After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Washington and Moscow created a direct line of communication to prevent conflicts from escalating. Still in operation, little is known about the actual use of the system at the height of the war in Ukraine: the world had already been through two world wars – 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1945 – and, in October 1962, the third global conflict seemed imminent. The communist superpower of the Soviet Union has installed nuclear missiles on the territory of its ally Cuba. The United States was only 180 kilometers away, which made the Americans feel threatened and imposed a blockade of sea lanes in the region.
After a US plane was shot down, many expected the worst. But at the last moment, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced on Radio Moscow that nuclear weapons would be withdrawn from Cuba. The world could then breathe again.
The shock of a catastrophe just avoided left deep marks and made both sides think about how to increase mutual trust, despite and precisely because of their enmity. In this way the two superpowers agreed to create a direct line of communication between the capitals Washington and Moscow.
Ten months after the missile crisis, on August 30, 1963, the so-called “red telephone” went into operation, the direct line between Washington and Moscow. However, it was not a telephone, but a telex, a system that sent written messages. Even at that time this technique was already considered old-fashioned. “But unlike the telephone, it was bug-proof,” historian Bernd Greiner points out.
This was something very important to both superpowers. “They wanted to make sure that no one else, whoever they were, could be spying on them,” Greiner adds. The first sentence sent as a test from the USA to the USSR looks coded – and indeed it was: “The fast brown fox jumped on the back of the lazy dog 1234567890.”
Why the lack of meaning? Because in the original English this sentence contained the complete alphabet and all the digits used in the language.
“Sign of Peace to the World”
At first the toll-free number was not a telephone, much less a red one, as it is depicted in some films. That’s why Bernd Greiner, Americanist expert on the Cold War, says that it is a symbolic gesture. “It was an outward signal to reassure the world that the value of mutual emergency communication was understood and that they did not want to let matters get to the threatening situation of autumn 1962.”
Greiner quotes the words of the then president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara: “we have tested the limits of our leeway”. The lesson learned from the 1962 missile crisis, therefore, was the following: there was no management in this crisis, it depended on chance and on the goodwill of the other side. Therefore it was necessary to find other means and forms of communication.
The telex was used very little. “It was fired up several times for testing, but it wasn’t used in critical decision situations,” says Greiner.
When world peace seemed seriously threatened, the classic telephone was used, such as during the Six-Day War between Israel and various Arab states in 1967 and during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. On both occasions the risk of global war. crisis, with the United States on Israel’s side and the Soviet Union on the Arab side.
Changes in the hotline
In this dramatic era, the old telex was replaced by the satellite telephone. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the end of Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an early warning system between Washington and Moscow, now Russia’s capital, seemed to have become redundant.
In addition, technological innovations, especially the Internet, have long made rapid and interceptable communication possible. For decades, the connection between Washington and Moscow has been made using the most advanced technology. There are also channels of communication between other capitals of the world for crisis situations.
Whether the “red phone” was used frequently after the Russian invasion of Ukraine is difficult to assess. “We don’t know, obviously this form of communication is not disclosed,” says Greiner.
Less contacts than during the Cold War?
The expert says US President Joe Biden is known to have spoken several times on the phone with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “But what goes on beyond that at the intermediate or military level in terms of contact is beyond our knowledge,” he adds. Greiner doubts, however, that a hotline of any kind will help in Ukraine’s current war.
“The problem is that communication, especially between the military and diplomats, has been practically interrupted. There is a sort of silence at these levels,” laments the historian. “This differentiates the situation we live in today from the one that occurred at the height of the Cold War”. That is when the powerful in Washington and Moscow decided to set up the hotline.
Source: Terra
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