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Direct line to diplomacy

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Committing to take the Indo-US relationship to a new level, the leaders of the oldest and largest democracies decided to establish a hotline. This new venture would further add to the growing bond between the two nations.

The hotline will be set up between their top leaders – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

“We will establish hotlines between myself and Barack and our National Security Advisors,” Modi said in his opening statement during the two leaders’ joint interaction with the media on Sunday.

The Ministry of External Affairs later said this was the first time that India and the US would have a hotline at the level of top leadership.

Modi said the effort was part of their exercise to give the critical partnership between two countries “a new thrust and sustained attention”

A hotline is a quick communication link between heads of states, which is designed to reduce the danger of an accident, miscalculation or a surprise attack, and especially an incident that might trigger a nuclear war. It is also a means by which countries strengthen their relations.

It is a line that situated within the country’s most important place or buildings or sometimes between two key persons (President, Prime Minister and etc.) of a country.

The hotline significantly reduces the time required for direct communication between the heads of the two governments from hours to minutes.

We look at key hotlines established by India and US with other superpowers:  

US-Russia

Interesting, the US and Russia (the Soviet Union) in 1996, agreed to establish a ‘hot line’ (Washington-Moscow hotline) communication system between the two nations.

This was a small step to reducing tensions between the US and Russia following the October 1962 Missile Crisis in Cuba, which had brought the two nations to the brink of nuclear war.

“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back 1234567890”—was the first telegram sent by Washington to open its hotline to Moscow.  The reply in Russian, according to a leading daily, was completely “unintelligible” to American operators. Washington took nearly 12 hours to receive and decode a message from Moscow. By the time it was done, a fresh message had landed.

This highly secured connection originally used teletype machines, which were replaced by facsimile units in 1988 and is using e-mail since 2008.

In 1990 both countries agreed to establish a direct, secure telephone link between Washington and Moscow. This might be the Direct Voice Link (DVL), which is maintained by the White House Communications Agency.

US-UK

During World War II, two decades before the hotline Washington-Moscow was established, there was a hotline between the Cabinet War Room bunker under Downing Street, London and the White House in Washington.

From 1943-1946 this link was made secure (encryption of voice communication over radio, telephone) by using the very first voice encryption machine, called SIGSALY.

In the fifties and sixties the Washington-London hotline was secured by the KY-9, probably succeeded by the KY-3 voice encryption devices.

Eventually, the British prime minister was directly connected to the US Defence Red Switch Network (DRSN).

US-China

On April 29, 1998, China’s minister of Foreign Affairs Tang Jiaxuan and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright signed an agreement to set up a direct telephone link between the presidents of both countries.  The hotline was activated during President Clinton’s visit to China in June 1998.

On February 29, 2008 both countries agreed to set up a Defence Telephone Link (DTL) between the US Department of Defence and China’s Ministry of National Defence, which became operational in April 2008. Until 2011 this hotline was used only four times.

India-Pakistan

In 2004 India and Pakistan agreed to set up a secure hotline between their foreign ministers, aimed at preventing misunderstandings that might lead to nuclear war.

The two states had fought three wars since they both gained independence in 1947, and were dangerously teetering on the brink of nuclear conflict in 2002.

With the establishment of the hotline, both states limited command and control structures, and reaffirmed that each side would continue to uphold the moratorium on nuclear tests.

In 2011 both countries agreed to set up a “terror hotline”. The hotline warns each party state of possible militant attacks and moves them to restore the trust between each other. The Director-General of Military Operations of the two countries already had a hotline.

India-China

Since 2005 there’s a non-encrypted hotline between the foreign ministers of India and China for building “mutual political trust”.

In 2009 both countries agreed to set up a direct, secure telephone link between the Chinese premier and Indian prime minister, which was meant as a confidence building measure and to maintain regular contacts at the highest level. The agreement for this hotline was signed in April 2010.

The agreement was signed by the then External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi  to better avoid flare-ups over a longstanding border dispute across the Himalayas, and to strengthen their diplomatic ties.

US-Germany

In 1969 president Nixon offered the German Prime Minister (Bundeskanzler) to set up a secure teletype hotline, like the US already had with Moscow and London.

US-Spain

The Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar (1996-2004) was so often in contact with US president George W Bush, that a special phone line was installed in his office in the Moncloa palace, exclusively for phone calls to the White House.

One of those phone calls was just before the war in Iraq and both leaders also talked about developments in South America.

India-Russia

India and Russia opened a hotline in 1998. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his counterpart Boris Yelstin spoke over the hotline and vowed to deepen Indo-Russia ties and build a strategic partnership.

There’s also a non-encrypted hotline between Delhi and Moscow.

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