The “red phone” is ringing again: Due to Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war, the US is currently increasingly using the direct communication channel with Moscow, also known as the “hotline”. US President Joe Biden’s administration warns Russia against actually using nuclear weapons.
“We have the opportunity to speak directly at a high level and be clear with our messages to them,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan recently told NBC. “That has happened a lot in recent months. That has also happened in recent days.”
“Catastrophic” consequences threaten
It is made clear to Russia that “catastrophic” consequences are imminent if the country “turns down the dark path of using nuclear weapons”.
Unlike many movies, no red phone is actually used in the conversations. Rather, it is a picture of the highly secured contacts between historical rivals. The hotline was established after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The US and the Soviet Union agreed that they urgently needed to do something to make each other reachable.
So Washington and Moscow imposed a direct line of communication between the major powers to clear up misunderstandings about a possible impending nuclear attack.
“World peace by a thread”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it took hours for the messages to be delivered and translated. For example, a letter dated October 26, 1962, in which the Soviet Union hinted at a political solution, arrived at the US Embassy in Moscow at 9:42 a.m. Washington time. When the letter finally reached the US State Department, translated and coded, it was after 9 p.m. “World peace was hanging by a thread, but it took nearly 12 hours to get a message from one superpower to another,” wrote American author Michael Dobbs in his book One Minute to Midnight.
The “hotline” between Washington and Moscow was established on August 30, 1963. At first it was not really a red telephone, but a wired connection for written messages. The first text sent from the US read: “The swift brown fox jumped over the back of the lazy dog 1234567890” – a meaningless sentence, said to have caused some guesswork on the Soviet side, but which in English contains all letters of the alphabet and contains all numbers.
A satellite telephone line was not added until the 1970s. In 1994, a new system allowed defense officials from both countries to contact each other almost continuously.
The US and the Soviet Union communicated through a direct line
The US is silent on how many times the “red phone” has actually been used. However, the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union communicated through direct lines during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
The “Red Phone” served as a model for similar connections between Moscow and Western European capitals during the Cold War. China established such a channel with Russia and the United States in the mid-1990s. The rival nuclear powers India and Pakistan did so in 2005.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
