Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is the satirical look at the nuclear Cold War era of the 1950s and 60s. General Ripper, a crazed US officer convinced Russians are trying to poison American waters through fluoridation, initiates a plan to essentially instigate World War III. All the while a incompetent American president, constantly urged by a trigger-happy general, attempts to negotiate with the intoxicated Russian leader. With destruction looming, the leaders convene in the War Room to plan a resolution, where Dr. Strangelove reveals a plan to save top government officials. The film ends with the inevitable bomb drop, which triggers the Russian doomsday mechanism causing a series of dramatic explosions.

Stanley Kubrick’s comical depiction of nuclear armament and international confrontation lampoons the alarm of the Cold War era, though at the same time it illustrates the important political issues of the 1950s and 60s. The film demonstrates the irrationality behind the concept of “mutually assured destruction” – knowledge that the use of weapons would also destroy the aggressor. The characters of the film are exaggerated and laughable, though their correlation to actually leaders comes across so strong that viewers are able to draw connections between reality and the plot of the movie. Similarly, the plot is fanciful with the purpose of criticizing a system reliant on a delicate stalemate to ensure security.

The film Dr. Strangelove successfully addresses the absurdity of Cold War policies and on a larger level criticizes humanity's progression towards separatism, in the movie marked by international distrust and dischord. Interestingly, even long after the 1950s and 60s, the message of destructive security remains resilient as ever.  At the heart of Kubrick's film lie issues of global cooperation and the dangers that exist in its void; these messages are not bound to the Cold War era but rather continue through time. 

The article “The Macroeconomics of Dr. Strangelove” by Andrew John, Rowena Pecchenino, and Stacy Schreft considers weapons accumulation through an economic model and works to find an equilibrium between countries’ strategies. The authors construct a situation in which individual of two nations can choose to amass weapons by allocating resources. By monitoring the moves of the other, a country can calculate its probability of winning and decide appropriately whether or not to attack. One can then calculate the benefits and disadvantages of accumulating and using weapons.

The model presented mathematically analyzes the issue of nuclear proliferation. In its calculated approach, however, the model fails to capture the element of humanity; the model only measures success and failure not innate human worth. In this way the article doesn’t drive the same message as Dr. Strangelove. Instead of emphasizing the danger of nuclear armament like the film, the article examines whether or not nuclear accrual is beneficial or detrimental to a country. Interestingly, the article finds that equilibrium can exist where neither country amasses weapons and where both countries “accumulate weapons to the point where conflict initiation is so dangerous that it never occurs” (p. 44). This finding supports the ideology held by Cold War hardliners, the same ideology Kubrick satirizes with Dr. Strangelove. Through a purely analytic model it may seem possible for a country to protect itself with weaponry, though, as the Kubrick’s film indicates, the dangers incurred through such defense are too immense to tolerate.