Sketch: NATO-Russia military hotline defuses first crisis

By Nowhere Man for NATO Watch

 
[This Sketch first appeared in NATO Watch Observatory No.41 - March 2013]
 
A new NATO-Russia military-to-military telephone line was finally established last week. It comes only a mere 50 years after the famous Moscow–Washington ‘hotline’ was set up to allow direct communication between the leaders of the United States and then Soviet Union.  Belgian telecom engineers insisted that, even for Brussels, such a long wait for a service connection was unusual and blamed the delay on a “contract dispute” between the two parties. 
 
The first use of the Moscow-Washington hotline was a test message: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890". It would be another four years before the hotline was first used to help soothe a major crisis: during the six-day Egypt–Israel War in 1967, both superpowers informed each other of military moves which might have been provocative or ambiguous. 
 
However, NATO Watch can exclusively divulge that the Moscow-Brussels ‘secure’ hotline immediately helped smooth out some misunderstandings and rescue a potential meltdown situation in NATO-Russian relations, as these leaked transcripts (from NATO HQ) reveal:
 
Hello….
 
Hello, Dmitry I can’t hear you too well… do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little…
Ah that’s much better…
 
Yes I can hear you now Dmitry, clear and plain and coming through fine
 
I’m coming through fine too, eh, then well then good, as you say we are both coming through fine… 
Well it’s good that your fine and I’m fine
 
I agree with you it’s great to be fine…..
 
Yes, I know…. if we had gone with Skype then we could see how fine we both are… but Skype doesn’t allow encrypted calls Dmitry…. and you never know when Unit 61398 might be listening in…
 
What’s that Dmitry?  You are not happy with the division of the restaurant bill following the last NRC [NATO-Russia Council] meeting… but we agreed a 50:50 split… Yes, I know there were 28 countries in our delegation Dmitry, but take a look at the drinks bill…….  not even the Brits drink that much beer…..  OK, we can look at the figures again but I can’t promise anything Dmitry…. our taxpayers are looking very closely at our budgets and these are austere times as our Secretary General keeps reminding us…
 
Now then Dmitry, you know how we have always talked about our missile defences not being a threat to your defences…. missile defence Dmitry, ballistic missile defences
 
Well, what happened is one of our missile commanders he went a little funny in the head…. You know, just a little funny and he went and did a silly thing.
 
Well, I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his warship’s Aegis SM-3 missiles to attack your country…. Well, let me finish Dmitry,… let me finish Dmitry,…. Well how do you think I feel about it?  Can you imagine how I feel about it Dmitry?  Why do you think I am calling you? Just to say hello? …..of course I like to speak to you? Of course I like to say hello. Not now, but at any time… I am just calling up to tell you that something terrible has happened.
 
It is a friendly call; of course it is a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly, you probably wouldn’t have even got it. 
 
Please pay attention Dmitry, the missiles will reach their target in about 20 minutes…   just south of the Ural mountains, close to Chelyabinsk, I think.  What’s that Dmitry? Putin is not going to like it… well, I think I can say the same for President Obama. 
 
But listen up Dmitry, the missiles are unlikely to cause much collateral damage and if we play our cards right our civilian leaders need never know. Our spinners here at NATO HQ have come up with a great cover story: meteorites.  METEORITES, yes Dmitry, you heard right, METEORITES.
Well, hold on a minute Dmitry let me explain….. of course they will believe it, our publics are so gullible we can get them to believe anything…..and we have a nice piece of stage-managed video footage to prove it… take a look for yourself we have just emailed it over to you….[see video here]
 
I am sorry Dmitry, you faded away there… I am sorry too Dmitry, all right you’re sorrier than I am… but I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are Dmitry. Don’t say that you are more sorry than I am because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we are both sorry, all right. 
 
I look forward to seeing your sorry face next week in Brussels…..
 
[With apologies to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Russian ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, who clearly saw through the cover story and was quoted by the BBC as saying: "Meteors are falling. Those are not meteors, it is Americans testing their new weapon"]