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Chapter 5 Nuclear Crisis Mismanagement “There Would Be No Learning Curve” In November 2008, about a week after the horrific terror attacks in Mumbai, India, an astonishing episode came to light. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that, during the waning hours of the sixty-hour-long siege, the president of nuclear-armed Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, took a phone call from the foreign minister of nucleararmed India, Pranab Mukherjee. The message from Delhi was blunt, directly threatening Islamabad with military action in response to the Mumbai attacks. Immediately following the call, Pakistan placed its air force on its highest alert level and directed its warplanes to patrol the skies with live weapons. There was only one problem: the telephone call was a hoax.1 A prank call. A splendid gag! We might have all died laughing. Nuclear miscalculation is a scenario that almost no one talks about anymore. It is as if we got through the Cuban missile crisis, so we don’t ever have to worry about something similar ever happening again. But in a nuclear-armed world there remains the singular danger that sometime , somewhere, some head of state, in the midst of some kind of political beef with some other state, is going to misjudge the adversary, or the geopolitics, or the political winds, or the veracity of a prank caller, or his mistress’s mood, and abruptly decide that the only option is to fire off a few nuclear missiles—right now. It is easy to imagine a pair of national leaders in a hot political crisis: under extraordinary pressure, haven’t slept for three days, sweating, taking advice from five sides at once. And then one of them begins to engage in an insidious logic—deciding that 85 CH005.qxd 2/4/10 10:59 AM Page 85 the other leader must be planning to launch a nuclear first strike, and concluding that the only way to forestall that is to launch a nuclear first strike first. So he pushes the button. The danger that a deteriorating political crisis will go nuclear is probably increased by the accidental-launch danger discussed in Chapter 4. In a hot political crisis, with both tempers and uncertainties escalating, one side might be more likely to conclude that the other side is planning a nuclear first strike if the other side’s nuclear forces could be launched within minutes of decision. In such a case, one side may decide to roll the dice, and strike first. People don’t think straight when they are bombarded with uncertainty , or when then they are wound up in anger, or when they are filled with fear. Crises can spin out of control; decision makers can misunderstand , miscommunicate, and misjudge. In matters of war and peace, political events take on a momentum of their own, and even the instigators may not be able to turn them around. “Any fool can start a war,” said Khrushchev, “and once he’s done so, even the wisest of men are helpless to stop it—especially if it’s a nuclear war.”2 In 1959, when the nuclear age was not yet two decades old, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote about the importance that pride, honor, and self-esteem might play in such a context: “The game may be played without misfortune a few times, but sooner or later it will come to be felt that loss of face is more dreadful than nuclear annihilation. The moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of ‘Chicken’ from the other side. When that moment is come, the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.”3 Decades later comedian George Carlin, more coarsely, made much the same point. Speaking about India and Pakistan, he said, “I’m telling you, somebody is going to fuck somebody’s sister and an atom bomb is going to fly. . . . Tune in and watch the human adventure. It’s a cursed, doomed species.”4 Astronomer Carl Sagan also wrote about the irrationality that lies so close to the human surface and the circumstances that cause it to emerge. Nuclear deterrence proponents, he said, contend “that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous.” A p o c a l y p s e N e v e r 86 CH005.qxd 2/4/10 10:59 AM Page 86 [3.141.30.162...

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