Between Washington and Moscow, the "red telephone" heats up again

Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's top security adviser, confirmed this.

To the journalist who asked him if the "red phone was working again", he replied on September 25 on the NBC channel: "The answer to your question is yes."

Before specifying: "We have the ability to speak directly at a high level (to the Russians), to tell them clearly what our message is and to hear theirs".

“It has happened frequently in recent months, it has even happened in recent days,” said Jake Sullivan, who did not want to give details on the exact nature of the communication channels used, in order to “them protect", nor on the frequency of exchanges.

The term "red phone" has, over time, come to refer to all high-level confidential contacts of an urgent nature between Washington and Moscow.

- Missile crisis -

But it is initially a very specific device established in 1963 between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis shook the whole world.

The absence of direct communication favors speculation on the intentions of the opposing camp, and therefore the risk of nuclear escalation. It then takes several hours to transmit, translate and encrypt the messages between Moscow and Washington.

The two countries will then negotiate, down to the smallest detail, the establishment of a rapid and direct communication system, extremely secure.

The "Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Link", the first bilateral treaty between the two powers, was signed in Geneva on June 20, 1963.

In the film "Doctor Strangelove", it is on the telephone that US President Merkin Muffley has a tragicomic conversation with "Dimitri" in Moscow about an impending nuclear apocalypse.

In reality, it is by written messages, coded and transmitted by a cable thousands of kilometers long (Washington-London-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Helsinki-Moscow), and by a radio circuit, that the two capitals communicate.

According to a 2013 Smithsonian Magazine article, the first message sent by Americans is: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back 1234567890".

Which doesn't mean much but has the merit of using all possible characters in order to test the hardware.

The system was modernized in 1971, replaced by satellite links and terminals installed in the two countries -- on the American side, the link arrived at the Pentagon, itself linked to the White House crisis room, the "Situation Room ".

- Shakespeare et Tchekhov - 

In a 1988 article, the New York Times Magazine compared the Pentagon room to "the computer room of a well-equipped high school" and recounted how the system was tested hourly, every day, with messages unrelated to the news: "Americans sometimes send Shakespeare, Russians Chekhov."

In 1994, a new system made it possible for the Defense officials of the two countries to be reachable practically at all times.

The United States has always kept secret the number of uses of this secure link.

She served in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and then in the 1973 war, according to the US State Department.

The line would have, according to various press reports, heated during the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR in 1979, and would have been used extensively during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, with exchanges about Lebanon and Poland.

According to the NBC chain or the Washington Post, former President Barack Obama used the "red phone" - in reality a highly secure email - on October 31, 2016, to solemnly warn Vladimir Putin against any disruption of the impending US presidential election.