Learning the Right Lessons From ‘A House of Dynamite’

Within three days of its debut on Netflix, “A House of Dynamite” rocketed to the top of the streaming service’s charts, with more than 22 million views. In the film, a nuclear-armed ballistic missile, launched by an unknown enemy, streaks toward Chicago, leaving only minutes to respond.

The film’s politics are hardly subtle. Director Kathryn Bigelow has made clear she wants her work to drive “discussions about reducing the nuclear stockpile.” That might make sense if America’s adversaries were open to drawing down, but Russia, China, and North Korea are doing just the opposite. In reality, “A House of Dynamite” actually makes a compelling case for strengthening both America’s homeland missile defenses and nuclear deterrent.

In the film, U.S. forces employ ground-based interceptors, but they fail to destroy the incoming missile. Despite Bigelow’s professed commitment to “realism and authenticity,” that is not how the U.S. military’s ground-based midcourse defense system would be employed in such a scenario. 

Confronting an actual intercontinental ballistic missile threat, the military would have launched multiple interceptors to destroy the incoming missile. And what if, for the sake of argument, those failed, too? It would make a strong case for additional investment in our missile defenses, unless one believes that our adversaries are ready to disarm, if only the United States demonstrates a sincere commitment of its own.

This was the illusion that animated much of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s, and it seems to have seeped into the film’s logic as well. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim said he and Bigelow are “thrilled to see a conversation happening between policymakers and experts about how to make the world a safer place.” Are Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping part of this conversation? Perhaps Kim Jong Un and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

The evidence suggests they are not. Last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed, “Beijing continues to outfit hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos built to support the largest nuclear expansion in Chinese history.” 

The head of U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for nuclear operations and deterrence, testified in March that, “Russia maintains the largest and most diverse nuclear arsenal in the world — including 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and up to 2,000 non-strategic nuclear warheads.” Putin regularly rattles his nuclear saber.

Meanwhile, the top U.S. commander in Korea warned earlier this year that Pyongyang’s capabilities are growing thanks to Moscow’s expanded “sharing of space, nuclear, and missile-applicable technology, expertise, and materials.”

While U.S. and Israeli airstrikes seriously degraded the Iranian nuclear program in June, new reporting indicates that the regime in Tehran is already working to rebuild its missile capabilities with Chinese help.

So, what is to be done? After decades of American leaders grappling with the nuclear threat, one of the few clear lessons to emerge is that deterrence works.

That is why the United States must complete the modernization of all three legs — land, air, and sea — of its nuclear triad. That means fully funding and completing the much-needed fielding of the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Columbia-class Ballistic Missile Submarine, and the B-21 “Raider” Strategic Bomber programs.

The goal is to deter nuclear war, not start it, and the maintenance of a credible nuclear deterrent helps convince adversaries that a nuclear attack on our country would be a grave mistake.

Defense also enhances deterrence, so despite its gaudy name, the administration’s Golden Dome initiative is worthy of support. To be sure, deploying anything close to the system envisioned will be difficult, costly, and time-consuming, but “House of Dynamite” demonstrates the costs of the U.S. government not being able to defend its citizens.

If America had adversaries willing to negotiate in good faith, we could work toward limiting and perhaps reducing nuclear arsenals. Yet the Kremlin repeatedly violated an array of Cold War-era treaties. Trump gave North Korea every chance to step away from the nuclear brink, but it refused. China is simply uninterested in serious nuclear diplomacy, and the regime in Iran has shown it would rather endure comprehensive sanctions than allow UN inspectors to monitor the full extent of its nuclear program.

As entertainment, “House of Dynamite” succeeds admirably. As a prescription for national security, it bombs.

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where David Adesnik is the vice president of research.