The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly turned very hot on several occasions. However, despite the diplomatic conflicts and proxy wars waged by both states, Washington and Moscow had a direct channel of contact: the popularly called "Red Telephone". Beyond ideological differences, geopolitical interests, and the resentments that arose over the years, both sides agreed that the main enemy was the lack of information, and to combat it, the most stable communications technology was used.
The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Wake-Up Call
On October 14, 1962, Major Richard Heyser of the United States Air Force took more than 900 photographs from his Lockheed U-2, confirming the existence of Soviet missile bases being installed on Cuban territory.
History today identifies the event as the "Cuban Missile Crisis". It was twelve days of pure uncertainty and fear, with heightened tensions on both sides, and even one death, Major Rudolf Anderson.
Declassified information revealed decades later that on October 27 of that year, hours after Anderson was shot down, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, second-in-command of submarine B-59, convinced Captain Valentin Savitsky not to fire a nuclear torpedo at American ships.
He thus avoided what could well have become a full-scale nuclear war. The conflict officially ended the next day, and from the negotiations in the following months emerged various agreements. One of them was the Red Telephone.
The Origins of the Red Telephone Between Moscow and Washington
The official name is the "Moscow-Washington direct line", established on June 20, 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been the perfect example to expose how dangerous the lack of a reliable communication channel between the two powers could be.
To put it in perspective, the original message from Nikita Khrushchev took twelve hours to be received and decoded, time in which a tragedy could have erupted. Ironically, the first version of the Red Telephone had nothing of a telephone, considering that a direct verbal exchange could be misinterpreted.
The original route of the telegraph (teletype) circuit linked Washington, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Moscow, using in its initial stretch the TAT-1, the first transatlantic submarine telephone cable, backed by a secondary radio connection between Washington, Tangier, and Moscow.
The first major upgrade was agreed on September 30, 1971, when two satellite communication channels were added. The wired connection was reassigned to a secondary role, and the radio connection via Tangier was eliminated. The upgrade process took nearly seven years. (You can find a declassified copy of the agreement here).
The next phase of upgrades took place during the Reagan administration. The proposal was made in May 1983, and it materialized in July 1984, with the addition of support for fax communications, which became operational in 1986.
A curious detail is that some sources mention that the installation of the telephone itself was carried out during the first phase of upgrades, while others place it alongside fax support in the mid-80s (such as the article "The Origins, Use and Development of Hotline Diplomacy", by Haraldur Þór Egilsson).
The term "Red Telephone" may be symbolic these days, stimulated by all kinds of movies and novels, but the direct line between the two capitals continues to work, and to tell the truth, it is not the only one. India and Pakistan have a similar communication channel, while the United States also maintains a link with China, something more than reasonable given the times we live in.
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Source: Department of State
