ON September 26, 1983, the Soviet Union’s missile attack early warning system displayed, in large red letters, the word “LAUNCH.” The computer alerted the officer on duty, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, that an American intercontinental ballistic missile had been launched and was headed toward the Soviet Union. First, it was just one missile, then another, and another, until the system reported that a total of five Minuteman ICBMs had been launched.
Petrov had to make a decision: Would he report an incoming American strike? If he did, Soviet nuclear doctrine called for a full nuclear retaliation. There would be no time to double-check the warning system, much less seek negotiations with the US. Call it a providential event, because Petrov did not report the “incoming strike.” He and others on his staff concluded that what they were seeing was a false alarm. And it was—the system mistook the sun’s reflection off clouds for a missile. Petrov prevented a nuclear war between the Soviets, who had 35,804 nuclear warheads in 1983, and the US, which had 23,305.
A 1979 report by the US Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment estimated that a full-scale Soviet nuclear assault on the US would kill 35 to 77 percent of the US population—or between 82 million and 180 million people in 1983. The inevitable US counterstrike would kill 20 to 40 percent of the Soviet population, or between 54 million and 108 million people. The combined death toll (between 136 million and 288 million) far exceeds the death toll of any war or other violent catastrophe in human history. And it’s likely hundreds of millions more would have died once the conflict disrupted global temperatures and severely hampered agriculture. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War put the potential death toll from starvation at about 2 billion people.
From the Associated Press: “Russia unleashed a string of attacks Monday against rail and fuel installations deep inside Ukraine, far from the front lines of Moscow’s new eastern offensive, as Russia’s top diplomat warned against provoking World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target,” adding that Russian forces had already targeted weapons warehouses in western Ukraine.”
Regarding the possibility of a nuclear confrontation, Lavrov said: “I would not want to see these risks artificially inflated now, when the risks are rather significant. The danger is serious. It is real. It should not be underestimated.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby decried what he called Lavrov’s “escalatory rhetoric.” “It’s obviously unhelpful, not constructive, and certainly is not indicative of what a responsible (nuclear power) ought to be doing in the public sphere,” Kirby said. “A nuclear war cannot be won and it shouldn’t be fought. There’s no reason for the current conflict in Ukraine to get to that level at all.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin must have influenced Lavrov to utter those words. We may recall that when Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin issued a stern warning to the rest of the world. He said that any country that interfered would “face consequences greater than any you have faced in history.” Putin also crowed about Russia’s nuclear arsenal and, several days later, put Russia’s deterrent forces, including nuclear weapons, on high alert.
Officials selected for the diplomatic service are arguably intellectual elites. As the official representative of a country abroad, a seasoned diplomat like Lavrov certainly knows how to deal with people in a sensitive but effective way. Diplomats are expert practitioners of the art and craft of diplomacy. They are responsible for overseeing international relations that promote peace. Their job is NOT to escalate conflicts.