By

Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo

Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo is a social justice activist, writer and blogger.

Arms control doesn’t just mean treaties. It means inspections. Verification. Satellites watching missile silos. Inspectors counting warheads. Communication channels between adversaries so that a radar malfunction doesn’t get interpreted as an incoming strike.

The 1983 Soviet satellite false alarm nearly ended the world. A Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov chose not to report what his instruments showed as an incoming American first strike, and he was right that it was a malfunction.

The 1995 Norwegian rocket incident nearly ended the world, a scientific rocket was briefly interpreted by Russian early warning systems as a potential submarine-launched ballistic missile.

In both cases, the communication architecture and the human judgment within it prevented catastrophe.

New START is gone.

IAEA inspections in Iran are suspended.

The Bulletin notes an “almost complete absence of communication on strategic stability among nuclear adversaries.” The architecture that saved the world twice is now largely absent. The next Stanislav Petrov moment will have fewer safeguards than the last one.

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