A Shout Out to Stanislav
Anniversaries we were lucky to ever commemorate, at least once more
Just after midnight, on September 26, 1983, the most destructive species on planet earth almost went up in smoke.
In the Soviet Serpukhov-15 satellite control center, ninety miles southwest of Moscow, alarms shrieked and red lights were flashing. An American intercontinental ballistic missile launch had been detected. System data indicated with high reliability that five Minuteman ICBMs were definitely en route to strike Red Square with nuclear weapons. One after another, sirens howled, but the officer on duty, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, wasn’t buying it. Something just wasn’t right. Call it intuition and years later, Petrov was quoted as saying his intuition won out.
I had a funny feeling in my gut. Who starts a nuclear war against another superpower with just five ICBMs?
The U.S. would have launched hundreds, possibly thousands, yet ground-based radar installations – which search for missiles rising above the horizon – still showed no evidence of an imminent attack. A skeptical Lt. Col. Petrov ignored launch protocol. With a “phone in one hand, the intercom in the other,” relayed nothing up his chain of command. A full Soviet retaliation was avoided by a 50-50 gut decision.
September 26th also marks the 10th anniversary of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. My guess is you probably missed it on Morning Joe, Inside Politics or Fox & Friends, but then why would a National Security State corporate news platform raise public awareness to the threat posed to humanity of nuclear annihilation, when Iraq war criminal Tony Blair is hawking a book on MSNBC and Kamala Harris is glad-handing Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.
Apparently less earth-shaking, with Joe Biden poised to approve Ukraine’s launching of long-range missiles inside Russian territory, Putin unsurprisingly countered with an announcement of a series of updates to Russia’s national strategy for using nuclear weapons. In a televised meeting with security officials, Putin detailed proposed changes to the country’s nuclear doctrine, adding new criteria for launching a nuclear response.
“We see the modern military and political situation is dynamically changing and we must take this into consideration,” Putin said, citing “the emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies”.
Putin outlined the update, saying that “it is proposed to consider aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear power (Read: USA), as their joint attack on Russia”. This would seemingly apply to Ukraine, a non-nuclear state that receives military support from the United States and other nuclear-armed countries.
RT reports Moscow would also “consider” resorting to a nuclear response if it gets “reliable information” about a “massive” missile or air strike launched by another state against Russia, or even its closest ally, Belarus, according to Putin, “modifying the earlier distinction about only using nuclear weapons if the survival of the state was in jeopardy to responding to a critical threat to its sovereignty.”
So much has changed since Petrov saved the world, but today World War III is unlikely to happen by accident or miscalculation. This week even Russian nuclear red lines are no longer opaque. Yet there’s every reason to expect the Biden administration - or whoever’s in charge (Dr. Jill, Jake Sullivan, VP Joy?) - to authorize Ukraine’s use of U.S.-guided missiles to strike deep in Russian territory before Friday’s news dump, and to be touted by CNN on Monday.