BEJARIN, Joanne Camille P.

April 26, 2017

4POL1 Asst. Prof. Montana, Ph.D.

Analyzing the President’s Decisions for the United States of America through Jean Jacques

Rousseau’s Philosophy

“Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains,” (Rousseau, 2010, p.1). This is perhaps

the most famous quote attributed to French Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. In the movie

Fail Safe, many of the concepts introduced in Rousseau’s ‘The Social Contract’ are demonstrated.

With this being said, the student shall analyze the decisions made by the president in the movie

using the philosophy of Rousseau.

The president of the United States of America found himself between a rock and a hard

place in the advent of a machine malfunction concerning the fail-safe boxes of US Airforce

bombers. It can be seen from the movie that even after an employee reported one of the fail-

safe boxes to be intermittently blinking and thereby possibly broken, the replacement fail safe

box also demonstrated the same behavior as the first. Events just start to go downhill from here.

Little do they know, the fail-safe box has already sent go signals in its own accord to the pilots of

the bomber plane. Upon receiving a code on the screen, the pilots confirm the code with a piece

of paper in sealed envelope, with the same scene revealing that they are bound to bomb

Moscow, Russia. It is of standard operating procedure for the air force to ignore any visual or

audio transmissions from nearby aircrafts or from the home base from this point on.

One must keep in mind that the context in which this movie is set is in the 1960s, when

the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was at its peak. This becomes one
of the key determinants of the president’s decisions. Throughout the movie the president can be

seen to be communicating with Russian authorities about the nature of the situation. The first

decision of the president was to send their own fighter planes to communicate visually with the

bomber planes. Because of the protocol observed by the pilots of the bomber plane to ignore all

forms of visual or audio communication, this proved to be ineffective. With this, the president

gave the go signal for the fighter planes to shoot down the bomber planes, all the while informing

the Russian officials and trying his best to make them believe that this was not intentional. It

must also be noted that the president was able to communicate directly with the bomber planes.

However, due to the fact that they were trained to ignore any form of communication because

it might be a form of trickery by the Russians, the President was unsuccessful in convincing them

that there is no actual war going on. The plot twist or the climax of the movie was when the

president asked the ambassador of the Russia to the United States to stand atop the Empire State

Building in New York, with it being ground zero. It was revealed that the moment Moscow is

devastated by the bomb, New York will be, too. There was absolutely no clue in the movie that

the president was headed towards this direction, but the student will try to analyze this decision

using Rousseau’s philosophy.

Rousseau’s philosophy involves sacrificing one’s individual freedom for civil liberties. Civil

liberties were defined by Rousseau as the liberties earned by man when he passes from the state

of nature to the civil state (Rousseau, 2010). This implies a sense of duty over other members of

the society as well as an idea of what is right and wrong, what must be done and what must be

avoided. Most importantly, it purports a moral obligation for man to use his rationality before

listening to the whims of his appetites (Froese, 2001). In earning civil liberties, man is deprived
of doing whatever he wants but is instead given what he needs. In the words of Rousseau, “he

gets enormous benefits in return—his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas are

extended, his feelings ennobled, and his whole soul uplifted,” (Rousseau, 2010, p. 9).

Rousseau also put prime importance to the concept of general will. The general will is

”the will of society considered as a single whole.” (Shklar, 1978, p. 17) which tends to favor

equality. However in the article by Shklar (1978) and as was also mentioned in Rousseau’s “The

Social Contract” (2010), it is inevitable for some individuals to pursue their particular wills at the

price of the general will. These individuals are said to be those in power who refuse to let go of

the monopoly that they may practice by sheer position alone. Thus, they bend the rules to their

favor and for the preservation of their privileges (Shklar, 1978). In addition to this, the general

will finds itself to be concretely demonstrated through an entity called the sovereign (Rousseau,

2010).

Another concept explored by the works of Rousseau was that interdependence fosters

conflict and inequality (Knutsen, 1994). In the article written by Knutsen entitled “Re-reading

Rousseau in the Post-Cold War World”, it was theorized that even though Rousseau was often

reported to be a realist, he just believed that countries are better off pursuing their own interests

because being interdependent on one another has a potential to cause conflict. The division of

labor paved the way for man to develop his skills and reasons and to nourish his relationships.

However, Rousseau warns that through this division of labor, man becomes enslaved and that

being contented is hard to accomplish (Knutsen, 1994). This is for the reason that “the benefits

of increased material wealth cannot outweigh the costs of social interdependence, (Rousseau as

cited in Knutsen, 1994, p. 249). It paved way for greed and the unquenchable need to acquire
more possessions. It made man seek for economic advancement while disregarding what is good

and what is evil. This concept plays out well in the relationship portrayed by the movie between

the United States and Russia, which shall be expounded further later on.

This student believes that there are several factors which affected the decision of the

president. First and foremost, as being the sovereign of his country, the conglomeration of the

wills of the citizens (Rousseau, 2010), his decisions are expected to reflect the general will.

Furthermore, the power he had emanated from the people, and he was hereby elected by the

people to decide for them (Putterman, 2003). This presupposes that the people have put their

trust in his wisdom and knowledge, and surrendered some of their individual rights for the

common good (Putterman, 2003; Rousseau, 2010). “Between the government and the state there

is this essential difference: the state exists in its own right, whereas the government exists only

through the sovereign. Thus the prince’s dominant will is, or should be, nothing but the general

will or the law; his force is only the public force concentrated in his hands, and the moment he

tries to base any absolute and independent act on his own authority, the whole structure starts

to come apart.” (Rousseau, 2010, p. 31). One may learn from Rousseau (2010) that because of

this, the sovereign is always be correct because his decisions are the reflection of the general

will. “The sovereign, merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it ought to be,” (Rousseau, 2010,

p. 8).

However, the student believes that this begs the question about justice. Was it unfair for

the lives of the five million people to be sacrificed for the whole? Were they a victim of a tyranny

of the majority? These questions remained in the mind of this student after the movie. Especially

because from the beginning until the end of the movie, the people had no idea of what was
actually going on. At the closing scene of Fail Safe, the people of New York were seen to be going

about their day, having no idea that the president authorized for a bomb to be dropped on their

heads. About this Rousseau says that “any proposal that is rejected by the majority is said to not

reflect la volonte generale (general will) and, by implication, the body that proposed it is seen as

unaware of the volonte gendrale,” (Rousseau as cited in Putterman, 2003, p. 464). In this sense,

it may be said that there existed injustice first and foremost because the president failed to

inform his constituents about what might happen to their fates. It was, however, mentioned in

the movie that this might cause mass hysteria, but the student believes that had the pilots of the

bomber planes believed the calls made to them or had the president decided earlier about his

last resort, there might have been enough time to evacuate the citizens.

The second consideration was the population. Notice that the president decided to bomb

New York despite of its population of five million people. This might seem grotesque and

unnecessary to some but when analyzed through the lens of Rousseau’s philosophy,

the vote of the majority always binds all the rest,” (Rousseau, 2010, p. 56). Since the president

earned the majority of the percentage of the votes from the electorate, this decision then shall

be followed by everyone else, as well as all the decisions he shall make from then on. In bombing

New York City, Rousseau (2010) says that the sovereign, in this case the president, decided in

behalf of the people because he believes that this is a minor collateral damage than to risk an all-

out war that has the potential to kill more than five million people. Of course, there is a question

of how this decision is morally grounded, but according to Rousseau, “If the state or city is nothing

but a moral person whose life consists in the union of its parts, and if its most important concern

is for its own preservation, it must have a universal force to move and place each part in the way
that is most advantageous to the whole,” (Rousseau, 2010, p. 14). With this, it is safe to assume

that the president undertook the decision to sacrifice the lives of some for the benefit of the

whole.

Last but not the least is the president’s personal responsibility as a manifestation of a

sovereign. It may be inferred from the movie that because he was the chief executive as well as

the commander in chief of the American forces, the president is responsible for all the acts

committed by the units involved therefore. Despite the fact that all the commotion was due not

to human error but to machine failure, there is reason to believe that the president feels

responsible for the repercussions it entails. This is where the context of the movie comes in. The

Cold War was a crucial point for the United States because it was on the verge of its emergence

as one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world (Knutsen, 1994; Giangreco &

Griffin, 1998). Going back to the discussion of the division of labor which causes man to be greedy

and adapting more possessive qualities, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet

Union then was also a manifestation of competing ideologies (Giangreco & Griffin, 1998). On one

hand, the Soviet Union emphasizes a strict communist-fascist type of government wherein man

is supposedly given fair opportunities in the acquisition of property (Knutsen, 1994), and on the

other hand, the United States emphasizes democracy and liberty as foundations of society

(Knutsen, 1994). Both have different interests which were potentially reconcilable except for one:

both wanted to be the most powerful country in the global arena (Knutsen, 1994).

It can be inferred from the movie that the actions and words of the president while

communicating with Russian authorities was calculated. According to Rousseau (2010), this might

be because his words and actions as the sovereign in behalf of the people has the capacity to
affect the people as a whole. Furthermore, that the position of America, which was only starting

to gain a foothold in the international arena then as a benevolent hegemon, may be potentially

altered if the president does not take measures to solve the problem. This student believes that

the president’s decision to sacrifice some of his own for the betterment of the whole was his own

brand of justice. It was a way to compensate for the mistake which originated under his

supervision as a sovereign and a mistake which he had no choice but to shoulder. Furthermore,

it was a compromise so as not to destroy the status quo existing during the Cold War which may

entail more complication and the involvement of more countries in pursuing power. The student

believes that Rousseau’s theory of interdependence as a source of conflict still applies, but the

president’s decision in the move highlighted not interdependence but rather diplomacy and

cooperation between states to preserve peace and for the United States to claim responsibility.

To conclude, the student believes that the philosophy introduced by Rousseau and

discussed in this paper supplanted by peer-reviewed articles substantiates the decision of the

president in the movie. The student believes that although the decision of the president to bomb

New York City may be seen as immoral, it should be remembered that the president has

exhausted all possible ways to prevent the bomber from continuing its course. Furthermore, that

the last decision made by the president was his last resort. It was a demonstration of the general

will of the people because it was for the benefit of the whole. The concept of the general will

being concretized through the decisions made by the sovereign was present in Fail Safe. To

preserve peace and for justice to prevail, albeit sacrificing the lives of some, the president was

simply left with no other choice.

Bibliography
Froese, K. (2001). Beyond Liberalism: The Moral Community of Rousseau's Social Contract. Canadian
Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol.34, No. 3, 579-600.

Giangreco, D., & Griffin, R. E. (1998). Background on Conflict with USSR. Retrieved from Harry. S. Truman
Library and Musem: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/BERLIN_A/BOC.HTM

Knutsen, T. L. (1994). Re-Reading Rousseau in the Post-Cold War World. Journal of Peace Research, Vol.
31, No. 3, 247-262.

Putterman, E. (2003). Rousseau on Agenda-Setting and Majority Rule. The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, No. 3, 459-469.

Rousseau, J. J. (2010). The Social Contract. United States: Pacific Publishing Studios.

Shklar, J. (1978). Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality. Daedalus, Vol. 107, No. 3, Rousseau for Our Time,
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