Abstract
In this chapter, we revisit the year 1983 and the collision course on which the Americans and Soviets found themselves in that momentous time. Political relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were marked by the Reagan administration’s defense buildup and assertive rhetoric toward the USSR, which Moscow, in turn, reciprocated with considerable brio. A series of events, including NATO’s commitment to its “572” European theater ballistic and cruise missile deployments, in response to earlier Soviet deployments of intermediate range SS-20 nuclear missiles, and a Soviet intelligence tasking for indicators of an American and NATO imminent decision to launch a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union and/or its Warsaw Pact allies, all contributed to a scenario of unintended escalation. Into this mix, NATO added a command post exercise, Able Archer, in November of 1983 that included simulated procedures for nuclear release. The case study might hold lessons for NATO and Russia as they exit the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 and open the door to renewed deployments of nuclear-capable intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in Europe.
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Notes
- 1.
Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (NY: HarperCollins 1990), p. 583.
- 2.
Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.) Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975–1985 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 68–90 provides a full account of “RYAN”.
- 3.
See References No. 373/PR/52, Attachment 2, The Problem of Discovering Preparation for a Nuclear Missile Attack on the USSR, in Andrew and Gordievsky (note 2) pp. 74–81, citation p. 74.
- 4.
Ibid. pp. 77–81.
- 5.
Ibid. p. 76.
- 6.
My appreciation of the Soviet perspective here owes much to helpful comments from Raymond Garthoff. See also Raymond L. Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings 1985) pp. 864–72.
- 7.
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (NY: Simon & Schuster 1996), p. 262.
- 8.
Andrew and Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions, p. 76. Soviet fears of the preemptive value of Pershing II seemed excessive from the US and NATO perspective. The range of the Pershing II given by US official sources would not have permitted prompt attacks against main military command bunkers in or near Moscow. However, Soviet military planners might have feared that, once in place, Pershing II missiles could be enhanced and given extended ranges bringing Moscow and environs within their reach.
- 9.
Gates, From the Shadows, p. 264.
- 10.
Statement of Soviet scientists on SDI quoted in Andrei A. Kokoshin, Soviet Strategic Thought, 1917–91 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1998) p. 182.
- 11.
Gates, From the Shadows, p. 268.
- 12.
Ibid. p. 267.
- 13.
Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 597.
- 14.
Ibid. p. 598.
- 15.
See David Hoffman, ‘“I Had a Funny Feeling in My Gut”: Soviet Officer Faced Nuclear Armageddon’, Washington Post, 10 Feb. 1999, p. A19.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
For recent accounts of Able Archer and its significance, see: Jill Kastner, “Standing on the Brink: The Secret War Scare of 1983,” The Nation, in Johnson’s Russia List 2018 – #99 – May 31, 2018, davidjohnson@starpower.net; Nate Jones, Tom Blanton and Lauren Harper, editors, The 1983 War Scare Declassified and For Real: All-Source Intelligence Report Finds US – Soviet Nuclear Relations on “Hair Trigger” in 1983, National Security Archive, Briefing Book No. 533, posted October 24, 2015, nsarchiv@gwu.edu; Douglas Birch, “The USSR and US Came Closer to Nuclear War Than We Thought,” The Atlantic, www.theatlantic.com, May 28, 2013, in Johnson’s Russia List 2013 – #97, May 29, 2013, davidjohnson@starpower.net. See also: John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), pp. 225–228; Andrew and Gordievsky, pp. 599–600; Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 270–3. See also Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds: Soviet Postwar Defectors (NY: Weidenfeld 1989) pp. 328–35.
- 19.
Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds, p. 329.
- 20.
Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 599.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Ibid. p. 600.
- 23.
Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink (Westport, CT: Praeger 1999) p. 41.
- 24.
Gates, From the Shadows, p. 273.
- 25.
Ben B. Fischer, ‘Intelligence and Disaster Avoidance: The Soviet War Scare and US-Soviet Relations’, Ch. 5 in Stephen J. Cimbala (ed.) Mysteries of the Cold War (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate 1999) pp. 89–104, esp. p. 98. I gratefully acknowledge Ben Fischer for calling this important aspect of Operation “RYAN ” to my attention.
- 26.
Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic, Ministry for State Security, Deputy of the Minister, Implementation Regulation to Order Nr. 1/85 of 15.2.1985: Comprehensive Use of Capabilities of the Service Units of the MfS for Early and Reliable Acquisition of Evidence of Imminent Enemy Plans, Preparations and Actions for Aggression (Berlin: 5 June 1985).
- 27.
Fischer, “Intelligence and Disaster Avoidance,” p. 98.
- 28.
Markus Wolf, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (NY: Times Books, 1997) is a first-person account of his amazing career.
- 29.
Wolf, Spionage Chef im geheimen Krieg: Erinnerungen (Dusseldorf and Munich: List 1997), p. 332, cited in Fischer, “Intelligence and Disaster Avoidance,” p. 101.
- 30.
Raymond L. Garthoff, Deterrence and the Revolution in Soviet Military Doctrine (Washington, DC: Brookings 1990) pp. 24–25.
- 31.
William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 1–15 is excellent on this point. See also Garthoff, Deterrence and Revolution in Soviet Military Doctrine, pp. 16–22.
- 32.
Ghulam Dastagir Wardak (compiler) and Graham Hall Turbiville Jr. (gen. ed.) The Voroshilov Lectures: Materials from the Soviet General Staff Academy, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989), pp. 69–75.
- 33.
In theory according to some US distinctions, launch “on warning” would take place in response to multiple indicators that an attack had been launched but prior to the actual detonations of warheads on US soil. Launch “under attack” would be delayed until after actual detonations had occurred. Skeptics can be forgiven for assuming that launch “under attack” was a euphemism in declaratory policy for action policy that was likely to be launch “on warning”. Launch on warning would be necessary to save the ICBM force from prompt destruction: the difference between LOW and LUA might, at most, affect some components of an already partly alerted US bomber force.
- 34.
Bruce G. Blair, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1993).
- 35.
Garthoff , Deterrence and the Revolution in Soviet Military Doctrine, p. 78.
- 36.
Paul Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and The New Power Politics (New York: Henry Holt – Times Books, 2012).
- 37.
This concept of strategy is explained in Colin S. Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). There is room for well-crafted and appropriately applied deterrence strategies, as Gray notes: “A strategy of deterrence, say, chosen for the purpose of preventing war, can be said to be more important than are plans for the conduct of war, at least until it fails” (Ibid., p. 98).
- 38.
For pertinent reflections, see Tom Nichols, “Billions Dead: 5 Times Russia and America Nearly Started a Nuclear War: Some history that should never be forgotten,” The National Interest, April 1, 2019, in Johnson’s Russia List 2019 – #55 – April 2, 2019, davidjohnson@starpower.net
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Cimbala, S.J. (2020). Nuclear Learning from the Past: “Able Archer” and the 1983 War Scare. In: The United States, Russia and Nuclear Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38088-5_1
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