In 2020, the Russians take Paris - a trailer for Tom Clancy's EndWar
The Russians, Tom Clancy's old reliable villains, are back. The American techno-thriller author has lent his name to several computer games, including the intricate new title from Ubisoft known as EndWar.
The video game's back scenario? In the next twenty years, America deploys a space weapons system to protect the U.S. and Europe from nuclear attack, while a sullen Russia stays out of the missile shield club. A few years later, the world's peak oil doomsayers are suddenly proven right and all of the world's major oil producers - except for Russia - are found to have massively inflated their reserves. The resulting collapse of the world economy puts a remilitarized Russia on a collision course with the America and Europe.
Naturally, the reasons why Russia's grown-up Nashi youth would rather level Paris than buy it are never quite explained. (On this point, a pessimistic Russian might ask: where will Russia find enough men to maintain a powerful army in twenty years? But the game designers seem to get around this question by having most of fighting take place between robots).
As one of the game's designers joked in an interview, the present war of words between the U.S. and Russia over missile defenses has given his marketing campaign plenty of free publicity.
UPDATE: World Politics Review has republished this article here.
"An Evil Empire" - President Ronald Reagan at the National Association of Evangelicals convention in 1983
At the time, many critics accused the Reagan Administration of being influenced by apocalyptic literature
Of course, Russians know that Russian bad guys are nothing new in American pop culture. The bestselling "non-fiction" book of the 1970s was Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, which relied heavily on the author's own particular interpretation of American 19th century evangelical dispensationalist theology. In Lindsey's vision of the apocalypse, the Soviet Union was fated to launch a massive assault on tiny Israel - and then watch as its armies were destroyed by the Almighty. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992, Lindsey and his publisher made some updates to the book, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran, and China became the new "Gog and Magog" gearing up for Armageddon.
In 1983, when President Ronald Reagan delivered his famous "Evil Empire" speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, many of his critics seized upon the popularity of Lindsey's book with his audience as proof that Reagan was a religious fanatic itching for a nuclear showdown with the USSR. The Left Behind books, written during the 1990s by evangelical authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, opens with a similar storyline about a revanchist Russia attacking Israel. Left Behind was the bestselling fiction series of the last decade. (In case our Russian readers were wondering, the influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life is now the all time U.S. bestseller in the non-fiction category).
Who can imagine an episode of VH1's "I Love the Eighties" without some reference to a cast member from the movie Red Dawn? Although in hindsight, the movie's depiction of a combined Soviet/Latin American invasion of the U.S. seems ridiculous, the screenwriter John Milius reportedly sought out former NATO Supreme Commander Alexander Haig for advice on creating a plausible scenario for World War III.
"A Russian doesn't go to the bathroom without a plan..."
The 1980s also featured the Cold War techno-thrillers (based on best selling novels) Firefox and The Hunt for Red October. The most memorable "Cold War" line from that movie probably came from a Navy Admiral played by future United States Senator and current U.S. Presidential candidate Fred Dalton Thompson, "A Russian [submarine captain] doesn't go to the bathroom without a plan." (incidentally, Mr. Thompson was also featured in the 1980s Cold War spy drama No Way Out.) If Thompson actually wins the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2008, the Russian media is likely going to have some fun with this soundbite.
Besides the legacies of the Cold War and the crime-ridden Nineties, the main reason Russians make such useful bad guys for Hollywood is political correctness. There are no powerful Russian-American groups that will flood the studios and networks with complaints when Russians are portrayed as drunks, thugs, spies, or terrorists. There is a Russian actor named Alexander Nevsky (who clearly models himself after Arnold Schwarzenegger, right down to the accent) who has had some success in Hollywood by refusing to play the part of these "heavies" - but very few Americans have probably seen him in Moskovska Zhara (Moscow Heat) or in the other movies where he plays a real "Russian action hero".
It should be said here that Russians are not always the bad guys in American novels, films and TV shows. Just seven years ago, Tom Clancy released his novel The Bear and the Dragon, which featured the U.S. allying with its former Cold War adversary against the new global superpower, China. More recently, Season 5 of FOX's popular television drama "24" featured a similar plot theme, with Chinese and Chechen villains plotting a wave of terrorist attacks in order to prevent an alliance between the U.S. and Russia.
On "24", Jack Bauer hunts terrorists with the help of the Russian ambassador
"24" is produced by one of the few Republicans in Hollywood, Joel Surnow, and this has led to speculation in the U.S. media about Surnow allegedly inserting his politics into the show. However, at the end of the twenty four hour day depicted in every season of "24", the real masterminds behind the terror plots invariably turn out to be a cabal of greedy tycoons supported by traitorous officials inside the U.S. government, rather than foreign terrorists.
The bottom line: Russians should not take this new wave of Russian bad guys in American popular culture too seriously. And foreigners should not conclude, based on the popularity the Left Behind series, that all Americans are dispensationalists who are eagerly awaiting the apocalypse. While EndWar's scenario of the U.S. and Russia going to war over missile defenses may seem ironic, at the end of the day, making video games is all about appealing to a target demographic, 99% of which is bored young men, all around the world.
If Russia and America did not go to war in 1962 when American nuclear bombers were on station around the clock over the Arctic Circle and Soviet missiles were sited eight minutes away from Washington D.C., then our two countries will never go to war - and we can all thank God for that.
An interview with the creator of Tom Clancy's "EndWar" game
Unfortunately, despite the fictitious character of these movies and games, the idea that all Russians are inherently crooked and evil permiates the minds of the masses.
This in turn will greatly retard the transition to the truly normalized relationship between USA and Russia.
Yuri points out in the previous article that the next generation of politicians may not be as deeply entrenched in this apocalyptical view of ultimate show-down between good empire and the evil one. Yet media has quite an influence on the masses, who don't always draw a clear line in their consciousness and subconsciousness between reality and fiction. The bias is still developed.
Anyways, I think that for a change someone needs to make the game where Russians save the world from, say, evil Europeans or Americans. Exchange the roles for the heck and the shock of it. Just this once.
Maybe when CIS market is sufficiently large to justify such a mind-boggling alteration, some video game company will release and market such a game for young crazy Russian youths. ;)
Rice just can’t see the egg on her face.
Today, Dr Rice (Strangelove) has announced that the US will pursue its missile defense as planned. Despite Putin’s offer… and what was missed in all this chatter, Latvia offered to host elements of the US missile defense system – ya just can’t get more north than that, just can’t get more further from Iran or North Korea.
As important Putin suggested the US install it’s system in Iraq.
But imagine, if you take all the euphoria, the certainty and the slam-dunk assurance that the US had in March of 2003 about the mission ahead for attacking Iraq. Take that entire positive and expert body odor from Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rummy and the rest and now look at the state of things today in Iraq and the world.
Now apply that American confidence to missile defense, and I personally start to giggle. Then I think about peace, and I start to cry.
So, a message to Bush and Rice, I ask “really?â€
This time you know what you are doing?
This time you feel the outcome will be as you whish?
This time you actually think and believe that there will be a slight sliver of success?
This time you think you might trip over success?
This time will it will be different?
Truly, this is an era of “market-based†foreign policy.
And ladies and gentlemen, citizens of the United States, your security, the lives of our children are relying on “market based†security apparatus. Your children's lives are based on a gamble, and Rice with Bush betting on your kid's lives like a crap game or horse race... Do ya feel comfortable?
Sorry folks, but this is going to be a new cold war. Because accountability is not present in the US government anymore, they refuse to acknowledge the egg on their faces from the Iraq catastrophe (and so many other failures). Ask Bush or Rice and Iraq is going as planned.
I firmly believe things will escalate, but I hope after a few years, maybe the decaying egg on America’s face will get too bad even for the next president, and then things will normalize.
Looks to me like Rice will can give a great show with egg on her face, unfortunately, we need to wait till the heat makes this egg rot with stench and maybe, then, the US government will cry uncle and begin to do the things that are in the best interest of future American generations and the world.
Somehow, we all hoping for sanity in all this, but you need to understand, Rice, Bush and Cheney don't have the gray matter to comprehend their own failures.
We will have a new cold war. Hopefully in today's modern age, like everything else, this new cold war will become obsolete in a few years.
Another oil scenario appears in the book 'Ghost Force', by Patrick Robinson.
Tensions develop between Siberia and Moscow that cause a resource war, which eventually involves many other countries including Britain.
The post on this blogsite, titled 'Russia's Declining Population', also hints at the potential of Siberia to inflame the world.
Anyway these new games where modern Russia takes the place of the Soviet Union (which was thought by many as striving for world domination .... which is "bullshit") .... these new "old" scenarios are a sign for us, Russians. A sign of continuied Western dislike and fear...towards us. Well..let it be ... because you don't fear only those countries who serve you (which is of course called "partnership"). We'll never...
nice job man russia wouldovov win usa in the wor because 1) russia wase the strongest power in the world till 1989 until soviet era came to end and russia hade better wepens and gones like ( ak-47 its from ww2 and its steal the best gun because this is rssian had not american 2) americans bough so many wepens bombs gons from russia they couldent think how to make to stuped :) soviets 4 life C.C.C.P hell yeaaa