His job one night was to stay up and monitor the Soviet Early Warning System, monitoring the United States for ICBM launches. This was a tough time; Ron Raygun had made his dumbass joke about starting the bombing in five minutes, a Russian fighter pilot had shot down a KAL passenger jet believing it to be a military intrusion and the Soviet leadership was on pins and needles.
Petrov was on duty that night when the alarms went off and the system told him the US had launched a single ICBM. Soon after, it indicated that several more ICBM’s had launched at the Soviet Union. Petrov now had a choice - his standing orders were to alert the Soviet leadership, who would almost certainly order an immediate launch of Soviet missiles and the End Of The World, OR, since it seemed odd the US would only fly a few birds, to treat the alert as a malfunction and let the comrades in charge keep sleeping. He elected not to give the alert, the malfunction was found and global nuclear war was averted. Petrov was investigated, demoted and dismissed.
Petrov had two choices that night. He could have stayed within his lane, followed his orders correctly, and the world almost certainly would have ended. OR, he could have acted outside his authority envelope, following reasoning accumulated through years of training and experience, but at the cost possibly of his life and certainly his public honor, with such action forestalling the deaths of millions. Two shitty choices but one much shittier than the other. He made the right choice and suffered the consequences.
General Milley unfortunately found himself in a situation in which there were no good choices; a hostile nuclear power freaking out over the ravings of a deranged, defeated president and contemplating making a preemptive move. He could have elected to stay in his lane, fulfill his office and remain under traitor Trump’s orders, in which case we apparently might well have ended up at war with superpower China. He chose, it seems to me, like Petrov, to put himself on the line and take action outside of the constitutional civilian oversight to which he is required to submit. It may turn out, when all the dust settles, that Milley saved the world from catastrophe by picking up a phone without authorization.
IMO Vindman called for Milley’s resignation not because he believes Milley took the wrong action, but because in his view there MUST be consequences for stepping out of line even if the cause was just, if a slippery slope is not to be established in the critical area of military submission to civilian authority.
Joe Biden, however is now the civilian authority and should have the choice of keeping Milley in command. Personally I’m glad he apparently has; I think we got very lucky he was on the post.
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