If only we still had ‘Thirteen Days’

Hollywood is taking us back to the Cuban missile crisis – and the “Thirteen Days” that the United States and Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war. In some ways, the movie is dated, but not because the threat of nuclear annihilation ended with the Cold War. Indeed, the chances of nuclear war starting by miscalculation are even greater today.

What has changed is that instead of having 13 days to decide whether to fire their nuclear missiles, U.S. and Russian leaders have just minutes to decide the fate of the earth. This is because the two sides still have thousands of nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert, poised to be launched in a crisis situation or on warning of an attack – or by accident. One false alarm, one computer error could lead to catastrophe. The continuing deterioration of Russian nuclear systems only increases the danger.

As President George W. Bush himself said during his campaign: “For two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch.” A study published in April 1998 in the New England Journal of Medicine documented that even a limited accidental launch of the missiles from just one Russian submarine would kill an estimated 6.8 million people directly, with millions more dying from radiation sickness in the following weeks.

The possibility of an accidental launch of nuclear weapons is more than a theoretical possibility. The most recent and frightening example occurred Jan. 25, 1995, when Russian military radar mistook a weather rocket launched from Norway for a potential nuclear attack on Moscow. President Yeltsin was awakened and given less than 10 minutes to decide if he should launch a counter attack against the United States which could have involved thousands of warheads destroying every major population center in the United States.

Our luck held in 1995. How much longer do we want to rely on luck to preserve the future for generations yet to come? What can we do to regain control over our fate?

Despite the misleading hype from its proponents, National Missile Defense is not the answer. The majority of Americans well understand that this resurrection of President Reagan’s failed Star Wars dream is unproven, does not address terrorist threats, and will waste tens of billions of dollars. Moreover, our European allies know that deployment of National Missile Defense is a fundamental violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and will provoke a new arms race with Russia, which will only increase the danger to us all.

There is a much simpler answer. Prominent military leaders such as Gen. George Lee Butler, retired commander of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, have called on the president to agree with President Putin to simply take all U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert. Even conservatives such as former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn have concluded that, “… de-alerting would create a judicious delay in the capacity for launch in order to assure more reliable control over nuclear weapons, to reduce daily nuclear tensions, and to strengthen mutual confidence in each other’s nuclear intentions.”

In sharp contrast to the unworkably complex technology required for National Missile Defense, the means of taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert are simple. Warheads can be removed from the missiles and stored separately.

Other key components, such as the guidance systems, can be removed. Pins can be placed to keep open the switches used to fire missile motors. Land-based missile silo covers can be blocked. A combination of on-site and video camera verification of any of these steps would be relatively easy.

It’s true that once nuclear weapons are taken off hair-trigger alert, these mechanisms can be reversed. But this would take some time. Thus, de-alerting would be a highly effective confidence-building measure that would allow arms reductions negotiations to proceed in an atmosphere more conducive to success.

In 1991, this was exactly what Presidents Gorbachev and Bush had in mind when they took some Soviet and American missiles off high-alert status while negotiating the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Unfortunately, thousands of nuclear missiles have remained on high alert ever since.

Now it’s President George W. Bush’s turn. It’s time to see if his words were hollow campaign rhetoric or a serious recognition of this great danger.

On Feb. 5 and 6, citizens from across the nation are calling the White House, urging the president to immediately begin work with the Russians to get all nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. It’s up to all of us to join in creating a safer world for generations yet to come.

The risk of global catastrophe remains terrifyingly real. With wise leadership and decisive action taken now, the threat of accidental nuclear war can be left to exist only in the minds of Hollywood filmmakers.

Peter Wilk, M.D. is former national president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and currently serves as co-president of the Maine chapter of PSR. He lives in Sebago.