“A Common Insanity: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg About Nuclear War” is a short and straight-to-the-point documentary about the unbelievable dangers of nuclear weapons. With Trump’s recent statement that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing to be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China, it is a relevant film that details what horrors even the threat of nuclear war poses on the world to this day.
Dan Ellsberg is known for being the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000 page top secret document that exposed the systematic policy of lies told to the public about the U.S. war on Vietnam. In this documentary, he concisely narrates what he learned working in the Defense Department during the Cold War. While in the White House in 1961, he was presented with a nuclear war plan drafted during the Eisenhower administration. It stated that if these weapons, which already existed, were used as planned to strike China and Russia, they would kill an estimated 600 million people. Over half of those would be casualties from neighboring European countries deemed as “collateral damage. Not desired, inadvertent, but expected.”
The documentary expands on this alarming premise. Beyond the damage done on impact, the fallout would create a nuclear winter devastating the land and making harvest impossible for nearly a decade. Nuclear war plans are also designed to be carried out in an instant, where it would take only minutes for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to be launched after a command. And there is no possibility to limit the damage of a nuclear war head after it has been launched.
Ellsberg openly connects the dots with the military industrial complex. Weapons manufacturers spend enormous amounts of money to convince politicians that these weapons are needed for defense, buying off support to continue profiting from these weapons. Ellsberg makes the case that it’s up to everyday people to organize against this horrific reality. He highlights the anti-war movement of the 1960s where millions of people made clear that it should be common sense to remove any threat of nuclear war. Yet today, over 50 years since the release of the Pentagon Papers, it’s insanity that we’re still living with the same threat.
This film is a great resource to learn about and discuss the violent aims that are standard in this system and a reminder that we can – and must – organize for a future without threat of war and other catastrophes.
You can stream the documentary for free on YouTube here.
