Defending America, the Underdog

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When it comes to our national self-image, humility gave way to hubris long ago.

Politicians not only proclaim the United States the greatest society the world has known, but say that it will remain so forever. Few leaders give voice to the notion of decline even as it becomes quite plausible to some of us.

Thankfully, that’s what we have artists for: to challenge and force us to face our darkest fears. And that’s why we have video games like Homefront.

Written by John Milius, a screenwriter of “Apocalypse Now” and “Red Dawn,” Homefront conveys a chilling, gripping, not entirely ludicrous version of America’s fall. Strictly as a game — mechanically, technically — Homefront is pedestrian. But as a provocative, emotionally involving and politically relevant creative experience, it is vital. Were it a film, Homefront might already be a topic of national discussion.

What follows is a description of the future as imagined in the game, developed in New York by Kaos Studios and released recently by THQ for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

2012: The United States begins a military withdrawal from Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, dies and is succeeded by his son Kim Jong-un.

2013: Saudi Arabia ramps up its militarization and begins to square off against Iran for control in the Middle East. Oil markets roil. Kim Jong-un begins reunification talks with South Korea and ignites a wave of anti-Americanism across Asia. The American military withdraws from South Korea.

2014: General Motors declares bankruptcy again. American department stores and consumers experience scarcity for the first time in decades.

2015: Korea is unified, and Kim Jong-un is elected president.

2016: Iraq is riven by sectarian violence. Iran declares that Saudi Arabia has turned Iraq into a “client state” and invades in the face of what it calls “unacceptable Saudi intervention.” In the United States gasoline tops $12 a gallon. Thousands of Americans freeze to death that winter amid nationwide energy shortages. The United States withdraws its forces from Asia.

2017: As tax revenue declines, the American economy continues to falter under the weight of the nation’s crushing debt. Black markets in gasoline emerge. Without regular outside supplies of electricity and food, major cities become unlivable. Japan erupts in conflict between natives and ethnic Koreans. Kim Jong-un promises to protect Koreans in Japan.

2018: Korea declares war against Japan. Korean special forces sabotage a Japanese nuclear power plant, causing a meltdown and a huge radiation leak. Japan capitulates to Korean occupation. Iran and Malaysia, among other nations, congratulate Kim Jong-un.

2019: Korea begins to use Japanese infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons. American cities descend into chaos.

2020: Korea provides commando units to help Iranian forces operating in Iraq.

2021: Malaysia joins Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand in the Greater Korean Republic, with Cambodia and Vietnam on the doorstep. An Asian H5N1 influenza pandemic strikes the United States.

2023: A Korean peacekeeping mission in Nigeria is declared a success, cementing Korea’s global stature.

Soon Korea detonates an electromagnetic pulse weapon over the United States, essentially destroying the national electronic fabric. The Mississippi River is irradiated, dividing the country. Mexico closes its borders to American refugees, and the military of the Greater Korean Republic eventually invades and occupies Western states.

Which is where you come in. As Homefront begins, in 2027, you are inducted into the Resistance in Colorado. Western America has become an occupied wasteland of the Korean military, devastated suburban tracts and pockets of crazed survivalists.

The basic shooting and combat mechanisms in Homefront are standard fare. And the main single-player story campaign is brief, perhaps five hours at most, though the multiplayer modes are surprisingly engaging.

What makes Homefront stand out from all the other shooting games is its setting and its ambition to grapple with a vision of what could happen in the real world if absolutely everything were to go wrong. When you see images of bulldozers pushing around mounds of American corpses, citizens in an internment camp in what used to be a high school football stadium and the twisted wreckage of a suburban White Castle or Hooters restaurant, you feel an emotional connection to the action that simply doesn’t accompany a science-fiction game set on a faraway planet.

When Mr. Milius worked on “Red Dawn” in the 1980s, few people really thought that Soviet troops were about to occupy a small town in the Rockies. And maybe no one thinks a unified Korea is about to take over San Francisco.

And yet I can’t imagine what the social and political fallout would be if some company had invested the millions of dollars required to make a film or TV mini-series out of Homefront’s vision. And I’m not sure a whole lot of people would really want to watch it, because it is disturbing.

And it is disturbing because as unpalatable as it may be, the inkling that America might not necessarily be the most important place in the world forever is finally sinking into our national consciousness.

No matter what the politicians say.