RED ALERT OR CRYING WOLF

‘Red alert’ is a term much abused by the media. It is not a term to be found in the lexicon of the government or the administration. Even the Blue Book governing the arrangements for the protection of the President and the Prime Minister does not use this expression. Even the Webster dictionary does not mention it. It is only the media which advertises this grim-sounding expression to sensationalize a situation. Following a terrorist attack in J&K, a Naxalite raid in Andhra Pradesh or a kidnapping in Bihar , the print as well as electronic media screams that the administration has declared a ‘red alert’. Red Alert isn't really an alert status as much as a sign that things have already gone wrong. History records many instances of deadly strategic surprises. Alert, red or otherwise, was sounded only after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1940, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and not before. Had the United States gone to Red Alert a few minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon, the plane crash in Pennsylvania and, perhaps, the second World Trade Centre attack would probably have been averted.
In the Indian context, as a knee-jerk reaction police departments' plans typically include stationing a lot of personnel in visible locations and upping neighborhood patrols. After having pressed the panic button the media forgets all about it. Red alert conveys that something like an emergency has been declared but it forgets that Protective Measures for a Severe Condition are not intended to be sustained for substantial periods of time. Operating at a permanently high level of alert carries its own potentially damaging costs. But you never read or hear of a ‘red alert’ being withdrawn or rescinded.
An alert is the declaration of a threat perception and the colour red conveys danger at its severest. It is in this sense that we can trace ‘red alert’ to the period of the Cold War. Cold War refers to the rivalry that developed during the second half of the twentieth century between countries espousing different political ideologies. The Soviet Union and its satellite states, often referred to as the Eastern bloc, were on one side. The United States and its allies were on the other, and were usually referred to as the Western bloc. Beginning at the end of World War II in 1945, the Cold War lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. built immense early warning systems to guard against surprise, full-scale nuclear attacks. Initially, the greater amount of information that these systems collected reduced vulnerability to surprise attacks. But as the systems became more sophisticated, each side faced a new dilemma. Various innocent activities could be interpreted by an overly sensitive system as the initial stages of an all out attack. So to reduce the risk of launching a false preemptive attack, the superpowers built alert systems that decreased the sensitivity of the system to incoming information. They color-coded the threat-assessment scheme. Above "Elevated Risk (coloured Orange)," where the country would likely remain at for the duration of the war, there was only one level: "Severe Risk" a.k.a. Red Alert.
A virtual genre of topical fiction sprang up in the 1950s spinning grim tales of just how close to nuclear destruction the world could be. Peter George’s 1958 novel Red Alert painted the worst of all possible worst-case scenarios in the Cold War – an American General loses his reason and orders full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR. It was originally published in the UK as “Two Hours to Doom” – with George using the nom de plume “Peter Bryant”. Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s later bestseller Fail Safe so closely resembled Red Alert in its premise that George sued on the charge of plagiarism and won an out-of-court settlement.
‘Red Alert’ has come alive once again for the US government following the September 11 attack. In its war on terrorism it has revived the colour coding of threat perception. A Red Alert would meanthere is a severe risk of terrorist attack or that an attack is imminent or may already be under way. A red alert would also tear away virtually all personal freedoms to move about and associate.All non-critical functions will cease; non-critical would be almost all businesses, except health-related. As the war on terrorism is likely to go on for along time, it will be interesting to observe how the US resolves the confrontation between security and freedom.
Nearer home, let the media not colour-code its own perception of a situation. It should confine its duty to convey to the public any do’s and don’ts that the administration may prescribe in a given situation. It must realise that there is a difference between alerting and alarming the public. If it cries wolf, read red alert, too often it will lose credibility and may not be taken seriously when the situation may warrant. In the mean time, if it must go on red-alerting let it do so to warn against mounting threat from Tsunami, global warming and endangered biodiversity.


(Sudhir Kumar Jha)

The author is a former Director General of Police, Bihar. He can be contacted at sudhirjhapatna@gmail.com