With the recent release of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the first-person shooter video game franchise continues its frightening trend of misrepresenting the realities of U.S. militarism. In its early days, Call of Duty—or CoD as it’s known—was set in World War II, where players battled Nazi stormtroopers and Japanese imperialists. These settings and storylines were familiar and gave players a clear objective: be the hero.
Since creating newer games set in the Cold War and the Forever Wars, CoD has purposefully obscured the impacts of U.S. military intervention.
But as jingoistic images of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan flooded the media in the early 2000s, players tired of the same Pacific beaches and French countrysides. They wanted something new and exciting. To supply this demand, CoD left Normandy and Iwo Jima for more modern battlefields where players could wield state-of-the-art weaponry against digital versions of the same enemies they saw on the news.
The setting was not the only change. Since creating newer games set in the Cold War and the Forever Wars, CoD has purposefully obscured the impacts of U.S. military intervention. From parroting the lies of the Iraq War to justifying inexcusable Cold War crimes, CoD goes out of its way to perpetuate the myth of the United States as a “good empire” to its impressionable audience. And while game makers don’t want to believe it, their myths have real consequences.
It’s not hard to see why the historical alterations in CoD began once it left WWII for modern warscapes. For WWII-centered games, the moral justification for killing virtual Nazis with sub-machine guns and hand grenades does not need to be invented. But in the Forever Wars, the “good guy” narrative isn’t so clear.
When CoD started entering Iraqi cities and Vietnamese rice paddies, the character’s presence and belligerency was no longer justifiable at face value. In the real-life locations these levels are based on, the morality of western military action varies greatly, from the possibly just assassination of Osama Bin Laden to the atrocity of the My Lai massacre.
But in attempting to maintain the constant aura of the main character being on the right side of history, the game’s designers often take drastic creative liberties that wind up leaving the audience with a heavily skewed version of historical reality.
The first game set outside of WWII, 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, centers on a U.S. invasion set on deposing a murderous Middle Eastern tyrant. But in this retelling of the Iraq War, the Saddam Hussein stand-in actually has nukes.
When the mushroom cloud appears, the player is left feeling righteous, justified, and glad U.S. soldiers are currently stationed in non-virtual Iraq to stop such an atrocity from happening for real. The only problem is that the real Saddam Hussein never had WMDs, a fact conveniently omitted from the CoD storyline.
Black Ops II used Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who illegally armed and financed the Contra death squads in Nicaragua, as a consultant; they even placed him as a character in the game.
Call of Duty: Black Ops, the predecessor to the most recent game, credits the CIA’s MK ULTRA mind control program—which was both a tactical failure and gross violation of civil rights—with preventing a Soviet chemical attack. The sequel, Black Ops II, used Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who illegally armed and financed the Contra death squads in Nicaragua, as a consultant; they even placed him as a character in the game.
2019’s Modern Warfare highlights the central contradiction of the “good empire” mythos. One mission has the player use air support to defend a Benghazi-style compound from “Al-Qatala.” In effect, the game adapts the rightwing conspiracy of “denied air support,” allowing the player to “stop Benghazi.”
The very next mission takes place among the charred vehicles of the Highway of Death. In reality, the Highway of Death was named when an American-led coalition used airstrikes to obliterate a caravan of defeated Iraqi soldiers and Kuwaiti civilians during the Gulf War, killing hundreds. In a breathtakingly wild fabrication, “CoD” blames this atrocity on Russia.
In both missions, CoD recreates notable events, but discreetly whitewashes the complexities and drawbacks of military intervention. In “Benghazi,” the game advocates for more military force, while in “The Highway of Death,” the dark side of such force is ignored.
But perhaps the most harmful (and confusing) theme of the franchise is its villains. The endless waves of bad guys you mow down with missiles and machine guns come from a farfetched alliance of Arabs, Soviets, Vietnamese, South Americans, and Chinese fighters who “want to see the West fall.” In CoD 4, the player finds an Arabic nuke on a Russian freighter; in “Cold War,” Pablo Escobar schemes with the Soviets. It’s George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” taken to an even more cartoonish degree.
Whether preached by a real Bush or a computer-generated Ronald Reagan, the belief that all opposition to the United States is because “they hate our freedoms” is detrimental. It’s a dangerous oversimplification that has led this nation into a series of unending wars, costing us and the rest of the world much bloodshed and tragedy.
The falsehoods conveyed in Call of Duty aren’t trivial. Entertainment shapes the audience’s world view. It’s why the Pentagon has consulted on more than a thousand movies and dozens of video games, including CoD.
From implying that Saddam had nukes (he didn’t), to portraying torture as an effective means of intelligence gathering (it isn’t), CoD is in lockstep with “The Blob”—a nickname coined during the Obama Administration for America’s interventionist-prone foreign policy establishment—in justifying every CIA incursion and military intervention while downplaying the blowback.
As Americans grow tired of the Forever Wars, “The Blob” exaggerates the effectiveness and cleanliness of militarism while understating the repercussions. This messaging takes many forms, from op-eds to books to CoD.
With a little help from the Pentagon, CoD posits a world where American military might is the only thing keeping society intact.
With a little help from the Pentagon, CoD posits a world where American military might is the only thing keeping society intact. Black Ops Cold War opens with a computer-generated Ronald Reagan saying the player’s mission is both “of the highest honor” and “highly illegal.”
The player then spends the next ten hours “making paper airplanes” out of the Geneva Accords and the U.S. Constitution by invading sovereign countries and executing prisoners. Even when it doesn’t shy from actual atrocities, the story-telling in CoD excuses them, arguing that unapologetic militarism is the only effective foreign policy, and war crimes are just the cost of business.
Whether it’s echoed by a prestigious newspaper or CoD, the mantra that U.S. military intervention is uniformly clean and virtuous is highly deceitful. A nuanced conversation about the United States’ role and responsibility in the world is necessary, but it must portray the entirety of our military actions, not just the “righteous” ones.
But perhaps the true harm of Call of Duty is its portrayal of military intervention as the only serious form of foreign policy. As recent history has shown, U.S. diplomacy is far more effective and ethical than U.S. militarism. Unlike the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Iran Nuclear Deal and Paris Climate Accords were successful. It wasn’t generals and bombs that achieved these pacts, but diplomats and pen strokes.
Willingly or not, Call of Duty is propaganda for a “shoot first, ask questions never” mindset. This is a dangerous belief for the United States, as it ties our hands to a gun and gives us just two international options: shoot or don’t.