A very personal reflection

We are all shaped by events and activities that we choose to participate in, or those that befall upon us. As the spirit of LinkedIn seems to be about allowing people to get to know each other better, through histories and backgrounds, I decided to share a bit about some key things that happened in my teenage years. A truly formative phase - you learn a lot, and carry the knowledge forward. It helped shape me into how I am today as a professional, and a human being. Read on, if that would be of interest:

Why I take the demise of the INF treaty so personally

Speech by Al Palladin at the Seattle Olympic Club on August 8, 2019

And there it was – the harbinger of Armageddon. I had my “eyes on the prize”. Fully erect and ready to launch its deadly payload, the Pershing II nuclear tipped missile, on a mobile platform that made it a particularly evasive target – a “needle in a haystack”, but we got to it, and proceeded to work on setting demolition charges.

It took the GRU Spetsnaz squad that I was with more than 2 days to fight our way through men and Mother Nature’s nasty elements. Units of the Soviet Army’s elite and secretive force were dropped into a dense forest from 300 feet. That’s barely enough for a parachute to open fully, but the Spetsnaz operator is advised to not waste time looking up at the canopy – but to look down, and especially in front, bracing for impacts, as you come crashing through, and for some – into, the trees. A brother-in-arms broke his ankle on the way down, but there was no way to back out of this mission deep behind enemy lines – nor would he accept evacuation, if that was even a possibility. We did our best to bandage his foot, made him a crutch from some of the branches that came down, as the remainder of our unit landed. One buddy took his backpack, and I carried the injured man’s Kalashnikov, as we set forth on the very long walk through inhospitable terrain.

They knew we were coming. As darkness fell, it was harder, but not impossible, to find and avoid the multiple booby-traps. As the commanding officer realized that we could proceed no further without revealing ourselves, he ordered the unit to build a temporary shelter for the night and sent me and a fellow, as lookout, to conceal ourselves on the main path that the enemy could take if they came for us.

The gunshots and screams, sounds of straining car engines, all came from a distance. We saw flashes and heard explosions. Later, we learned that two other units, which were deployed simultaneously with us, but who took their own routes, were hunted down. One walked into an ambush, and had to run through a literal field of fire – of tracer rounds and napalm-like substances that were set ablaze. The other was cornered by “jeeps” – no matter how fast you run, it’s difficult to beat an off-road vehicle.

My 1st thought that final morning was that I had no thought. I could barely open my eyelids – in order to see motionless bodies all around me. For the first (and, thankfully, only) time in my life I could literally feel as my 2nd thought, which eventually materialized into a command, drifted down from my brain, down my spine, through my shoulder, down my arm and finally into my clenched fist. It took a while. It took a bit more for my fingers to start moving and to finally be able to unlock my hand. During that winter night one of the soldiers, who was assigned to the upkeep of our concealed fire, fell asleep. As soon as I could get the rest of my body to move, I started shaking the other special operators from their deep, cold-induced slumbers. And when I could clench my fist again, I whacked the man who was semi-frozen, by what used to be the fire pit, delivering a sharp blow to the side of his head. That certainly woke him up.

But that was all behind us now - we made it to the Pershing II. In part what kept me going on this mission were memories. I had first learned about the deadly capabilities of this missile when I was 13, as I was preparing for CBS TV’s “Children talk about Nuclear War” show, that was to bring together Soviet and American kids. It turned out to be my sparring match, live, on the airwaves of Washington D.C., with a hawkish, grey-haired American general, who had been the former deputy director of the CIA, and later the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Lt. General Daniel Graham was a surprise and unwelcome last-minute addition – but if 6 years prior I had the wit to outmaneuver him, surely, I had gained more knowledge to now help my team prevail in the “search and destroy” of a field-deployed nuclear weapon.

At 17, it really struck me. It was a fine spring day in Moscow, one of those where you look at and think about the pretty girls in your high school class a lot more, than what the semi-retired Major, who was leading our mandatory Basic Military Training lesson, would have wanted me to. For the last 40 minutes he was droning on about nuclear shelters. He snapped the class to attention with: “Comrades! The Party and the People are counting on you to perform your sacred duty. In the event of a nuclear war, we are to gather in front of our school and, in an orderly column, proceed a few blocks north, to the furniture store. The large warehouse under the showroom is to be unloaded of the amassed heavy boxes, in order to convert it into a fallout shelter for the citizens, who live in the vicinity. Your class has 3 hours to perform this crucial task”. And then my best friend raised his hand. “Comrade Major? A question – as a follow up to last week’s class. May I ask that you remind us of the flight time of the Pershing II missile - after it is launched from Western Europe and heads towards us?” The combat veteran, who always took pride in his precision, immediately responded: “8 minutes”. “8 minutes?.. 3 hours… no further questions…”

Later, I learned of this passage from President Reagan’s diary: “We had many contingency plans for responding to a nuclear attack. But everything would happen so fast that I wondered how much planning or reason could be applied in such a crisis... Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?”

When I was 12, President Reagan shook my hand. Leonid Brezhnev died and the American leader decided to come to the Soviet Embassy to sign the book of condolences. The administration’s head of protocol usually sends someone with good calligraphic skills, in advance, to inscribe a “ghost-written” message, which the head of state later signs – and then moves on to other business. Not that day. The American President intentionally took the time to sit down and in longhand write and write, conveying his personal thoughts to the Soviet people that, hopefully, a time for dialogue had come. Then, for the first time in 2 years, Reagan had a one-on-one chat with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. And before he left, the American President, to everyone’s surprise, approached the honor guard – I gave him the Pioneer’s salute, Ronald Reagan looked down at me, smiled, and extended his warm, firm hand.

That winter morning, as a 19-year-old Junior Sergeant, standing in front of the Pershing II full scale mock-up, I knew that the days of this missile system, and those of its “cousins”, were numbered. What the Spetsnaz battalion had gone through was an elaborate exercise – designed for a “what if”. “What if the Americans do not fulfill the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty?” and my home-town of Moscow, and most of Europe, would be just 8 minutes away from atomic annihilation… Thankfully, Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev demonstrated their wisdom and determination; my Father witnessed the signing of the INF agreement at the White House. For over 30 years the breakthrough accord, which eliminated a whole class of most dangerous nuclear weapons, was in full force.

Can Presidents Trump and Putin at least match their predecessors in this field? As of August 2, 2019 the INF treaty is dead.