World War Z and Predictions of the Zombie Model in International Relations

In the past few years, there has been a surge in pop culture surrounding materials that concern zombies. Beginning in 2003, Max Brooks published The Zombie Survival Guide, in 2009 Seth Grahame-Smith published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and in 2010 AMC started airing episodes of the zombie-apocalypse show called The Walking Dead. In 2006 Brooks published a fictional book titled World War Z that interwove dozens of personal accounts of the zombie outbreak to give more of a “human perspective” to such an event. Zombies have even made a foray into the world of international relations through the publications of Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University.

I picked up a copy of World War Z a few weeks ago after a friend of mine raved about it. I was expecting a slightly over-the-top zombie tale, never having read any “undead” literature before. To my surprise, the fictional tale was pieced together without any main characters (except for the interviewer) and relied heavily upon somber, deeply-felt first-hand accounts of interactions with zombies. Full of gruesome details, the novel accurately captures an element of realism about a zombie outbreak and is a captivating read. While reading the book, I couldn’t help but notice several major international relations themes in the book. After finishing the novel, I reread Drezner’s zombie articles to compare with Brooks’s predictions about what should theoretically happen in a zombie outbreak. World War Z was able to be used as a case study in zombie international relations theory, and I’ll try to enumerate my findings without giving away too many spoilers for those of you who may want to pick up the novel in the future.

If attacked by an outbreak of zombies, Drezner believes that it wouldn’t be an apocalyptic event that would eliminate the human race from the face of the planet. In his opinion, he believes that governments would respond to the existence of zombies with vigorous policies. Realists would have a “live-and-let-live” attitude toward the outbreak, liberals would institute a “World Zombie Organization” to coexist with and regulate the zombies, and constructivists would want to create a pluralistic security community in order to prevent future outbreaks and to socialize zombies into society (“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zombies”). Drezner also mentions that bureaucracies would make initial mistakes but would then correct them. Zombies are a synecdoche for a constellation of emerging threats in Drezner’s mind. Poorer countries would suffer especially from an outbreak of zombies: “In a world where zombies concentrate in the weakest countries—stronger states are better equipped to fend off the threat—billions of human beings would face an additional menace on top of disease, poverty, and the erosion of the rule of law” (“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zombies”).

In the case of World War Z, the zombie outbreak as something caused by a quickly-spreading infection. When bitten by a carrier, the victim eventually dies and is then reanimated in zombie form. The only way to kill zombies in the book is to destroy their brains. In order to deal with the dangerous outbreak, Brooks upholds Drezner’s theory by portraying the inefficiencies within governments that create slow, expensive programs to develop weapons that have no practical uses to fight zombies. Complex technologies are painstakingly developed while normal citizens effectively combat zombies with a cheaply produced weapon resembling an axe (Brooks 165). One of the major issues covered in the book deals with the fact that most of the American workforce doesn’t have practical skills such as carpentry, plumbing, and farming work. Most of the American population wasn’t adequately equipped to survive outside of the lap of luxury. Poorer regions of the globe experience much worse zombie outbreaks due to poor infrastructure and the initial lack of knowledge about how to properly kill a zombie. The Kashmir region in particular had a lot of political reasoning behind how the governments reacted to zombies in those regions. In China, the government initially detains anyone with knowledge of the zombie outbreak to keep the fear from spreading and in the United States, the government tries to keep the outbreak a secret for as long as possible and releases a placebo pill to “fight off the zombie infection” to effectively calm the masses. Multiple governments initially deny the problem in order to avert absolute panic, but when people start raiding camping and grocery stores, governments are too slow in reacting to the needs of its people.

Both World War Z and Drezner’s articles on zombies make convincing cases for how zombie outbreaks should occur in reality. World War Z contradicts Drezner’s idea that realists would “live-and-let-live” when it comes to a zombie outbreak. Certainly some countries unnecessarily ignored the problem for a time, allowing increased violence within their borders, but eventually states did recognize that they had to deal with the zombies and ended up using military force to do so. The idea that Drezner’s liberalists create, that there would be a World Zombie Organization, is completely shot down by Brooks in the way that his fictional zombies are portrayed. Zombies are vicious creatures without the ability to think for themselves, so Drezner’s liberalist thought that zombies would become part of a recognized organization is completely preposterous. The constructivist idea proposed by Drezner is probably the most accurate, with the exception of the socialization of zombies into society. Brooks creates a security community in the novel that emphasizes the reduction of the zombie population. Brooks takes a human perspective while Drezner remains theoretical in his approach.

Both texts have a considerable amount of overlap, but I think one of the biggest causes for disparity came from the definition of what a “zombie” actually was. Brooks portrayed them as mindless creatures whose disease was passed along biologically via a bite from a carrier. Drezner was more vague in his definition of zombies, but judging from how he though they would be able to be assimilated into society, it seems as if they are more intelligent and could be trained. Despite differences in the definition of “zombies,” both texts are fundamentally different in what they judge to be important in the prediction of how events will unfold on an international scale.

Apart from Drezner’s theories, I believe that realists would probably view a zombie outbreak as an all-out war against the undead and during this war states would have the secondary objective of vying for the status of being an internationally recognized hegemon. This theory is supported by Brooks in the passage about the Kashmir region. The governments of India and Pakistan are so consumed by their desire for control that their armies unnecessarily clash and do not protect their citizens to the best of their ability. Liberals would support the idea that smaller organizations would have a better chance of combatting threats such as zombies (Goldstein). In World War Z, it is the smaller communities and not the governments that create effective measures to ensure survival. Constructivism would maintain that reactions to the outbreak would be socially and historically contingent, implying that reactions to zombies would vary greatly throughout the globe. This is upheld in the novel, for countries such as China imprison those who speak about zombies while the United States denies the outbreak for months. Interestingly enough in real life, the CDC published a guide to zombie survival several months ago that advises people how to prepare for such an outbreak (Khan). Perhaps in reality, neither Drezner’s nor Brooks’ theories would play out as envisioned and the government would prepared, efficient, and effective against zombies.

One of my favorite things about World War Z was that it gave a human perspective when theorizing exactly how zombie outbreaks would occur in different regions of the globe. The premise of the book was that the narrator was charged to write a report about “The Walking Plague” but when he turned in his report, the “human element,” involving all of the interviews with survivors, was deemed unnecessary. In the introduction, the narrator of the novel states, “The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an objective ‘after-action report’ that would allow future generations to study the events of that apocalyptic decade without being influenced by ‘the human factor.’ But isn’t the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past? Will future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as they would for the personal accounts of individuals not so different from themselves? By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from a history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it?” (Brooks 1) I support his premise that oftentimes reports and theories are a little too cold-blooded to be concerned with human nature. Sometimes realist, liberalist, and constructivist ideas are so concerned with proving their own theory to be correct and disproving the others to be wrong that they can forget to provide any “wiggle room” in their theories to accommodate the abilities of people to break out of their presumed, ascribed roles in international relations. Is it beneficial to raise future intellectuals who think only in terms of theory and statistics, ignoring their own connections to humanity? Theory can give us a deeper understanding by using a broad view, but in the end, it is highly dependent upon how actual humans act and react in the real world.

Works Cited

Brooks, Max. World War Z. London: Duckworth, 2006. Print.

Drezner, Daniel W. "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zombies." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 13 Feb. 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://chronicle.com/article/How-I-Learned-to-Stop-Worrying/126306/?sid=cr>.

Drezner, Daniel W. "Theories of International Politics and Zombies." Daniel W. Drezner. 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://danieldrezner.com/zombies/>.

Ghosh, Pallab. "Science Ponders 'Zombie Attack'" BBC News Science and Environment. BBC News, 18 Aug. 2011. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206280.stm>.

Goldstein, Joshua S., and Jon C. Pevehouse. International Relations. New York: Longman, 2010. Print.

Khan, Ali S. "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse." CDC Blogs. CDC, 16 May 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/>.