By Bill Wineke
Special to Channel 3000

You didn't see this in the news because it wasn't in the news. But you need to know about it anyway.

This comes from a press release issued by NATO:

"Earlier this week, during exercise Bold Monarch 2011, for the first time a Russian submarine mated with a U.S. Submarine rescue system, the Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System, demonstrating they could work together and reach a milestone of international cooperation and interoperability."

Setting aside for a moment the awkward wording of military press releases, the news is that the United States and Russia (and 11 other countries) are actually working together to save the lives of imperiled submariners.

I shouldn't say it wasn't on the "news." I learned about it from the British BBC network. But I could find no evidence any American news outlet noticed or cared.

But it is an important development nonetheless.

During all the years of my youth and all the years of my adulthood, it was pretty much assumed that the purpose of American submarines was to make possible the destruction of Russian submarines and, also, the country that sent them to sea. Likewise, Russian submarines patrolled the seas ready to destroy American submarines.

Submarines don't really have any other purpose. Their purpose is to kill and destroy, kill and destroy ships, kill and destroy other submarines and, in the case of the nuclear-equipped subs, kill and destroy other countries. Some countries use research subs to study the sea, of course, but that's not really why submarines were invented or why countries spend billions of dollars maintaining them.

One thing I didn't know before I read the NATO press release is that "more than 40 countries are known to operate more than 440 submarines world-wide."

Now, we have developed capabilities of rescuing the very people who are charged with destroying us.

I don't know about you, but I think that's good news. If we are willing to rescue our enemy, that suggests pretty strongly that he is no longer our enemy.

This may not be such good news for the submarine services, however. If we don't really think Russia is going to use its subs to wipe out American cities -- and if we're willing to go bail out Russian submariners if they get in trouble, that's pretty much what we have concluded -- then you have to ask why we bother loading up billion-dollar underwater ships with nuclear missiles in the first place.

And if Russians think they can depend on Americans to rescue them if their subs get into trouble, why would they then want to launch missiles against us? And, if not, why send their subs out into the ocean?

I think it has been relatively clear for a long time that the big-bucks warfare major countries invest in is not likely to recur. We invest in these gargantuan weapons systems and, then, use them to swat gnats in regional battles against countries that can't produce drinkable water for large parts of their populations.

It's not just us, of course. Forty countries have submarine fleets? Why?

There is no reason why. But we are all humans and live in human systems. For the foreseeable future we will spend tons of money to send submarines to sea for no purpose. But, at least, we now understand that we don't really plan to kill each other and that, in a day when all the news seems bleak, is good news indeed.