November 2, 2009
Dead Hand, Defcon3 and intimations of Doomsday
I always find Halloween rather kitschy and light on genuine spine chills. More seriously frightening are some recent Cold War-era revelations that show how close the world may have come to nuclear oblivion around the time I was enjoying a misspent youth watching Hogan’s Heroes on the telly (the original release of the show, not the interminable reruns).
According to the new book Kissinger: 1973, The Crucial Year, the legendary German-accented practitioner of Realpolitik took it completely upon himself to raise US forces to Defcon3 — the third-highest war readiness alert level — during the anxiety-filled days of the Yom Kippur War. US-Soviet tensions were high and going higher, but the boss (President Nixon) was frequently too “loaded” after a couple of drinks to make such presidential decisions — so Dr. K made the call. The Prez was not on a good track that year, though it’s undeniable that he was (in his better moments) a leader of significant talent and vision. (Another good read is Conrad Black’s recent Nixon biography; as you may know, Lord Black is currently a long-term guest of the U.S. Government at the Federal Correctional Institute in Coleman, Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear his appeal, and in the meantime this onetime friend of Kissinger’s writes a witty regular column for the rather good Canadian newspaper he founded and lost — the National Post.)
In our new book (which Amazon just started shipping about a week ago), Gerald and I traverse some significantly more hair-raising Cold War close shaves with world annihilation. In that vein, Wired Magazine’s October 2009 coverage of a really above-top-secret Soviet program called “Perimeter” caught our eye. So hush-hush in fact, that neither Soviet arms negotiators (nor the U.S. intelligence services) knew about it. When former CIA director James Woolsey was told about it recently by author Nicholas Thompson, he was disbelieving, remarking “I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that.” Also known (in Russian) as “Dead Hand,” this doomsday device was designed to launch Armageddon automatically, based on computer-controlled sensor readings. It’s comforting to know that no malfunction or misinterpreted earthquake reading ever brought about World War III. But to quote character Dr. Stangelove from Stanley Kubrick’s cult classic of the same name, “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret… Why didn’t you tell the world?” It seems that with Perimeter, the Soviets built a deterrent system to “deter themselves” from premature commands to carry out nuclear war, on the theory that they could take comfort from the knowledge that devastating counterstrikes would go ahead — even if they themselves were dead. Perhaps not so comfortingly, it is said that Perimeter remains very much operational, with regular system upgrades and updates.
Gerald and I wish you a fine Feast of All Souls.
If Dr. K had a history of discounting his own importance, of even one or two instances when he sought to downplay his own influence, maybe I might buy his claim of taking over for Nixon in the tank. But over-marinated or not, Nixon made a point more than once of reviewing the conversations he had with his advisors about whether to begin a gradual response, or jump to highest alert. He offers that he decided the latter, in part and in the greatest measure, so as to let the Soviets know they were not welcome to intervene. In the end, the Soviets chose not to mess with this Quaker.
I have always respected Dr Kissinger – particularly after he once declared, in a speech he thought was private, that no European governments since the end of the Great War were truly legitimate.
Hear, hear. Bring back the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Hohenzollerns.