The Persistence of a Nuclear Threat
13
camp and re-education center, the Wolverines become guerilla warriors and a
major thorn in the sides of the invaders, who, in typical war film propaganda
style, appear to be both lethal and incompetent.
Milius wastes little time in describing the scenario which led to the outbreak
of hostilities. Some brief introductory credits and the testimony of a downed
American pilot, Andy Tanner (Powers Boothe) tell viewers that the Soviets are
desperate due to poor grain harvests and unrest in Poland. In a slap against
environmentalism and European pacifism, the Green Party assumes power in
Germany while Western Europe, with the exception of Great Britain, decides, in
the words of Tanner, “to sit this one out.” Meanwhile, revolution breaks out in
Mexico, while Cubans and Sandinistas from Nicaragua infiltrate America’s
borders, sabotaging the nation’s defense. Limited nuclear war then destroys the
nation’s largest cities, with the war degenerating or progressing into the
individual manly combat glorified by Milius. America stands alone, and patriots
rally to her defense.
The Milius scenario for World War III is also an indictment of American
liberalism, an ideology of weakness which the director perceives as threatening
national security. Parallel to the McCarthyism of the 1950s, R ed Dawn attempts
to link liberalism with communism. If not outright reds, liberals are soft on
communism and their pacifism places America at risk. For example, liberal
immigration policies allow Cubans and Nicaraguans to indiscriminately cross
the American border with Mexico, paving the way for an even more massive
invasion. In the white, paternalistic America embraced by Milius, Latinos are
suspect.
Gun control advocates are also a danger to American liberties. One of the
first actions taken by Cuban commander Bella (Ron O’Neal) is to have his
subordinates seize gun store purchase records of law-abiding Americans who
acquired their weapons under misguided liberal gun control legislation.
Supporters of the National Rifle Association must have felt vindicated by the
shot of an invasion victim’s body lying under a bumper sticker reading, “They
can take my gun when they pry it from my dead cold fingers.” Perhaps if the
dead man was armed it would not have been so easy to shoot him down in the
streets.
Revisionist historians also draw the wrath of Milius. One of the film’s
opening shots focuses upon a statue of Teddy Roosevelt, celebrating his role in
winning the West and raising his troop of cowboys known as the Rough Riders
who saw action in the Spanish-American War (Milius’s admiration for
Roosevelt was also made apparent in his made-for-television film Rough Riders
extolling the future President as a hero of the Spanish-American War.). When
the Soviets occupy the area, however, they erect their own monument
commemorating the peasant Indian groups who struggled against the
subjugation of Anglo capitalists and imperialists. Milius seems to equate telling
Western history from the perspective of Native Americans with communism.