The atomic protocol is subject to severe control, which does not prevent it from having blushing mishaps
The entire United States is within reach of our weapons and I have the nuclear button permanently on the table. The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, was thus dispatched in his 2018 New Year’s speech against President Donald Trump, who in turn responded on Twitter: “I also have a nuclear button, but it is much bigger and mightier than his.”
In view of the level of those messages and in a context such as the current one derived from the war in Ukraine, with the Kremlin making references to its atomic 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 has ever been in good hands. And, above all, if it is safe enough that the leader of one of the nine nuclear powers – the USA, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, North Korea, Israel and Pakistan – cannot activate it out of madness. , error or simple anger the 12,700 heads deployed on the planet.
History says that on too many occasions the famous button has been subjected to extreme stress. Richard Nixon, a tenant of the Oval Office between 1969 and 1974, is probably the American leader who came closest to triggering a nuclear conflagration. In fact, it was raised five times: first against North Korea, then in Vietnam, the confrontation between the USSR and China in 1969, the Indo-Pakistani war in 1971 and the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1973. In a chaotic mandate Hemmed in by ‘Watergate’, paranoid about alcohol and sleeping pills, and convinced of the existence of conspiracies against him, Nixon even pushed the pulse to unbelievable limits today by flying planes loaded with nuclear bombs near the border Soviet Union to show its firm determination to the Kremlin.
In 1973, months before he resigned, he confided to Senator Alan Cranston: “I can pick up the phone in my office and in 25 minutes millions of people will be dead.” It wasn’t long before the White House and the Pentagon behind his back incapacitated him from using the famous button with a technological lock. He never found out. However, there the residue was sown on whether it is really responsible to let a person have so much destructive power in their hands. The debate continues to the present day. The US Senate revives from time to time the discussion on the advisability of limiting the presidential authority in this area, although it is true that security has evolved and the will is already controlled ‘per se’. Faced with a hypothetical order to shoot Joe Biden, for example, there is a hierarchy of politicians and military chiefs involved, in addition to a series of technical stages to overcome, although it is true that there is always the factor of human fragility, the risk of to err and the natural subordination to the supreme command. The same happens in the Russian case. It is assumed that the orders of the head of state are irrefutable, but there is room for the General Staff to invalidate them in such an extreme situation.
Something like this happened with 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 on January 6 with the assault on the Capitol by a horde of extremists inflamed by his incendiary rants, many thought how risky it was that the tycoon still had the nuclear protocol.
Fortunately, as Barack Obama’s former military adviser Robert Keheler points out, the Pentagon leadership can flout “illegal presidential orders.” The chief of staff admitted to Congress that he would never have let Trump get the system going. 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 data
12.700
heads – some sources place them at 15,000 – are in the hands of nine powerspower symbol
Putin liked to show in public his training in handling the briefcaseTemerity
Nixon considered up to five times resorting to the most lethal warheads; they invalidated his protocol
The Republican leader was so angry over the electoral defeat that he decided to take the atomic briefcase to his retirement in Florida and did not return it for the inauguration ceremony of his successor. The rule provides that, while the president is sworn in, the custodian of the nuclear system will pass it on to the next special agent in charge of carrying it in a discreet act a few meters from the podium. The White House had to resort to a spare briefcase after deactivating Trump’s.
Safe Haven Guide
In reality, the nuclear button does not exist. It is a term fueled 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 summarized an idea: that the Government could react immediately and lethal in a confrontation with another power. The concept was very liked. Kennedy was called the guardian of the “atomic lever” during the missile crisis in Cuba and Nixon developed in his sleepless nights and alcohol the so-called ‘insane theory’: making the Kremlin and the Vietnamese believe that he alone, if his spirits stirred him up, he was capable in full rage of activating the bombs.
That suitcase that citizens can see tied to the wrist of an official who follows in the footsteps of the president from three meters away does not contain a button. The American briefcase weighs 20 kilos, is known as ‘football’ and includes a communications kit and two books with a guide to safe havens, attack strategies and even a forecast of the number of deaths and material damage that each launch would cause. Biden carries the ‘cookie’, a small disk with his authentication code to ensure that no intruder gives the lethal order. In the Russian case, the briefcase contains an exclusive communication system, the Cheget, which communicates Putin with the rest of the chain’s managers. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov carry two identical briefcases.
Putin has publicly demonstrated his training in handling the atomic terminal, fortunately in jest. Boris Yeltsin also used to display the portfolio as a display of his power. The only head of the Kremlin from whom it was removed was Mikhail Gorbachev during the coup attempt in August 1991. He was surprised at his Crimean dacha and the secret service ordered the nuclear protocol to be taken away and disabled so that he would not fall into trouble. hands.
Authentication codes have created quite a few headaches for the security services. Bill Clinton lost his wallet with his PIN card (it has never been revealed how) and went months without being found. In France, the key is passed from a 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 the clothes were dry-cleaned. The same thing happened to Jimmy Carter.
Based on such pedestrian incidents, the red button is far from the imaginary created by the cinema. Although there will always be the United Kingdom, the birthplace of James Bond, to remedy it. At the beginning of his term, the prime minister addresses four letters to as many nuclear submarine commanders with instructions in case the country receives an attack. Missives are locked in submersibles and can only be opened if the Government falls.
Humanity has been several times on the brink of nuclear holocaust. On October 27, 1962, an American frigate discovered a Russian submarine near Cuba. Believing that he was seeking to break the blockade on the island, he dropped several depth charges. The captain of the submersible, unable to communicate with Moscow due to a breakdown, thought that the world war had begun and decided to fire a nuclear torpedo. The refusal of one of the three commanders who had to assume this order, the officer Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, avoided 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 appeared to be a launch of atomic warheads from the United States. Petrov did not want to transmit the counterattack order until confirm if any of the suspected missiles exploded. Nothing happened. The delay revealed a technical failure due to a surprising interaction of the sun and the lunar reflection with the satellites. It was called the Fall Equinox Incident and it’s still scary today.