Don't worry, I won't spoil the film for anyone.
After the climax, the Watchmen (and the villain(s)) come to a conclusion that I did not quite understand. Or, I understood it, but I disagreed with on such a basic level that I was left wondering why none of them, including the villain(s) took possible actions X,Y or Z that I considered in my mind after the final unfolding of events. Even Rorschach who, because of his unique moral compass, decides to take a different course of action than the others, his choice and thinking is still guided and is derived from the same conclusion that everyone else came to.
I am too verbose. Here is the heart of the matter. The conclusion everyone came to only makes sense if one basic assumption is accepted. The author apparently accepted it so fully that none of his characters ever questioned it, even at the end.
It is that the nuclear capabilities of the US and USSR (and the destructive potential of Doctor Manhattan) are the cause of the Cold War. The implication at the end of the film is that had there been no nukes, nor any Dr. Manhattan, the Cold War would never be, nor would it continue if the nukes and Dr. Manhattan go away.
I find this assumption quite absurd. When the credits were rolling I was expected to believe that if nuclear power were as possible as cold fusion is today, then there would have been no standoff between Nato and the Warsaw Pact. That if only conventional arms existed, the free democracies and the communist world dominated by the Soviets would get along fine.
I can accept that nukes defined the nature of the Cold War and that they created idiosyncratic and intense situations and dynamics for it, but not that they are the cause of the "conflict" themselves.
One has to only consider that both the US and Russia have nukes today to see that this assumption is bogus. Why are we not scared of Russia now? Oh yeah, because they aren't an evil totalitarian state. Now they're just corrupt.
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I couldn't agree more Arthur. I believe that the presence of mutually self assured destruction changed the face of warfare forever. WWII was the last total war, meaning the last war in which a society devotes everything it has to a war. The last war in which a nation pours millions of men into combat and focus's on destroying everything about a country. The wars of the future are much more about who holds what cards then somebody actually playing those cards.
If there had been no nukes then we would have seen a total war between Nato and Russia and the soviet bloc. WWII would have paled in comparison to the devastation that war would have wrought. Because of nukes the US and Russia fought a series of proxy wars, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran vs Iraq, Cuba (Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile Crisis)....etc to try and gain the "better hand of cards". The irony is that nobody will ever play those cards because of nukes.
I truly believe that the wars of the future will be waged on scales much smaller than those in the past because nobody wants to provoke a nuclear response...ever. So in a way nukes have made war less brutal and less costly. Unless of course somebody think a flock of geese is a bunch of Russian missiles and we all die (seriously this almost happened once no joke).
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