But let's go back to 1 9 62, to the crucial events of the Cuban missile crisis. At that time, the two superpowers had fifteen minutes' warning time for war. The installation of Russian rockets on Castro's island threatened to reduce the Americans' warning to thirty seconds, which was unacceptable for President Kennedy, whatever the risks of his categorical refusal. We all know what happened: the installation of a direct line-the "hot line"-and the interconnection of the two Heads of State!
Ten years later, in 1 972, when the normal warning time was down to several minutes-ten for ballistic missiles, a mere two for satellite weapons-Nixon and Brezhnev signed the first s trategic arms limitation agreement in Moscow. In fact, this agreement aims less at the quantitative limitation of weapons (as its adversary/partners claim) than at the preservation of a properly "human" political power, since the constant progress of rapidity threatens from one day to the next to reduce the warning time for nuclear war to fess than one fatal minute-thus finally abolishing the Head of State's power of reflection and decision in favor of a pure and simple automation of defense systems. The decision for hostilities would then belong only to several strategic computer programs. After having been (because of its destructive capacities) the equivalent of total war-the nuclear missile launching submarine alone is able to destroy 5 0 0 cities-the war machine suddenly becomes (thanks to the reflexes of the strategic calculator) the very decision for war.
The State of Emergency
1 55