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The popular term for the emergency communications link between the White House and the Kremlin during the Cold War. This was first proposed by the State Department\'s Gerard C. Smith in 1960 and installed under a memorandum of understanding of 20 June 1963 following the alarm caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis of the previous October. Known formally as the ‘Direct Communications Link’, this was a precautionary measure which was designed to help cope with the consequences of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. It consisted of a wire-telegraph circuit which was routed Washington-London-Copenhagen -Stockholm-Helsinki-Moscow, and a back-up radio-telegraph circuit routed Washington- Tangier-Moscow. At each end were teleprinter terminals through which encoded messages in the sender\'s language were received. It had apparently proved its worth during at least one crisis but had weaknesses, one of which became apparent when the landline link in Finland was put out of action by a farmer\'s plough. As a result the hot line was upgraded with satellite circuits under an executive agreement (negotiated during the SALT I talks) which came into force upon signature on 30 September 1971. It soon proved useful again, especially during the Arab-Israeli war in October 1973. Interestingly enough, however, the hot line continued to have no ‘voice capability’ on the grounds that oral exchanges, with their requirement for simultaneous translation, would have been less accurate than the written message. Harold Nicolson, who maintained that diplomacy was essentially a written art, would have approved of this. The hot line was further reinforced in the late 1980s by the creation of ‘risk reduction centres’, which directly linked the American and Soviet defence establishments.
Over recent years this term has also come to be employed figuratively to signify any close relationship, especially between heads of state or government, which is supported by rapid direct communication links capable, in an emergency or when extreme confidentiality is required, of bypassing advisers and officials. When recorded, these communications links are sometimes known as ‘black box hot lines’. This is because they can be examined for an explanation, as with the black box flight recorder on an aircraft, in the event that the relationship ‘crashes’.
Telephones manned 24 hours a day in the emergency room of a diplomatic mission during an emergency. |
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