We are all passengers on Tehran-Kyiv Flight 752
In the early dawn hours of Jan. 8, 176 passengers and crew on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 out of Tehran felt their Boeing 737NG bank 24 degrees right. Abruptly, a horrifically loud explosion shattered their ears, and everything went dark. Dark for the last time for those aboard the doomed aircraft.
Tensions were high after the U.S. killing of Iran’s revered Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on two U.S. air bases and the U.S. president’s threat to hit 52 more Iranian targets in yet another retaliation. Iran was on high alert and Flight 752 was mistaken for an incoming air attack on a nearby Iranian base.
The commander in charge of the defensive missiles had very limited time to decide and check on the identity of the craft. Essentially the time frame was sufficiently tight that a launch on warning of an attack was the order of the day. And, so, a false alarm and a hurried response brought a death sentence for those innocent Iranians, Canadians and Ukrainians aboard Flight 752.
What if death were not so abrupt? What if the passengers had 30 minutes’ warning of an inevitable attack and their certain death? What would that have felt like? We can ask residents of Hawaii that very question, because on Jan. 13, 2018, they experienced just that.
Tensions were running high with North Korea and Hawaii was reportedly within reach of its missiles. Warning sirens went off and radio and TV messages went out that a nuclear missile attack on Hawaii was underway; the warheads would land within minutes.
Panic ensued. Parents put children down manholes, others made desperate drives for mountain caves or ran about in panic.
Some wept, some called loved ones to cry a last tearful goodbye.
But this time, thankfully, no one perished. The humans in charge of the warning system had erred. There was no attack.
We all live in the same situation as those passengers aboard Flight 752 and those panicking islanders. For right now Russia and the U.S. each have about 1,600 nuclear warheads on launch on warning, or LOW, status.
If an incoming attack is sensed, national leaders have less than 30 minutes to respond with a counterattack. If a false alarm occurs and it is not seen as such by either side, then an attack will be ordered and it will be followed by a counterattack. Both nations and their allies will perish, and perhaps as a result of fallout and effects on climate most of humanity or perhaps all of it will be lost.
What if the mistake made by the humans that provided a warning in Hawaii happened at an ICBM command launch center in charge of detection and launching rather than a civil defense post in charge of detection and warning the population? The result would have been nuclear Armageddon.
Why do we have LOW? It is not necessary. William Perry, former secretary of defense, said at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last November that the first and easiest step away from the nuclear precipice would be to eliminate LOW on the part of Russia and the United States, the only nations to have it so far.
It is time for us to follow Perry’s advice and negotiate away LOW. It is easy to implement and check technically and it might even be done by simultaneous policy shifts by the presidents of the United States and Russia without any involvement of the legislative bodies.
The immediate abandonment of LOW should be an urgent matter in the presidential campaign and debates of 2020. Let us hear from the candidates about it and let us hear the debate moderators ask about it.
The dice are being rolled on the fate of humanity. Sooner or later our luck will run out.