America, the Baleful

Germany has finally discovered the nuclear threat. For years, German politicians and press played down American concerns about the nuclear ambitions of, first, the Iraq of Saddam Hussein and, later, the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This past summer, however, the German public television network ZDF shook up the seasonal television doldrums with a sensational three-part documentary titled simply The Bomb. Broadcast over three evenings in late July and early August, it was hosted (and co-written) by ZDF's star primetime news anchor, the ever dour Claus Kleber. The tone of the 132-minute documentary is downright apocalyptic, promising nothing less than the "end of the world" if the nuclear issue is not tackled swiftly. To emphasize the urgency, each episode begins with a countdown recited by small children from around the world and interspersed with images of missiles and jet-fighters and mushroom clouds--and then a control panel switch being turned to "launch."

The Bomb would appear to be good news for transatlantic relations and the prospects of forming a united European-American front against Iran, North Korea, and other potential nuclear proliferators.

Unless, that is, one watches it.

For the overriding message of The Bomb is that the nuclear threat is not constituted by Iran, North Korea, and other potential rogue possessors of nuclear weapons, but by the established nuclear powers and first and foremost by the United States. According to the odd sort of nuclear theology proposed by the film, it is the United States that committed the original sin by developing the first nuclear weapons, and the current risk of proliferation is merely the consequence of America's transgression.

The viewer gets a first hint of this tenet barely two minutes into the film. Kleber is touring New York harbor with a police patrol boat assigned to protect the city from potential nuclear terror attacks. "The consequences of the Manhattan Project, the construction of the first bomb, come back to haunt its inventors--as a weapon of terror," Kleber intones.

The consequences of the Manhattan Project? It is as if the Manhattan Project occurred in a vacuum rather than in the midst of the Second World War, with America racing to beat Nazi Germany to the bomb.

Later on in part one, Kleber sits down in Islamabad with Hendrina Kahn, the wife of the world's most notorious proliferator of nuclear know-how: A.Q. Khan. Asked about the possibility of extremists taking control of the Pakistani government--and hence of its nuclear arsenal--Hendrina observes matter-of-factly, "but that's the way it is with nuclear weapons." Then, striking a schoolmarmish pose, she responds with a question of her own. "But who is the only country that has used them?" she asks, "You tell me." Far from in any way challenging the pertinence of the question, The Bomb both underscores it and provides the answer by immediately cutting to a map of the United States.

The map is superimposed on images of snow-dusted American prairie rolling by a car window. Kleber is on his way to the nuclear weapons facility at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. As if dutifully following the instructions of Hendrina Kahn, he is going to view the root of the evil. As his car rolls up to four heavily armed soldiers guarding the gates of the missile command center, Kleber notes that the motto of the base is "extreme weapons, extreme standards." "Absolute perfection," he continues, "from carrying out the order for the apocalypse to the security check of the rare visitor."

The style of Kleber's interviews with military personnel resembles that of Sacha Baron Cohen's fictional television journalist Borat--but without the humor. The interviews are set-ups. Kleber has a point to make about the evil of American nuclear power and the unsuspecting servicemen and women are mere props. Thus, in one particularly creepy sequence, Kleber stares into space with a bored expression as his guide, Lieutenant Colonel David Stone, enumerates various physical features of the underground command module. Then, all of a sudden, Kleber cuts to the chase: "But you don't have any decisions to make, right? You are all just a tool of a political decision that is made far above your heads, and you are personally not responsible for anything."

As the narration has only just specified that the political decision in question would unleash "the apocalypse," the question is loaded. Reared on guilt-ridden debates about the personal responsibility of German soldiers in Nazi war crimes--the famous "just taking orders" motif--it is even more obviously loaded for a German audience.

"That is absolutely right," a wide-eyed Stone replies.