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The Hot Line in the Cold War

Summary/Abstract: The experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in the birth of a Direct Communication Link – the hot line – between Moscow and Washington in August 1963 in order to better and quicken communication between Soviet and American leaders in times of direct superpower conflict. In this paper, drawing on the summit diplomacy literature, we explore the role this technological innovation played in Cold War superpower relations – most importantly how much its use was in harmony with the aims of its establishment. Focusing on the Six Day-, the Indo-Pakistani-, and the Yom Kippur wars, the invasion of Afghanistan and the Polish crisis of 1980, we argue that the hot line was employed in a much broader sense than originally thought, that is, similarly to any other means of crisis management: it was applied to quicken communication as well as to gain time, to resolve as well as to temporarily deepen crises. However, it was never utilized in direct superpower conflicts, since the Missile Crisis, by putting mankind to the brink of nuclear holocaust, also had a sobering and, thus, restraining effect on superpower competition. The hot line could only survive further technological innovation because it came to embody superpower commitment to cooperation.

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