Hotline Agreement 1963
The hotline was tested every hour. News about American tests included excerpts from William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, encyclopedias, and a first aid manual; Soviet essays included passages from the works of Anton Chekhov. MOLINK staff take particular care not to include literary allusions or images that could be misinterpreted, such as. B passages of Winnie the Pooh, because a bear is considered the national symbol of Russia. The Soviets also demanded under the Carter administration that Washington not send routine communications via the hotline. [1] On New Year`s Eve and August 30, the anniversary of the hotline, vows replace test messages. [1] These agencies may, by mutual agreement, decide on matters and draw up instructions for the technical maintenance and operation of the direct communication link, as well as provisions to improve the functioning of the link. On the 31st. In October 2016, the Moscow-Washington hotline was used to reinforce Barack Obama`s warning in September that the Us would consider any interference on Election Day to be serious business. [20] The communication link has proven its worth since its installation. During the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, for example, the United States used it to prevent possible misunderstandings about the movements of the U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean.
It was reused during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The importance of the hotline is further demonstrated by the modernisation agreements of 1971, 1984 and 1988. These agreements are explained in the following sections. In the 1990 HBO film By Dawn`s Early Light, the White House situation room equipment that receives the (translated) telephone helpline message apparently transmitted by the Pentagon-NMCC MOLINK team is presented as a telex[24] (rather than a fax machine, the technology already used in the NMCC itself this year[3]). The Soviet Union and the United States wanted to reassure each other that they did not want to be militarily involved in the crisis. Throughout the Six Day War, both sides used the helpline nearly two dozen times for various purposes. During the crisis, it took the United States nearly twelve hours to receive and decipher Nikita Khrushchev`s first 3,000-word settlement message – a dangerously long time. By the time Washington wrote a response, a harsher message had been received from Moscow demanding that US missiles be withdrawn from Turkey. White House advisers thought that faster communication could have avoided the crisis and resolved it faster. The two countries signed the Direct Line Agreement in June 1963 – the first time they had officially taken steps to reduce the risk of unintentional nuclear war. [5] Several people came up with the idea of a hotline. Among them was Thomas Schelling, a professor at Harvard, who had previously worked on nuclear war policy for the Department of Defense.
Schelling credited the pop fiction novel Red Alert (the basis of the film Dr. Strangelove) for educating governments about the benefits of direct communication between superpowers. In addition, Parade magazine editor Jess Gorkin personally insulted 1960 presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon and provided Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev with a buttonhole during a visit to the United States to adopt the idea. [1] Meanwhile, Gerard C. Smith, as head of the State Department`s planning staff, proposed direct communication links between Moscow and Washington. Objections from other members of the State Department, the U.S. military, and the Kremlin delayed the introduction. [1] On August 30, the White House issued a statement that the new hotline “would help reduce the risk of an accident or miscalculation of war.” Instead of relying on telegrammed letters that had to travel abroad, the new technology was an important step towards a very near future, where American and Soviet leaders could simply pick up the phone and be instantly connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was agreed that the line should only be used in an emergency, not for more systematic replacement by the government. In 2018, China and India decided to set up another hotline between their armies.
India said in January 2020 that the line would soon be commissioned. Vietnam-China Hotline In March 2012, a hotline was opened between the Vietnamese and Chinese Ministries of Foreign Affairs. In their direct approach, the ministers reaffirmed their willingness to strengthen the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between Vietnam and China. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 made the hotline a priority. During the impasse, delivery from official diplomatic embassies usually took six hours. unofficial channels, such as correspondents of television channels, also had to be used because they were faster. [1] In May 1983, President Reagan proposed adding high-speed fax capabilities to the hotline. The Soviet Union and the United States formally agreed on 17 July 1984. The Moscow-Washington Hotline (officially known in the United States as the Washington-Moscow Direct Communication Link;[ 1] Russian: Горячая линия Вашингтон — Москва, tr. Goryachaya liniya Vashington-Moskva) was a system that allowed direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the USSR.
This hotline was created in 1963 and connects the Pentagon to the Kremlin (historically with the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union vis-à-vis the Kremlin itself). [1] [2] Although it is known in popular culture as the “red phone,” the hotline was never a phone line and no red phones were used. The first implementation used telex and switched to fax machines in 1986. [3] Since 2008, the Moscow-Washington hotline has been a secure computer connection through which messages are exchanged by e-mail. [4] South Korea-China Defense Hotline In 2008, South Korea and China set up telephone lines between their navies and air forces to prevent accidental clashes. However, the hotline would have only been used a handful of times and never to test procedures in a simulated seizure. South Korea and China agreed in July 2014 to set up an additional high-level hotline between their defense chiefs to strengthen military cooperation. The first call reportedly took place in December 2015. In April 2010, the prime ministers of China and India agreed to set up a hotline between them to better avoid a flare-up of a long-standing border dispute across the Himalayas and strengthen diplomatic relations. “The agreement to set up a hotline is an important confidence-building measure and opens a channel of direct communication between the two leaders,” Nirupama Rao, India`s foreign minister at the time, told a news conference in Beijing.
North-South Korea Hotline The Seoul-Pyongyang “hotline” includes 33 telephone lines that connect North and South Korea via the Panmunjom Joint Security Zone in the demilitarized zone. Five are used for daily communications, 21 for negotiations and 7 for transport and trade. If the wire circuit were to be interrupted, messages would be transmitted from the radio circuit. If experience shows that an additional wire circuit is needed, it could be determined by mutual agreement. In 2011, India and Pakistan agreed to set up a “terrorist hotline” to allow Indian investigators to travel to Pakistan in connection with the 2008 Mumbai bombings. The hotline warns all party states of possible militant attacks and persuades them to restore trust between them. The hotline to the Kremlin was set up in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, during which the United States and the USSR had come dangerously close to all-out nuclear war. The Kennedy administration had discovered that the Soviets had placed missiles capable of firing nuclear warheads at the United States on the island of Cuba. The very tense diplomatic exchanges that followed were plagued by delays caused by slow and laborious communication systems. Encrypted messages were to be transmitted by telegraph or radio between the Kremlin and the Pentagon.
Although Kennedy and Khrushchev were able to resolve the crisis peacefully and both signed a nuclear test ban treaty on August 5, 1963, fears of future “misunderstandings” led to the installation of an improved communication system. The design of the hotline was aimed at speeding up written communication and slowing down verbal exchanges so that colder minds could prevail: when leaders speak in real time, there can be translation problems or heated misunderstandings. Instead, each site received special teletypewriters who transmitted written messages directly to the official translators. In November 2015, the presidents of China and Taiwan agreed to establish a hotline between their respective bosses on Taiwan Strait issues. The line was put into service a month later. A helpline phone was depicted as a “Red 1/Ultimate 1 Touch Phone” in the movie Fail-Safe, as well as in the movie Dr. . . .
- On February 22, 2022
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