The scene where we lay our story is set in 1985. A man, scientist type, is working in his lab on several equations, working them out on his blackboard when the following happened. He is approached by a prominent general who makes the following request of him (once they exchanged pleasantries such as “How are things? How’s the family? Learn to putt a par three yet (and so on). The General says, “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Something ‘of the utmost importance’,” he asks with a minor chuckle bordering on sarcasm.
“As per usual,” The General says, “I require this to remain confidential.”
“What is it you want to talk about?”
“Has you already know the number one movie at the box office is currently Back to the Future. I think it is no hyperbole to say that almost everyone has seen the movie. President Reagen himself actually screened it in The White House, and loved it. In fact when he watched it he was so amused by the fact that Doctor Emmett Brown couldn’t believe an actor could become president that he had the projectionist stop and rewind the film in order to replay the scene. Personally I didn’t care for the president doing this because I was wrapped up in the story and felt it was an intrusion upon the compelling narrative. However he’s the president of the United States and I’m not. So what can you say, right?”
“What does this have to do with your visit here today?”
“Have you seen the movie?”
“Yes,” The Scientist admitted, “I saw it with my nephew and niece. We loved it.”
“Yes,” The General says, that seems to be the general pulse of the world, “So you know what the movie is about so I don’t need to explain anything, which can now lead me directly to my point.”
“Which is what, sir?”
“As you know The Soviet Union is a very closed society. We don’t really know what they do or what they plant and obviously they won’t tell us. Quieting fears and suspicions is quite difficult if you don’t know exactly what is you’re trying to silence in the first place. Understood?”
“I don’t understand the connection you’re making between the USSR and Back to the Future, sir.”
“After the White House premiere I was talking to the President personally. As I mentioned before he loved the movie but there was an aspect of it that greatly troubled him.”
“What aspect was that sir?”
“You know how we’ve spent billions of dollars trying to get the Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. Star Wars, operational in order to prevent nuclear war from outer space.”
“Yes,” The Scientist says as he walks to his desk to sit down, “I remember. We got a lot of flak for that.”
“Well what if The Soviets are doing the exact same thing. Except instead of trying to coordinate satellites in space to shoot down ballistics they’ve done the next best thing.”
“What’s the next best thing to that?”
“Be able to take out the enemy before he even decides to launch a missile. Destroy your enemy before his country is even created,” The General said, “It’ll be like The Terminator but with nations instead of future messianic figures battling robotic Gogs and Magog’s. If the USSR had access to a time machine of their own, and their own Marty Mcfly to pilot it, they’d be able to turn the entire world into a member of the Soviet Bloc without a single shot fired. Moscow and The Kremlin would be the world capital like Babylon was to the Tower of Babel. And worst of all we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it because we’d never even know time was changed in the first place, let alone know to go back and change it. How could we?”
“Are you seriously proposing that the Russians might be constructing a time machine of their own?”
“We don’t know. That’s the scary part. It would be the smart thing to do. We certainly don’t have any defenses against a meddling time traveler, even it be a reluctant one like Marty McFly was, so it would be a brilliant thing to do if it can be done. If The Soviets built a time traveling Delorian of their own and sent an operative to let’s say 1937 to assassinate Reagan on the set of “Love is On the Air” what secret service man could stop him. In 1985, it’s hard to dodge a bullet that was fired fifty years ago. That realization alone is what bothered the President to his very core and that’s why I’m here. How vulnerable would you say are we to the Machiavellian tactics of an unethical time traveler?”
“Practically or hypothetically?”
“Whichever one will allow them to retroactively win The Cold War.”
“Hypothetically we’re very vulnerable to a breach in the space-time continuum. That is, unless we had a time machine of our own as well. If we had one ourselves we might be able to stop Soviet aggression against causality through a pact of mutually assured destruction. Applied to time travel: you don’t go back in time and change things and we won’t do the same. With a DeLorian of our own we could have a very good deterrent against abusing time travel like we have against full out nuclear war.”
“And if we can’t produce a DeLorian of our own before they do?”
“Time travel is strictly hypothetical. It can’t be done. At least not with a human being. Heck, not even with a dog or the flea biting his neck. Not unless you can go faster than light, which nothing can. The universe seems well adept at preventing time travelers except on the quantum level,” suddenly The Scientist realizes something, “Except…”
“Except what?”
“If they could properly manage time dilation.”
“Time dilation?”
“Einstein proved that the only constant in the universe is light. That time, like space, varies from place to place, flowing at different rates. If The Soviets could figure out where time was, for lack of a better word, most sensitive to exploitation, perhaps it would be possible to send a time traveler back, one way, provided they survive the journey. But I wouldn’t even know how to even begin doing something like that. It’s unlikely that a time traveler would succeed in changing the past to redesign the future because he might end up in several pasts, in several pieces. I wouldn’t worry. I think the space-time continuum is very good at preventing time travel and any subsequent abuse of it.”
“So what should I tell President Reagan?”
“General,” he said, “tell President Mikhail Romanov that if The Japanese were building a time machine we would know about it. He need not worry. The Soviet Oblast of North America and the space-time continuum will be just fine. We’re on it.”