Certain ideas have the advantage of resisting the time, to prove useful well beyond the circumstances that have made them born. The Red phonethe direct line between Washington and Moscow is one of these. In the world of artificial intelligence, cybernetic war and instantaneous communications, the method inaugurated in 1963in the aftermath of the CUBA missile crisisremains current.
It was the 1962and humanity had seen the abyss closely. For thirteen days, the world found itself one step away from the nuclear war. The United States had discovered the Soviet missiles in Cuba, less than 150 kilometers from Florida. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Nikita Krusciov fled into an atomic poker game, with the threat of a nuclear holocaust suspended on the heads of millions of people. It was a duel between two incapable powers to communicate in real time, forced to send diplomatic messages through slow and unreliable channels.
From that crisis an awareness was born: the risk of an accidental clash between superpowers was too high. Hence the creation of the “Red phone”a safe and direct channel between the White House and Kremlin, designed to avoid disaster. At the time it was not a real phone – no handset to be raised with a direct line between Washington and Moscow – but of a encrypted telex for the transmission of written messages, to avoid misunderstandings due to simultaneous translations.
Today we live in a world deeply changed, yet the idea behind the Red phone It remains valid. The superpowers have not stopped confronting each other, although the protagonists of the Cold War have been replaced. In Moscow there is Putin, in Beijing Xi Jinping, in Washington an alternation between presidents of different vision, but the need to communicate in real time without misunderstandings It remained.
Over the years the Red phone It has been updated, transformed into a safe e -mail system and encrypted video calls. Was used during the Kippur war In 1973, during theSoviet invasion of Afghanistan In 1979, and it is still a silent but decisive weapon in international diplomacy.
The lesson of the Cuba missile crisis is clear: when two superpowers are equipped with nuclear arsenals capable of annihilating each other, Direct communication is not an option, but a vital necessity. It may seem anachronistic in an era of smartphones and social networks, but the principle of Red phone It is still one of the few barriers between reason and catastrophe.
