The atomic protocol is subject to strict control, which does not prevent it from having blushing accidents
The entire United States is within range of our weapons and I have the nuclear button permanently on the table. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un was aired in his 2018 New Year’s speech to President Donald Trump, who in turn replied on Twitter: “I also have a nuclear button, but it is much bigger and more powerful than the his.”
Given the level of those messages and in a context like the current one taken from the war in Ukraine, where the Kremlin refers to its nuclear arsenal and the possibility of using it in a direct confrontation with the West, it is possible to ask whether the trigger that will determine the end of civilization is or ever has been in good hands. And especially if it’s safe enough that the leader of one of the nine nuclear powers – the US, Russia, China, France, the UK, India, North Korea, Israel and Pakistan – can’t activate it out of madness. , mistake or simple wrath of the 12,700 chiefs deployed on the planet.
History says that the famous button has been subjected to extreme stress too many times. Richard Nixon, a tenant of the Oval Office between 1969 and 1974, is probably the closest American leader came to starting a nuclear conflagration. In fact, it was raised five times: first against North Korea, then in Vietnam, the USSR-China confrontation in 1969, the Indo-Pakistani war in 1971 and the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1973. In a chaotic Mandated by ‘Watergate’, paranoid about alcohol and sleeping pills, and convinced of the existence of conspiracies against him, Nixon today even pushed the heartbeat to incredible limits by flying planes loaded with atomic bombs near the border with the Soviet Union to his firm determination to the Kremlin.
In 1973, months before he stepped down, he confided to Senator Alan Cranston, “I can answer the phone in my office and in 25 minutes millions of people will be dead.” It wasn’t long before the White House and Pentagon behind his back prevented him from using the famous button with a technological lock. He never found out. There, however, the residue was sown as to whether it is really responsible to put so much destructive power in someone’s hands. The debate continues to this day. The US Senate from time to time revives the discussion about the desirability of limiting presidential authority in this area, although it is true that security has evolved and will is already controlled ‘per se’. Faced with a hypothetical order to shoot Joe Biden, for example, there is a hierarchy of concerned politicians and military leaders, in addition to a series of technical stages to overcome, although it is true that there is always the human vulnerability factor, the risk to mistakes and the natural subordination to the high command. The same happens in the Russian case. The orders of the head of state are believed to be irrefutable, but there is scope for the General Staff to invalidate them in such an extreme situation.
Such a thing happened to Donald Trump in the period between November 3, 2020 and January 20, 2021; that is, between his electoral defeat and the transfer of powers to Joe Biden. Given his growing anger, which overflowed with the attack on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 by a horde of extremists inflamed by his incendiary diatribes, many thought how risky it was for the tycoon to still have nuclear protocol.
Fortunately, as Barack Obama’s former military adviser Robert Keheler points out, the Pentagon’s leadership can ignore “illegal presidential orders.” The chief of staff admitted to Congress that he would never have started Trump’s system. In fact, he only had one red button in the Oval Office: the one he used for his assistant to bring him a Coca-Cola.
The Republican leader was so angry at the electoral defeat that he decided to take the atomic briefcase to his retirement in Florida and not return it for his successor’s inauguration ceremony. The rule states that while the president is being sworn in, the nuclear system custodian will pass it on to the next special agent charged with carrying it in a discreet act a few feet from the podium. The White House had to resort to a spare briefcase after deactivating Trump’s.
In reality, the nuclear button does not exist. It’s a term sparked by the Cold War and cinema. Political analyst William Safire explains in one of his books that the first time the button was mentioned was in a debate between President Lyndon B. Johnson and his political rival, Barry M. Goldwater, in 1964. He summed up an idea: that the government react immediately and deadly in a confrontation with another power. The concept was very popular. Kennedy was called the guardian of the “atomic lever” during the missile crisis in Cuba, and Nixon, in his sleepless nights and alcohol, developed the so-called “insane theory”: tricking the Kremlin and the Vietnamese into believing he is the only one, when his mind moved him , he was able to activate the bombs in full fury.
There’s no button in that briefcase that citizens see strapped to the wrist of an official following the president’s footsteps ten feet away. The US briefcase weighs 20 pounds, is known as “football,” and includes a communications kit and two books with a guide to safe havens, attack strategies, and even a prediction of the number of deaths and property damage each launch would cause. Biden carries the “cookie,” a disk containing his authentication code, to make sure no intruder gives the deadly order. In the Russian case, the briefcase contains an exclusive communication system, the Cheget, which Putin communicates with the rest of the chain managers. Defense Secretary Sergey Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov carry two identical briefcases.
Putin has publicly demonstrated his training in handling the nuclear terminal, luckily in jest. Boris Yeltsin also used the briefcase to show his power. The only Kremlin head from whom it was removed was Mikhail Gorbachev during the coup attempt in August 1991. He was surprised by his Crimean dacha and the secret service ordered the nuclear protocol to be removed and rendered useless so that he not in trouble hands.
Authentication codes have given the security services a lot of headaches. Bill Clinton lost his wallet with his debit card (it was never revealed how) and was not found for months. In France, the key is passed from one president to his successor. François Mitterrand received it from Valery Giscard d’Estaing in 1981 and put it in a pocket of his suit, but forgot to retrieve it before dry-cleaning the clothes. The same thing happened with Jimmy Carter.
Based on such pedestrian incidents, the red button is far from the imaginary one created by the cinema. Though there will always be the United Kingdom, the birthplace of James Bond, to remedy it. At the start of his mandate, the prime minister will send four letters to as many nuclear submarine commanders with instructions in case the country is attacked. Missives are locked in submarines and can only be opened if the government falls.
Humanity has been on the brink of a nuclear holocaust several times. On October 27, 1962, an American frigate discovered a Russian submarine near Cuba. Believing that he was trying to break the blockade on the island, he dropped several depth charges. The captain of the submarine, unable to communicate with Moscow due to a malfunction, thought that the world war had started and decided to fire a nuclear torpedo. The refusal of one of the three commandos to take this order, the officer Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov, averted the disaster.
Twenty-one years later, the expertise of a lieutenant, Stanislav Petrov, prevented the Kremlin from responding to the appearance of five flashes on its warning radar that resembled a launch of nuclear warheads from the United States. the counter-attack order confirming whether one of the suspected missiles has exploded. Nothing happened. The delay revealed a technical defect caused by a surprising interaction of the sun and the moon’s reflection with the satellites. It was called the Fall Equinox Incident and it’s still scary today.
Source: La Verdad
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