War Game depressingly stress tests American democracy
The doc's simulated, militarized insurrection is both fascinating and burdened by hopelessness.
Photo: Boat Rocker Media and Anonymous Content
Model United Nations programs and other simulations of cooperation and diplomacy were once a foundational part of civics education for teenagers across the United States. Given the riven state of the country, perhaps more nakedly entertaining, conflict-driven models should be indulged, in the name of preventative care for democracy. That’s one of the feelings one ponders while watching the documentary War Game, which summons forth a knotted-stomach despair and no small amount of sadness, feeling as it does like a dark prophecy, a likely missive from the not-too-distant future.
Directed by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber, War Game tells the story of a secret, unscripted, six-hour fake coup, and the American government’s real-time response. Staged on January 6, 2023, by the nonpartisan organization Vet Voice Foundation, and involving staffers spanning the last five presidential administrations, the thought exercise was designed to provide a rigorous stress test for the country’s national security system. Its filmic presentation serves up an unsettling manifestation of the thick sense of foreboding and political violence in the air.
The project’s genesis was informed by a 2021 Washington Post editorial written by three retired generals which expressed concern over extremism in the military, and that the next insurrection-like activity could well involve active-duty members—either in the form of soldiers “standing down” and refusing to follow lawful orders of their commanding officer, or joining in more active measures of overthrow.
After an unnerving cold open involving the scouting of Washington, D.C. landmarks, War Game sets its scene: January 6, 2025, against the backdrop of Congressional certification of a close and contested national election. As the exercise begins, under the orchestration of game designer Ben Radd, protestors are advancing on the U.S. Capitol, and elements of the military are showing signs of siding with the losing candidate.
As the game further unspools, Army veteran Kris Goldsmith serves as the “red cell” leader, using video statements from losing candidate Robert Strickland (actor Chris Coffey) and a handful of his military backers to whip up the support of a religiously zealous anti-government militia. Ex-Montana governor Steve Bullock portrays re-elected President John Hotham, who is tasked with consulting with his cabinet and formulating a response that (if possible) preserves a safe certification.
It does no good to beat around the bush, attempt to be clever, and “both-sides” the most direct threats of modern-day extremism. One of two major American political parties has cynically chosen, for the purposes of political expediency and power, to actively malign an assortment of institutions and core tenets of democratic governance. That is the backdrop that colors War Game’s exercise.
Still, for what it’s worth, the movie isn’t explicitly political, as difficult on the surface as that may be to believe. Its game participants, to the extent that nonpartisanship and comity still matter, include retired generals (Wesley Clark, Linda Singh, Jeffrey Buchanan), several former politicians (Heidi Heitkamp, Doug Jones), conservative pundit Bill Kristol, and a variety of apolitical security and intelligence veterans.
Furthermore, while out of necessity it employs some edited video content, its staged scenario is informed not by specific actions taken from the January 6, 2021 insurrection, but instead by demagogic rhetoric and direct appeals to religious and racial nationalism. The film uses some of the familiar markers of disunity and grievance, in other words, as building blocks to inform its unscripted narrative.
War Game is in some ways the ultimate cinematic Rorschach test. Those who plainly see the utility of an exercise of this nature, and thus the civic value of its parallel nonfiction presentation, will no doubt comprise the overwhelming majority of its audience; those intent on taking weird cultural offense will dismiss and/or attack the movie without ever seeing it, if they hear about it at all.