by Zack Beauchamp
Olivier Schmitt sees alien invasion movies as windows into America's foreign policy mindset:
The notion of peer-competitors, which designates a state which could be as powerful as the United States, is very important in the American strategic debate. Interestingly, while the emergence of a peer-competitor is officially feared, one almost has the impression that the U.S. wished to have one. It is as if strategists (military and civilians) were frustrated by the last decade of relatively low-tech COIN (although some new technologies were widely used on the battlefields) and wanted a real competitor to emerge in order to finally be able to use their expensive and so sophisticated hardwares. Screw the insurgent and his AK-47: we want large-scale air battles and cruise missiles to flow! This is translated in the movies by the use of high-tech of some kind, even in movies worshiping the action of the local grunt.
The Dish 