“Gentlemen, you cannot fight here!” It's the war room! » Most famously quoted from the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, this black and white satirical film produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick in 1964, is an excellent example Realist theories of Kenneth Waltz with regard to international theory. The realism that will be at the center of this article is that of Kenneth Waltz. Kenneth Waltz presents his theory of realism, within an international system, by proposing his central myth that "anarchy is the permissive cause of war." The central myth of Kenneth Waltz helps answer the question of why war happens in the first place. During the Cold War, feelings of insecurity increased between Russia and the United States due to the presence of nuclear weapons. The film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb used the tensions of the Cold War between the two countries to tell the story of a general who went crazy and decided to let go of his fleet of nuclear bombers on Russian military bases. The film tells the story of a deranged United States Air Force general who orders a first nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, who commanded Burpelson Air Force Base, launched a planned nuclear attack on the Soviet Union via his nuclear-armed B-52 fighter jets, which stood at their security points, to enter Soviet airspace, based on a twisted paranoia that the Communist Party was contaminating "our precious bodily fluids." The film follows the course of events preceding General Jack D. Ripper's ordered attack. In Kenneth Waltz's book Man, the State and War, he attempted to show how important the pr...... middle of paper ......r and interactions between the superpowers. Through Kenneth Waltz's IR theory of realism, it becomes easier to understand the dynamics and motivations behind the characters' actions. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Prod. Stanley Kubrick, Victor Lyndon and Ken Adam. By Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George, Gilbert Taylor, Anthony Harvey and Laurie Johnson. Perf. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones. BLC, 1963. DVD. Waltz, Kenneth Neal. Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis. Colombia UP; OxfordUP, 1959. Print. Waltz, Kenneth Neal. Theory of international politics. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1979. Print. Weber, Cynthia. International relations theory: a critical introduction. London: Routledge, 2010. Print.