie alerts us to this BBC story about modeling who would win if the dead actually did rise from the grave: 

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures....

To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose "classic" slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films....

[T]heir analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."  

Now, one could argue that this finding represents a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious. On the other hand, the report has clear freaked out Alex Massie:

[The researchers] are cheating. It's like something out of Dad's Army: You can't fight like that, it's not in the rules... Then again, if we can be destroyed by Zombie 1.0, just think how powerless we'd be when confronted by Next Generation Zombies...

To try to make Massie feel better let's have some fun with this and ask a different question -- what would different systemic international relations theories* predict regarding the effects of a zombie outbreak? Would the result be inconsequential -- or World War Z? 

A structural realist would argue that, because of the uneven distribution of capabilities, some governments will be better placed to repulse the zombies than others. Furthermore, anyone who has seen Land of the Dead knows that zombies are not deterred by the stopping power of water. So that's the bad news. 

The good news is that these same realists would argue that there is no inherent difference between human states and zombie states.  Regardless of individual traits or domestic instiutions, human and zombie actors alike are subject to the same powerful constraint of anarchy. Therefore, the fundamental character of world politics would not be changed. Indeed, it might even be tactically wise to fashion temporary alliances with certain zonbie states as a way to balance against human states that try to exploit the situation with some kind of idealistic power grab made under the guise of "anti-zombieism." So, according to realism, the introduction of zombies would not fundamentally alter the character of world politics. 

A liberal institutionalist would argue that zombies represent a classic externality problem of... dying and then existing in an undead state and trying to cause others to do the same. Clearly, the zombie issue would cross borders and affect all states -- so the benefits from policy coordination would be pretty massive.

This would give states a great opportunity to cooperate on the issue by quickly fashioning a World Zombie Organization (WZO) that would codify and promnulgate rules on how to deal with zombies. Alas, the effectiveness of the WZO would be uncertain. If the zombies had standing and appealed any WZO decision to wipe them out, we could be talking about an 18-month window when zombies could run amok without any effective regulation whatsoever. 

Fortunately, the United States would likely respond by creating the North American F*** Zombies Agreement -- or NAFZA -- to handle the problem regionally. Similarly, one would expect the European Union to issue one mother of a EU Directive to cope with the issue, and handle questions of zombie comitology. Indeed, given that zombies would likely be covered under genetically modified organisms, the EU would trumpet the Catragena Protocol on Biosafety in an "I told you so" kind of way. Inevitably, Andrew Moravcsik would author an essay about the inherent superiority of the EU approach to zombie regulation, and why so many countries in Africa prefer the EU approach over the American approach of "die, motherf***ers, die!!"  Oh, and British beef would once again be banned as a matter of principle. 

Now, avid followers of social constructivism might think that Wendt and Duvall (2008) have developed a model that would be useful for this kind of event... but you would be wrong. Back when this paper was in draft stage, I specifically queried them about wther their argument about UFOs could be generalized to zombies, vampires, ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, Elvis, etc.  Their answer was an emphatic "no":  aliens would be possessors of superior technology, while our classic sci-fi canon tells us that the zombies, while resistant to dying, are not technologically superior to humans. So that's a dead end.

Instead, constructivists would posit that the zombie problem is what we make of it.  That is to say, there are a number of possible emergent norms in response to zombies. Sure, there's the Hobbesian "kill or be killed" end game that does seem to be quite popular in the movies.  But there could be a Kantian "pluralistic anti-Zombie" community that bands together and breaks down nationalist divides in an effort to establish a world state. Another way of thinking about this is that the introduction of zombies creates a stronger feeling of ontological security among remaining humans -- i.e., they are not flesh-eaters (alas, those bitten by zombies are now both physically and ontologically screwed). 

Unfortunately, I fear that constructivists would predict a norm cascade from the rise of zombies. As more and more people embrace the zombie way of undead life, as it were, the remaining humans would feel social pressure to conform and eventually internalize the norms and practices of zombies -- kind of like the early-to-middle section of Shaun of the Dead. In the end, even humans would adopt zombie-constructed perceptions of right and wrong, and when it's apprpriate to grunt in a menacing manner. 

Now, some would dispute whether neoconservatism is a systemic argument, but let's posit that it's a coherent IR theory.  To its credit, the neoconservatives would recognize the zombie threat as an existential threat to the human way of life.  Humans are from Earth, whereas zombies are from Hades -- clearly, neoconservatives would argue, zombies hate us for our freedom not to eat other humans' brains.   

While the threat might be existential, accomodation or recognition are not options.  Instead, neocons would quickly gear up an aggressive response to ensure human hegemony.  However, the response would likely be to invade and occupy the central state in the zombie-affected area.  After creating a human outpost in that place, humans in neighboring zombie-affected countries would be inspired to rise up and overthrow their own zombie overlords.  Alas, while this could happen, a more likely outcone would be that, after the initial "Mission Accomplished" banner had been raised, a fresh wave of zombies would rise up, enmeshing the initial landing force -- which went in too light and was drawn down too quickly -- in a protracted, bloody stalemate. 

Readers are hereby encouraged in the comments to posit other IR theoretical prediction of the response to a zombie uprising. For example, would the zombie uprising confirm Marxist predictions about the revolt of the proletariat? 

*Alas, your humble blogger does not have the time to puzzle out the zombie effect on two-level games. 

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Your humble blogger is fully aware that everyone and their mother has been blogging and writing about the big Obama speech from yesterday.  Why, you might ask, have I been silent?  [I might, I might indeed!--ed.]

It's a combination of four things:

1. Like Mark Lynch, I want to wait and see what the longer-term effects are -- if any.  By longer term, we're talking past the six-hour window that bloggers would consider as long-term.
2. There are plenty of FP bloggers who can write about this to any ideological flavor.  So I'm free-riding off of them rather than write about a subject on which writing persuades no one and brings nothing but loopiness to the comments section.
3. [He's waaaay behind on some other writing assignments!!--ed.]  You weren't supposed to say that out loud.
4. Superficial cultural gadfly that I am, the thing that caught my attention this AM was not the reax to the Obama speech, but A.O. Scott's devastating evisceration of Sam Mendes' new movie Away We Go (though I do grant that the trailer looks amusing).  In this paragraph, Scott articulates for me the response I always have to Mendes' work: 

To observe that they inhabit no recognizable American social reality is only to say that this is a film by Sam Mendes, a literary tourist from Britain who has missed the point every time he has crossed the ocean. The vague, secondhand ideas about the blight of the suburbs that sloshed around American Beauty and Revolutionary Road are now complemented by an equally incoherent set of notions about the open road, the pioneer spirit, the idealism of youth.

Clearly, Sam Mendes is not the film equivalent of de Tocqueville.  This, of course, leads to a vital film question:  who is the cinematic equivalent of Alexis de Tocqueville?

In FP's sister publication Slate, Fred Kaplan critiques Steve Walt's list of top ten international relations films, as well as my own ("neither of them gives our own film critic, Dana Stevens—or, for that matter, Gene Shalit—the slightest cause for worry.")  In an act of sheer bravado, Kaplan then goes on to list 25 other films that he thinks are better than any of either Walt's film or mine. 

To which I say -- oh, it is so on now, Kaplan!!  You want to throw down on films?  Let's throw down!! 

[Wouldn't this have been a more succinct reply?--ed.  Yeah, I was going for more Jack Nicholson-crazy voice, but that works, sure.]

First of all, what act of hubris could make Kaplan claim that any film on his top-25 list is better than Dr. Strangelove?  It's like making a top ten best film list and consciously omitting Citizen Kane.  There's no point to it except sheer bloody-mindedness.  Dr. Strangelove captures all of the absurdities of the Cold War in one neat package ("Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!").  I didn't elaborate on that point in my original post for the same reason the world doesn't need another essay extolling Orson Welles' masterpiece -- it's an exercise in redundance. 

Second, Kaplan reacts to my fave flick, The Lion in Winter, as follows: "Um, OK: a strange choice, especially for the top of the list, but there's a daring quality about it."  This leads me to wonder if Kaplan has actually seen the film (and, full disclosure, I haven't seen some of the films on Kaplan's list, such as The Lives of Others.  From what I've heard, many of these films would likely have been on my list had I seen them.  To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, however, you make top ten lists with the films you've seen, not the films you wish you've seen).  This is a movie about a powerful but aging leader desperate to ensure that the gains his country has achieved under his rule persist after he is gone.  To do this, he has to outwit a foreign leader and plenty of domestic (in both senses of the word) adversaries.  This movie is filled with strategizing, backroom dealing, bluffing, backstabbing, balacing, bandwagoning, and an waful lot of shouting.  In other words, a typical day in world politics. 

Third, and more interesting, is defining what makes a movie a movie about international relations.  Kaplan nitpicks at Wag the Dog because "it's more about domestic politics than international affairs."  He similarly picks on Seven Days in May because it "isn't really about international politics."  Part of studying global affairs, however, is investigating the interplay between domestic politics and and international relations.  Wag the Dog is about how domestic difficulties can translate into foreign policy escapades (or staged foreign policy escapades).  Seven Days in May is clearly about civil-military relations, but on an abstract level it's about the difficulties of implementing international agreements over the resistance of powerful domestic interests. 

Now, all this said, I can't deny the quality of some of Kaplan's selections.  The moment I posted my list, I started kicking myself because I forgot about The Godfather.  It really is the perfect metaphor about international relations -- alternating levels of tension and calm punctuated by occasional bouts of violence. 

As for Kaplan's other films, Goodbye, Lenin! is also an inspired choice.  Thirteen Days is less inspired -- I could never get past Kevin Costner's atrocious accent.  On the other hand, I do have a soft spot for 1974's The Missiles of October. 

Finally, a few other films that got omitted from all of our lists but merit further conversation: 

1.  A Fish Called Wanda (1988):  One could argue that the Anglo-American alliance was the most significant relationship for much of the twentieth century.  This film, on the cultural differences that exist within the special relationship, is worth multiple viewings.  In a perfect world, watch this with a mix of Americans and Brits -- they laugh at different parts. 

2.  Traffic (2000):  The debilitating effects of drugs -- and the drug war -- on both sides of the Rio Grande makes for interesting viewing.  Plus, there's a terrific Salma Hayek cameo. 

3.  Henry V (1944) and Henry V (1989):  Alex Massie makes a good point here:  "the Olivier and Branagh versions remind one that an individual text may be subject to more than one interpretation. Plus, of course, there's an awful lot of Just War theorising to be done on the back of Henry V."

As a film buff, I was keen to see Steve Walt's top ten list of "movies that tells us something about international relations more broadly."

Someone once said that the only proper way to critique a film is by making another film. Following that logic, I think the only way to critique Steve's list is to make my own.

Using Steve's criteria, the overlap between our top ten list is pretty small: Dr. Strangelove and Casablanca. It's not that I hate the other films -- I just think there are better, more entertaining movies out there that highlight some interesting aspects of world politics. Here are eight other films I think are essential watching for international relations junkies: 

8. Burnt By the Sun (1994)

The tension in Nikita Mikhailkov's film comes from the juxtaposition of the terror that comes from living in a totalitarian society and the beauty on screen that comes from a family vacation in the Russian countryside.   

7. Seven Days in May (1964)

This Rod Serling-scripted, John Frankenheimer-directed movie is the film to watch when musing about civil-military relations, particularly in the United States. 

6. Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Buried within this romp about two Mexican teenagers going on a road trip with a very attractive woman is a lot of subtext about the ways in which globalization has affected Mexico.  I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but director Alfonso Cuarón is quite deft in making his points without banging you on the head repeatedly to do it.

5. Conspiracy (2001) 

Hannah Arendt wrote about the "banality of evil." This movie -- a real-time recreation of the 1942 Wansee Conference -- is the best evocation of Arendt's theme. Plus, any movie where Colin Firth plays a Nazi is guaranteed to shock. 

4. The Americanization of Emily (1964)

An absurdist tale about bureaucratic politics and public relations during wartime. James Garner was the perfect actor to play the protagonist.  Possibly the only movie ever made to extol cowardice as a virtue.  

3. The Day After (1983)

An ABC television movie that sparked a great deal of controversy when it aired during one of the peaks of Cold War tensions. It's far from a perfect film -- I mean, c'mon, Steve Guttenberg is in it -- but I actually prefer it to Dr. Strangelove on one important dimension. It does a much better job than Kubrick's film at evoking the latent dread that people felt during the Cold War about the possibility of global thermonuclear war. I'm glad this dread has largely disappeared from global consciousness, but there's a part of me that wants younger generations to see this movie periodically just to remember what it feels like. 

2. Children of Men (2007)

No top ten list about IR films is complete without a good dystopia flick. The premise (global infertility) is a bit of a stretch, but if you accept that, the rest of the movie seems like an effortless, logical extension of how civilization would respond to such a pandemic. Also directed by Alfonso Cuarón, incidentally. The action sequences are jaw-dropping.   

1. The Lion in Winter (1967)

How do you make a movie about the strengths and limits of rational choice in international politics? It helps if you have Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, and Timothy Dalton, and biting dialogue.

OK, readers, which flicks did I miss? 

classicmoviegals/Flickr

It's Oscar season, and the general consensus seems to the that the actual Oscar nominations mostly suck eggs. 

So, playing off this Tyler Cowen post about economists in the movies, I began to wonder if the problem is that movies need to have more political scientists in them.  After all, how many political scientists -- as opposed to politicians -- have been portrayed on film? 

The answer appears to be "not many."  Some of the people on Tyler's list -- Carl Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted, for example -- qualify for political science as well.  Independent of Cowen's list, however, I could only think of three movie characters who were clearly identified as political scientists: 

• Walter Matthau as Professor Groeteschele in Fail Safe (1964) 
• Coutney B. Vance as Luke in The Last Supper (1995)
• Kurt Russell as Dr. David Grant in Executive Decision (1996)

This is pretty thin gruel. 

Of course, that could be because our jobs are boring, or it could be because political scientists are "incredibly uncool, socially inept, and about as socially connected to high society as Gomer Pyle on crystal meth." 

Question to readers:  I'm sure that there are poli sci characters in movies that I am missing.  Who are they? 

Slumdog Millionaire won the Golden Globe for Best Drama this past Sunday, presaging a strong run for the Best Picture Oscar -- provided it can deal with the inevitable blowback.  And there will be blowback. 

Without giving anything away, the movie is undeniably the feel-good flick of the year.  The love story at its core, however, is tissue-thin.  Dev Patel really does deserve an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor, because he manages to give his character's motivations far more emotional longing than the story justifies. 

What I'm very curious about, however, is how the film will play in India.  The movie has yet to be released on the subcontinent.  According to the Associated Press, the film will open there on January 23rd.  The story also explains why it might not play too well in India: 

[S]cenes of Mumbai's filthy vast slums have drawn criticism from some viewers. Indian poverty is a delicate issue here, particularly when it is raised by outsiders [Danny Boyle, the director of Slumdog Millionaire, is British-DD]. While India has gone through spectacular economic growth over the past decade, about 400 million people — more than the entire population of the United States — are believed to live on less than $1 a day.

This is serious -- if Indians pan the movie, its shot at an Oscar is... er... shot. 

Still, I suspect that the Dickensian fable will play well in the country where it is set.  One criticism of the movie is that it paints the slums of Mumbai as too colorful and sanitized. 

Readers who have seen the movie:  does it deserve the Best Picture Oscar?