As many have noted, there’s a fairly basic flaw in Ozymandias/Veidt’s plan in Watchmen; it only solves the tensions in the short term. Yes, the spectre of an alien invasion (or a pissed of Dr. Manhattan, if you prefer the movie version) is likely to get the undivided attention of the US & USSR; but when no further onslaught is forthcoming, tensions will likely rise again.
What would have been a better solution? Assume, for the sake of the discussion, that Veidt’s assessment of the geopolitical situation is correct–that is, a nuclear war is truly in the offing, and that Dr. Manhattan’s presence is a major factor in bringing thing sto such a dismal pass.
This was the most unrealistic part of the novel for me. Maybe I’ve grown up in a more international time than the author or the audience he was writing for, but since Dr. Manhattan didn’t care for people, I found it unrealistic he would care about nationality. He’d share his talents with the world(if he shared them with anyone). It’s no big deal to him to synthesize enough lithium for the US to go electric versus enough for the world. So what would probably evolve is a world government dedicated to scheduling his time and getting him the top notch research and assistants he needed.
Of course this all takes out the cold war mentality which was such a factor in making the book hard hitting when it was originally published, but I think this aspect hasn’t aged well. The international tensions which make it believable haven’t really existed since the wall fell. c.f. Wargames, Dr. Strangelove, and other “brink of nuclear war” films. They lost their audience. The days of people seeing bomb shelters as something to envy a instead of something to laugh about are gone. Stories which rely on their audience being in this “us versus them” and fearful tension mindset have lost a lot of their punch.
As Dr. Manhattan said, “Nothing ever ends.” Ozy’s “solution” to the U.S.-Soviet confrontation was a stopgap measure at best, and probably wouldn’t work over the long term. (The “solution” in the movie was even less convincing, IMHO, whether or not Rorschach’s journal ever sees print in The New Frontiersman, or is believed when it does). Using Dr. M. in an “Atoms for Peace”-style arrangement with the Soviets would probably be a better approach, but the superpowers’ Cold War antipathies seemed to be too great for that.
Instead of zapping in a giant squid or exploding part of a city, Ozymandias should have invented a machine that produced good vibrations. Something that would zap all over the world and make everyone happy.
But then there’s another bucket of worms to deal with. If everyone is happy, do they have free will anymore?
It took time for Dr. Manhattan’s indifference to humanity to manifest itself. After his accident in 1959 his mind is still essentially human. He still loves his girlfriend, he’s human enough to cheat on her with Ms. Jupiter, and he still gets upset that the Comedian is callous enough to kill the pregnant Vietnamese woman bearing his child. Yes, as the Comedian points out, while Manhattan might have still been shocked by what happened he didn’t actually care enough to do anything about it. Manhattan had always been the type to be led around by others. He let his father push him into nuclear physics and after his accident he simply continued letting other people tell him what to do.
Odesio
(I have only seen the movie.) Dr Manhattan seems super powerful. Couldnt he just announce publicly that he will personally kill everyone involved in a decision causing nuclear war.
The solution used in the graphic novel is the same as in the old Outer Limits episode “The Architects of Fear”. Alan Moore was reportedly unaware of this until someone pointed it out, and they referenced the show by having it play on Sally Jupiter’s TV at the end (In the movie they also have the Outer Limits opening playing on the TV at that point, although they don’t reference the particular episode). The idea’s older than that – William Tenn used it in his 1950s short story “Alexander the Bait”. I’ll bet someone used it before him, too.
Certainly there are other solutions, but I suspect that all of them rely on the cooperation and good will of Dr. Manhattan. In its parody, for instance, Mad magazine suggested that Dr. Manhattan could clone himself i enough copies to keep watch on all the atomic warheads.
I suppose that he could remove or de-activate all the fissile or potentially fissile material on earth, as well. Although that would only remove the nuclear threat – people could still launch chemical or biological weapons, or somehow provoke major disasters in other ways (like crashing a meteor just off the shore of your opponent’s major seaport).
The solutions in both the book and the movie were ones that Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt could engineer and bring about on his own, with no direct agreement by Dr. Manhattan (movie) or even his direct cooperation (graphic novel).
Yeah, back in the 80s there was a mindset that nuclear confrontation was sort of an inescapable outcome of two countries having nuclear weapons.
Of course, now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, all of the sudden the game-theory scenarios about inevitable nuclear war have been forgotten. The problem wasn’t human nature, the problem was the Soviet Union. Soviet Union gone, the threat of nuclear war gone. Done and done.
So maybe Veidt’s short-term solution really was all that was needed?
That said, as per the OP: “Assume, for the sake of the discussion, that Veidt’s assessment of the geopolitical situation is correct,” Veidt’s assessment was also that leaders on both sides had already come to realize the suicidal implications of the escalating situation but merely lacked a pretext that would let them set aside the unwinnable standoff. So maybe the problem wasn’t just the Soviets, but also the Americans (as per that big block of text by Professor Glass in WATCHMEN, laying out how US decision-makers in the '80s are intoxicated by omnipotence-by-association).