Able Archer 83
Encyclopedia
Able Archer 83 was a ten-day NATO command post exercise
starting on November 2, 1983 that spanned Western Europe
, centred on the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
(SHAPE) Headquarters situated at Casteau
, north of the Belgian
city of Mons
. Able Archer exercises simulated a period of conflict escalation
, culminating in a coordinated nuclear release
. The 1983 exercise incorporated a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silence
s, participation by heads of government
, and a simulated DEFCON 1
nuclear alert.
The realistic nature of the 1983 exercise, coupled with deteriorating relations between the United States
and the Soviet Union
and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II
nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war
, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike
. In response, the Soviets readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland
on alert. This relatively obscure incident is considered by many historians to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war
since the Cuban Missile Crisis
of 1962. The threat of nuclear war abruptly ended with the conclusion of the Able Archer 83 exercise on November 11.
officers and Soviet leaders, General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev
and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov
bluntly announced that the United States was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR. To combat this threat, Andropov announced, the KGB and GRU
would begin Operation RYAN. RYAN (РЯН) was a Russian acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение); Operation RYAN was the largest, most comprehensive peacetime intelligence
-gathering operation in Soviet history. Agents abroad were charged with monitoring the figures who would decide to launch a nuclear attack, the service and technical personnel who would implement the attack, and the facilities from which the attack would originate. In all probability, the goal of Operation RYAN was to discover the first intent of a nuclear attack and then prevent it.
The impetus for the implementation of Operation RYAN is still largely unknown. Oleg Gordievsky
, the highest-ranking KGB official ever to defect, suspected that it was born of the increased "Soviet Paranoia" coupled with "Reaganite Rhetoric". Gordievsky conjectured that Brezhnev and Andropov, who "were very, very old-fashioned and easily influenced … by Communist dogmas", truly believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan
would push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history
". Central Intelligence Agency
historian Benjamin B. Fischer
lists several concrete occurrences that likely led to the birth of RYAN. The first of these was the use of psychological operations (PSYOP) that began soon after President Reagan took office.
Psychological operations by the United States began mid-February 1981 and continued intermittently until 1983. These included a series of clandestine naval operations that stealthily accessed waters near the Greenland
-Iceland
-United Kingdom
(GIUK) gap
, and the Barents
, Norwegian
, Black
, and Baltic
seas, demonstrating how close NATO ships could get to critical Soviet military bases. American bombers also flew directly towards Soviet airspace
, peeling off at the last moment, occasionally several times per week. These penetrations were designed to test Soviet radar vulnerability as well as demonstrate US capabilities in a nuclear war. In April, the United States Navy conducted FleetEx '83, the largest fleet exercise held to date in the North Pacific.
Lines Flight 007 (KAL 007) was shot down over the Sea of Japan
near Moneron Island
just west of Sakhalin
island over prohibited Soviet airspace. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald
, a sitting member of the United States Congress
. In conjunction with the extremely secretive PSYOPs against the Soviet Union, the attack brought relations between the two superpower
s to a new public low. Illustrating the historically antagonistic relations between the USA and USSR in the early 1980s, the Soviet attack on KAL 007 also lends several insights into Able Archer 83.
(labeled "Star Wars" by the media and critics). While Reagan viewed the initiative as a safety net against nuclear war, leaders in the Soviet Union viewed it as a definitive departure from the relative weapons parity of détente
and an escalation of the arms race into space
. Yuri Andropov
—who had become General Secretary following Brezhnev's death
in November 1982—lambasted Reagan for "inventing new plans on how to unleash a nuclear war in the best way, with the hope of winning it".
Despite the enormous Soviet outcry over the "Star Wars" program, the weapons plan that generated the most alarm among the Soviet Union's leadership during Able Archer 83 was the 1979 NATO approval and planned deployment of intermediate-range Pershing II missiles in Western Europe
.Although Able Archer 83 simulated the release of Pershing II missiles for the first time, the missiles themselves were not deployed until November 23 – 22 days after the exercise completed (Pry, p. 34) These missiles, deployed to counter Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range missiles on its own western border, represented a major threat to the Soviets. The Pershing II was capable of destroying Soviet "hard targets" such as underground missile silos and command and control bunker
s. The missiles could be emplaced and launched from any surveyed site in minutes, and because the guidance system was self-correcting, the missile system possessed a genuine "first strike
capability". Furthermore, it was estimated that the missiles (deployed in West Germany
) could reach targets in the western Soviet Union within four to six minutes of their launch. These capabilities led Soviet leaders to believe that the only way to survive a Pershing II strike was to preempt
it. This fear of an undetected Pershing II attack, according to CIA historian Benjamin B. Fischer, was explicitly linked to the mandate of Operation RYAN: to detect a decision by the United States to launch a nuclear attack and, it must be believed, to preempt it.
, who was on duty during the incident, correctly dismissed the warning as a computer error when ground early warning radars did not detect any launches. Part of his reasoning was that the system was new and known to malfunction before; also, a full scale nuclear attack from the United States would involve thousands of simultaneous launches, not a single missile. Later, the system reported four more ICBM launches headed to the Soviet Union, but Petrov again dismissed the reports as false. The investigation that followed revealed that the system indeed malfunctioned and false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' orbits.
The February 17, 1983 KGB Permanent Operational Assignment assigned its agents to monitor several possible indicators of a nuclear attack. These included actions by "A cadre of people associated with preparing and implementing decision about RYAN, and also a group of people, including service and technical personnel ... those working in the operating services of installations connected with processing and implementing the decision about RYAN, and communication staff involved in the operation and interaction of these installations."
Because Able Archer 83 simulated an actual release, it is likely that the service and technical personnel mentioned in the memo were active in the exercise. More conspicuously, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
participated (though not concurrently) in the nuclear drill. United States President Reagan, Vice President George H. W. Bush
, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
were also intended to participate. Robert McFarlane
, who had assumed the position of National Security Advisor
just two weeks earlier, realized the implications of such participation early in the exercise's planning and rejected it.
Another illusory indicator likely noticed by Soviet analysts was an influx of ciphered
communications between the United Kingdom
and the United States. Soviet intelligence was informed that "so-called nuclear consultations in NATO are probably one of the stages of immediate preparation by the adversary for RYAN". To the Soviet analysts, this burst of secret communications between the United States and the UK one month before the beginning of Able Archer may have appeared to be this "consultation". In reality, the burst of communication regarded the US invasion of Grenada
on October 25, 1983, which caused a great deal of diplomatic traffic as the sovereign of the island was Elizabeth II.
A further startling aspect reported by KGB agents regarded the NATO communications used during the exercise. According to the Moscow
Centre's February 17, 1983 memo,
Soviet Intelligence appeared to substantiate these suspicions by reporting that NATO was indeed using unique, never-before-seen procedures as well as message formats more sophisticated than previous exercises that possibly indicated the proximity of nuclear attack.
Finally, during Able Archer 83 NATO forces simulated a move through all alert phases, from DEFCON 5
to DEFCON 1. While these phases were simulated, alarmist KGB agents mistakenly reported them as actual. According to Soviet intelligence, NATO doctrine stated, "Operational readiness No 1 is declared when there are obvious indications of preparation to begin military operations. It is considered that war is inevitable and may start at any moment."
Upon learning that US nuclear activity mirrored its hypothesized first strike activity, the Moscow Centre sent its residencies a flash telegram on November 8 or 9 (Oleg Gordievsky cannot recall which), incorrectly reporting an alert on American bases and frantically asking for further information regarding an American first strike. The alert precisely coincided with the seven- to ten-day period estimated between NATO's preliminary decision and an actual strike. This was the peak of the war scare.
The Soviet Union, believing its only chance of surviving a NATO strike was to preempt it, readied its nuclear arsenal. The CIA reported activity in the Baltic Military District
, in Czechoslovakia
, and it determined that nuclear capable aircraft in Poland and East Germany were placed "on high alert status with readying of nuclear strike forces". Former CIA analyst Peter Vincent Pry goes further, saying he suspects that the aircraft were merely the tip of the iceberg. He hypothesizes that—in accordance with Soviet military procedure and history—ICBM
silos, easily readied and difficult for the United States to detect, were also prepared for a launch.
Soviet fears of the attack ended as the Able Archer exercise finished on November 11. Upon learning of the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 by way of the double agent
Oleg Gordievsky
, a British SIS
asset, President Reagan commented, "I don't see how they could believe that—but it’s something to think about."
The double agent
Oleg Gordievsky
, whose highest rank was KGB resident
in London, is the only Soviet source ever to have published an account of Able Archer 83. Oleg Kalugin
and Yuri Shvets
, who were KGB officers in 1983, have published accounts that acknowledge Operation RYAN, but they do not mention Able Archer 83. Gordievsky and other Warsaw Pact
intelligence agents were extremely skeptical about a NATO first strike, perhaps because of their proximity to, and understanding of, the West. Nevertheless, agents were ordered to report their observations, not their analysis, and this critical flaw in the Soviet intelligence system – coined by Gordievsky as the "intelligence cycle" – fed the fear of US nuclear aggression.
No Soviet political figure has publicly acknowledged Able Archer 83. Marshal
Sergei Akhromeyev
, who at the time was Chief of the main operations directorate of the Soviet General Staff, told Cold War
historian Don Orbendorfer that he had never heard of Able Archer. The lack of public Soviet response over Able Archer 83 has led some historians, including Fritz W. Ermarth in his piece, "Observations on the 'War Scare' of 1983 From an Intelligence Perch", to conclude that Able Archer 83 posed no immediate threat to the United States.
, Deputy Director for Intelligence during Able Archer 83, has published thoughts on the exercise that refute this conclusion:
A still-classified
report written by Nina Stewart for the President's Foreign Advisory Board concurs with Gates and refutes the previous CIA reports, concluding that further analysis shows that the Soviets were, in fact, genuinely fearful of US aggression.
Some historians, including Beth A. Fischer in her book The Reagan Reversal, pin Able Archer 83 as profoundly affecting President Reagan and his turn from a policy of confrontation towards the Soviet Union to a policy of rapprochement
. Most other historians say that Reagan always intended to increase the United States defensive ability and then negotiate with the Soviet Union from a position of strength. The thoughts of Reagan and those around him provide important insight upon the nuclear scare and its subsequent ripples. On October 10, 1983, just over a month before Able Archer 83, President Reagan viewed a television film about Lawrence, Kansas
being destroyed by a nuclear attack titled The Day After
. In his diary, the president wrote that the film "left me greatly depressed".
Later in October, Reagan attended a Pentagon briefing on nuclear war. During his first two years in office, he had refused to take part in such briefings, feeling it irreverent to rehearse a nuclear apocalypse; finally, he consented to the Pentagon official requests. According to officials present, the briefing "chastened" Reagan. Weinberg said, "[Reagan] had a very deep revulsion to the whole idea of nuclear weapons ... These war games brought home to anybody the fantastically horrible events that would surround such a scenario." Reagan described the briefing in his own words: "A most sobering experience with[ Caspar Weinberger
] and Gen. Vessey
in the Situation room
, a briefing on our complete plan in the event of a nuclear attack."
These two glimpses of nuclear war primed Reagan for Able Archer 83, giving him a very specific picture of what would occur had the situation further developed. After receiving intelligence reports from sources including Gordievsky, it was clear that the Soviets were unnerved. While officials were concerned with the Soviet panic, they were hesitant about believing the proximity of a Soviet attack. Secretary of State
George P. Shultz
thought it "incredible, at least to us" that the Soviets would believe the US would launch a genuine attack. In general, Reagan did not share the secretary's belief that cooler heads would prevail, writing:
According to McFarlane, the president responded with "genuine anxiety" in disbelief that a regular NATO exercise could have led to an armed attack. To the ailing Politburo
—led from the deathbed of the terminally ill Andropov, a man with no firsthand knowledge of the United States, and the creator of Operation RYAN—it seemed "that the United States was preparing to launch ... a sudden nuclear attack on the Soviet Union". In his memoirs, Reagan, without specifically mentioning Able Archer 83—he states earlier that he cannot mention classified information—wrote of a 1983 realization:
Military exercise
A military exercise is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat...
starting on November 2, 1983 that spanned Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, centred on the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe is the central command of NATO military forces. It is located at Casteau, north of the Belgian city of Mons...
(SHAPE) Headquarters situated at Casteau
Casteau
Casteau is a village of Belgium in the French-speaking region. With the others villages Chaussée-Notre-Dame-Louvignies, Horrues, Naast, Neufvilles, Soignies , and Thieusies, they compose the municipality of Soignies....
, north of the Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
city of Mons
Mons
Mons is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut, of which it is the capital. The Mons municipality includes the old communes of Cuesmes, Flénu, Ghlin, Hyon, Nimy, Obourg, Baudour , Jemappes, Ciply, Harmignies, Harveng, Havré, Maisières, Mesvin, Nouvelles,...
. Able Archer exercises simulated a period of conflict escalation
Conflict escalation
Conflict escalation describes the escalation of a conflict to a more destructive, confrontational, painful, or otherwise "less comfortable" level; in particular, it is concerned with how persons or forces can be controlled or subdued in conflict...
, culminating in a coordinated nuclear release
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
. The 1983 exercise incorporated a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silence
Radio silence
In telecommunications, radio silence is a status in which all fixed or mobile radio stations in an area are asked to stop transmitting for safety or security reasons.The term "radio station" may include anything capable of transmitting a radio signal....
s, participation by heads of government
Head of government
Head of government is the chief officer of the executive branch of a government, often presiding over a cabinet. In a parliamentary system, the head of government is often styled prime minister, chief minister, premier, etc...
, and a simulated DEFCON 1
DEFCON
A defense readiness condition is an alert posture used by the United States Armed Forces. The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and unified and specified combatant commands. It prescribes five graduated levels of readiness for the U.S...
nuclear alert.
The realistic nature of the 1983 exercise, coupled with deteriorating relations between the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II
Pershing missile
Pershing was a family of solid-fueled two-stage medium-range ballistic missiles designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the PGM-11 Redstone missile as the United States Army's primary nuclear-capable theater-level weapon. The Pershing systems lasted over 30 years from the first test...
nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war
Ruse of war
A ruse of war, or ruse de guerre, is an action taken by a belligerent in warfare to fool the enemy in order to gain intelligence or a military advantage against an enemy.-Modern history:* American Civil War General George Meade's General Order No...
, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike
First strike
In nuclear strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing...
. In response, the Soviets readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland
History of Poland (1945–1989)
The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Soviet Communist dominance imposed after the end of World War II over the People's Republic of Poland...
on alert. This relatively obscure incident is considered by many historians to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
since the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
of 1962. The threat of nuclear war abruptly ended with the conclusion of the Able Archer 83 exercise on November 11.
Operation RYAN
The greatest catalyst to the Able Archer war scare occurred more than two years earlier. In a May 1981 closed-session meeting of senior KGBKGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
officers and Soviet leaders, General Secretary
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title given to the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With some exceptions, the office was synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union...
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
bluntly announced that the United States was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR. To combat this threat, Andropov announced, the KGB and GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
would begin Operation RYAN. RYAN (РЯН) was a Russian acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение); Operation RYAN was the largest, most comprehensive peacetime intelligence
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
-gathering operation in Soviet history. Agents abroad were charged with monitoring the figures who would decide to launch a nuclear attack, the service and technical personnel who would implement the attack, and the facilities from which the attack would originate. In all probability, the goal of Operation RYAN was to discover the first intent of a nuclear attack and then prevent it.
The impetus for the implementation of Operation RYAN is still largely unknown. Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
, the highest-ranking KGB official ever to defect, suspected that it was born of the increased "Soviet Paranoia" coupled with "Reaganite Rhetoric". Gordievsky conjectured that Brezhnev and Andropov, who "were very, very old-fashioned and easily influenced … by Communist dogmas", truly believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
would push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history
Ash heap of history
The ash heap of history is a figurative place to where objects such as persons, events, artifacts, ideologies, etc...
". Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
historian Benjamin B. Fischer
Benjamin B. Fischer
Benjamin B. Fischer has worked for the United States Central Intelligence Agency for nearly 30 years. In recent years, he has been employed by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence...
lists several concrete occurrences that likely led to the birth of RYAN. The first of these was the use of psychological operations (PSYOP) that began soon after President Reagan took office.
PSYOP
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
-Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
-United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
(GIUK) gap
GIUK gap
The GIUK gap is an area in the northern Atlantic Ocean that forms a naval warfare chokepoint. Its name is an acronym for Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, the gap being the open ocean between these three landmasses...
, and the Barents
Barents Sea
The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Norway and Russia. Known in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea, the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barents...
, Norwegian
Norwegian Sea
The Norwegian Sea is a marginal sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, northwest of Norway. It is located between the North Sea and the Greenland Sea and adjoins the North Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Barents Sea to the northeast. In the southwest, it is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a...
, Black
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, and Baltic
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
seas, demonstrating how close NATO ships could get to critical Soviet military bases. American bombers also flew directly towards Soviet airspace
Airspace
Airspace means the portion of the atmosphere controlled by a country above its territory, including its territorial waters or, more generally, any specific three-dimensional portion of the atmosphere....
, peeling off at the last moment, occasionally several times per week. These penetrations were designed to test Soviet radar vulnerability as well as demonstrate US capabilities in a nuclear war. In April, the United States Navy conducted FleetEx '83, the largest fleet exercise held to date in the North Pacific.
"It really got to them," recalls Dr. William Schneider, [former] undersecretary of state for military assistance and technology, who saw classified "after-action reports" that indicated U.S. flight activity. "They didn't know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home."
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
On September 1, 1983 the Korean AirKorean Air
Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd. , operating as Korean Air, is both the flag carrier and the largest airline of South Korea, with global headquarters located in Seoul, South Korea. Korean Air's international passenger division and related subsidiary cargo division together serve 130 cities in 45...
Lines Flight 007 (KAL 007) was shot down over the Sea of Japan
Sea of Japan
The Sea of Japan is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, between the Asian mainland, the Japanese archipelago and Sakhalin. It is bordered by Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it has almost no tides due to its nearly complete enclosure from the Pacific...
near Moneron Island
Moneron Island
Moneron Island, is a Russian possession located off Sakhalin Island.-Description:Moneron has an area of about and a highest point of . It is approximately long by wide, and is located from Sakhalin's port of Nevelsk and about directly southwest of Sakhalin Island itself at the northeastern...
just west of Sakhalin
Sakhalin
Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...
island over prohibited Soviet airspace. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald
Larry McDonald
Lawrence Patton McDonald, M.D. was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the seventh congressional district of Georgia as a Democrat...
, a sitting member of the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
. In conjunction with the extremely secretive PSYOPs against the Soviet Union, the attack brought relations between the two superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
s to a new public low. Illustrating the historically antagonistic relations between the USA and USSR in the early 1980s, the Soviet attack on KAL 007 also lends several insights into Able Archer 83.
Weapons buildup
The Reagan government oversaw the largest peacetime military buildup in the history of the United States. On March 23, 1983, Reagan announced one of the most ambitious and controversial components to this strategy, the Strategic Defense InitiativeStrategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
(labeled "Star Wars" by the media and critics). While Reagan viewed the initiative as a safety net against nuclear war, leaders in the Soviet Union viewed it as a definitive departure from the relative weapons parity of détente
Détente
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War...
and an escalation of the arms race into space
Militarisation of space
The militarisation of space is the placement and development of weaponry and military technology in outer space.-History:Acquisition of high grounds for military advantage has been a perennial feature of military campaigns. For thousands of years, military tacticians have exploited the concept of...
. Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
—who had become General Secretary following Brezhnev's death
Death and funeral of Leonid Brezhnev
On 10 November 1982, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, the third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the fifth leader of the Soviet Union, died a 75 year-old man after suffering a heart attack following years of serious ailments. His death was officially acknowledged on 11...
in November 1982—lambasted Reagan for "inventing new plans on how to unleash a nuclear war in the best way, with the hope of winning it".
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
.Although Able Archer 83 simulated the release of Pershing II missiles for the first time, the missiles themselves were not deployed until November 23 – 22 days after the exercise completed (Pry, p. 34) These missiles, deployed to counter Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range missiles on its own western border, represented a major threat to the Soviets. The Pershing II was capable of destroying Soviet "hard targets" such as underground missile silos and command and control bunker
Bunker
A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...
s. The missiles could be emplaced and launched from any surveyed site in minutes, and because the guidance system was self-correcting, the missile system possessed a genuine "first strike
First strike
In nuclear strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing...
capability". Furthermore, it was estimated that the missiles (deployed in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
) could reach targets in the western Soviet Union within four to six minutes of their launch. These capabilities led Soviet leaders to believe that the only way to survive a Pershing II strike was to preempt
Preemptive war
A preemptive war is a war that is commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending war before that threat materializes. It is a war which preemptively 'breaks the peace'. The term: 'preemptive war' is...
it. This fear of an undetected Pershing II attack, according to CIA historian Benjamin B. Fischer, was explicitly linked to the mandate of Operation RYAN: to detect a decision by the United States to launch a nuclear attack and, it must be believed, to preempt it.
False alarm from the Soviet early missile warning system
On the night of September 26, 1983, the Soviet orbital missile early warning system (SPRN), code-named Oko, reported a single intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the territory of the United States. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav PetrovStanislav Petrov
On September 26, 1983 the Nuclear Early Warning System of the Soviet Union twice reported the launch of American Minuteman ICBMs from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were correctly identified as a false alarm by Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air...
, who was on duty during the incident, correctly dismissed the warning as a computer error when ground early warning radars did not detect any launches. Part of his reasoning was that the system was new and known to malfunction before; also, a full scale nuclear attack from the United States would involve thousands of simultaneous launches, not a single missile. Later, the system reported four more ICBM launches headed to the Soviet Union, but Petrov again dismissed the reports as false. The investigation that followed revealed that the system indeed malfunctioned and false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' orbits.
Exercise Able Archer 83
Thus, on November 2, 1983, as Soviet intelligence services were attempting to detect the early signs of a nuclear attack, NATO began to simulate one. The exercise, codenamed Able Archer, involved numerous NATO allies and simulated NATO's Command, Control, and Communications (C³) procedures during a nuclear war. Some Soviet leaders, because of the preceding world events and the exercise's particularly realistic nature, believed—in accordance with Soviet military doctrine—that the exercise may have been a cover for an actual attack. Indeed, a KGB telegram of February 17 described one likely scenario as such:In view of the fact that the measures involved in State Orange [a nuclear attack within 36 hours] have to be carried out with the utmost secrecy (under the guise of maneuvers, training etc) in the shortest possible time, without disclosing the content of operational plans, it is highly probable that the battle alarm system may be used to prepare a surprise RYAN [nuclear attack] in peacetime.
The February 17, 1983 KGB Permanent Operational Assignment assigned its agents to monitor several possible indicators of a nuclear attack. These included actions by "A cadre of people associated with preparing and implementing decision about RYAN, and also a group of people, including service and technical personnel ... those working in the operating services of installations connected with processing and implementing the decision about RYAN, and communication staff involved in the operation and interaction of these installations."
Because Able Archer 83 simulated an actual release, it is likely that the service and technical personnel mentioned in the memo were active in the exercise. More conspicuously, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1973 to 1998...
participated (though not concurrently) in the nuclear drill. United States President Reagan, Vice President George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Willard "Cap" Weinberger , was an American politician, vice president and general counsel of Bechtel Corporation, and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from January 21, 1981, until November 23, 1987, making him the third longest-serving defense secretary to date, after...
were also intended to participate. Robert McFarlane
Robert McFarlane
Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane was a National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, serving from 1983 through 1985.After a career in the Marines, he became part of the Reagan administration, and was a leading architect of the Strategic Defense Initiative for defending the United States...
, who had assumed the position of National Security Advisor
National Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
just two weeks earlier, realized the implications of such participation early in the exercise's planning and rejected it.
Another illusory indicator likely noticed by Soviet analysts was an influx of ciphered
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
communications between the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States. Soviet intelligence was informed that "so-called nuclear consultations in NATO are probably one of the stages of immediate preparation by the adversary for RYAN". To the Soviet analysts, this burst of secret communications between the United States and the UK one month before the beginning of Able Archer may have appeared to be this "consultation". In reality, the burst of communication regarded the US invasion of Grenada
Invasion of Grenada
The Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was a 1983 United States-led invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean island nation with a population of about 100,000 located north of Venezuela. Triggered by a military coup which had ousted a four-year revolutionary government, the invasion...
on October 25, 1983, which caused a great deal of diplomatic traffic as the sovereign of the island was Elizabeth II.
A further startling aspect reported by KGB agents regarded the NATO communications used during the exercise. According to the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
Centre's February 17, 1983 memo,
It [was] of the highest importance to keep a watch on the functioning of communications networks and systems since through them information is passed about the adversary's intentions and, above all, about his plans to use nuclear weapons and practical implementation of these. In addition, changes in the method of operating communications systems and the level of manning may in themselves indicate the state of preparation for RYAN.
Soviet Intelligence appeared to substantiate these suspicions by reporting that NATO was indeed using unique, never-before-seen procedures as well as message formats more sophisticated than previous exercises that possibly indicated the proximity of nuclear attack.
Finally, during Able Archer 83 NATO forces simulated a move through all alert phases, from DEFCON 5
DEFCON
A defense readiness condition is an alert posture used by the United States Armed Forces. The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and unified and specified combatant commands. It prescribes five graduated levels of readiness for the U.S...
to DEFCON 1. While these phases were simulated, alarmist KGB agents mistakenly reported them as actual. According to Soviet intelligence, NATO doctrine stated, "Operational readiness No 1 is declared when there are obvious indications of preparation to begin military operations. It is considered that war is inevitable and may start at any moment."
The Soviet Union, believing its only chance of surviving a NATO strike was to preempt it, readied its nuclear arsenal. The CIA reported activity in the Baltic Military District
Baltic Military District
The Baltic Military District was a military district of the Soviet armed forces, formed briefly before the German invasion, and then reformed after World War II and disbanded after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991....
, in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, and it determined that nuclear capable aircraft in Poland and East Germany were placed "on high alert status with readying of nuclear strike forces". Former CIA analyst Peter Vincent Pry goes further, saying he suspects that the aircraft were merely the tip of the iceberg. He hypothesizes that—in accordance with Soviet military procedure and history—ICBM
Intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile is a ballistic missile with a long range typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery...
silos, easily readied and difficult for the United States to detect, were also prepared for a launch.
Soviet fears of the attack ended as the Able Archer exercise finished on November 11. Upon learning of the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 by way of the double agent
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
, a British SIS
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
asset, President Reagan commented, "I don't see how they could believe that—but it’s something to think about."
Soviet reaction
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
, whose highest rank was KGB resident
Resident (title)
A Resident, or in full Resident Minister, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indirect rule....
in London, is the only Soviet source ever to have published an account of Able Archer 83. Oleg Kalugin
Oleg Kalugin
Oleg Danilovich Kalugin , is a former KGB general. He was a longtime head of KGB operations in the United States and later a critic of the agency.-Early life and the KGB career:...
and Yuri Shvets
Yuri Shvets
Yuri B. Shvets was a Major in the KGB during the years 1980-1990. From April 1985 to 1987 he worked in the Washington Rezidentura of the KGB....
, who were KGB officers in 1983, have published accounts that acknowledge Operation RYAN, but they do not mention Able Archer 83. Gordievsky and other Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
intelligence agents were extremely skeptical about a NATO first strike, perhaps because of their proximity to, and understanding of, the West. Nevertheless, agents were ordered to report their observations, not their analysis, and this critical flaw in the Soviet intelligence system – coined by Gordievsky as the "intelligence cycle" – fed the fear of US nuclear aggression.
No Soviet political figure has publicly acknowledged Able Archer 83. Marshal
Marshal of the Soviet Union
Marshal of the Soviet Union was the de facto highest military rank of the Soviet Union. ....
Sergei Akhromeyev
Sergei Akhromeyev
Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev was a soviet military figure, Hero of the Soviet Union , Marshal of the Soviet Union .Akhromeyev was a Naval Infantry junior officer during the German-Soviet War, serving with distinction on the Leningrad front. At one point he was ordered to guard and hold a road on...
, who at the time was Chief of the main operations directorate of the Soviet General Staff, told Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
historian Don Orbendorfer that he had never heard of Able Archer. The lack of public Soviet response over Able Archer 83 has led some historians, including Fritz W. Ermarth in his piece, "Observations on the 'War Scare' of 1983 From an Intelligence Perch", to conclude that Able Archer 83 posed no immediate threat to the United States.
American reaction
In May 1984, CIA Russian specialist Fritz W. Ermarth drafted "Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities", which concluded: "we believe strongly that Soviet actions are not inspired by, and Soviet leaders do not perceive, a genuine danger of imminent conflict with the United States." Robert GatesRobert Gates
Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....
, Deputy Director for Intelligence during Able Archer 83, has published thoughts on the exercise that refute this conclusion:
Information about the peculiar and remarkably skewed frame of mind of the Soviet leaders during those times that has emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union makes me think there is a good chance—with all of the other events in 1983—that they really felt a NATO attack was at least possible and that they took a number of measures to enhance their military readiness short of mobilization. After going through the experience at the time, then through the postmortems, and now through the documents, I don't think the Soviets were crying wolf. They may not have believed a NATO attack was imminent in November 1983, but they did seem to believe that the situation was very dangerous. And US intelligence [SNIE 11–9-84 and SNIE 11–10–84] had failed to grasp the true extent of their anxiety.
A still-classified
Classified information
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation...
report written by Nina Stewart for the President's Foreign Advisory Board concurs with Gates and refutes the previous CIA reports, concluding that further analysis shows that the Soviets were, in fact, genuinely fearful of US aggression.
Some historians, including Beth A. Fischer in her book The Reagan Reversal, pin Able Archer 83 as profoundly affecting President Reagan and his turn from a policy of confrontation towards the Soviet Union to a policy of rapprochement
Rapprochement
In international relations, a rapprochement, which comes from the French word rapprocher , is a re-establishment of cordial relations, as between two countries...
. Most other historians say that Reagan always intended to increase the United States defensive ability and then negotiate with the Soviet Union from a position of strength. The thoughts of Reagan and those around him provide important insight upon the nuclear scare and its subsequent ripples. On October 10, 1983, just over a month before Able Archer 83, President Reagan viewed a television film about Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...
being destroyed by a nuclear attack titled The Day After
The Day After
The Day After is a 1983 American television movie which aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. It was seen by more than 100 million people during its initial broadcast....
. In his diary, the president wrote that the film "left me greatly depressed".
Later in October, Reagan attended a Pentagon briefing on nuclear war. During his first two years in office, he had refused to take part in such briefings, feeling it irreverent to rehearse a nuclear apocalypse; finally, he consented to the Pentagon official requests. According to officials present, the briefing "chastened" Reagan. Weinberg said, "[Reagan] had a very deep revulsion to the whole idea of nuclear weapons ... These war games brought home to anybody the fantastically horrible events that would surround such a scenario." Reagan described the briefing in his own words: "A most sobering experience with
Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Willard "Cap" Weinberger , was an American politician, vice president and general counsel of Bechtel Corporation, and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from January 21, 1981, until November 23, 1987, making him the third longest-serving defense secretary to date, after...
John William Vessey Jr.
John William Vessey, Jr. is a retired United States Army general. He served as the tenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from June 18, 1982 to September 30, 1985...
in the Situation room
White House Situation Room
The White House Situation Room is a conference room and intelligence management center in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. It is run by the National Security Council staff for the use of the President of the United States and his advisors to monitor and deal...
, a briefing on our complete plan in the event of a nuclear attack."
These two glimpses of nuclear war primed Reagan for Able Archer 83, giving him a very specific picture of what would occur had the situation further developed. After receiving intelligence reports from sources including Gordievsky, it was clear that the Soviets were unnerved. While officials were concerned with the Soviet panic, they were hesitant about believing the proximity of a Soviet attack. Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
George P. Shultz
George P. Shultz
George Pratt Shultz is an American economist, statesman, and businessman. He served as the United States Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970, as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974, and as the U.S. Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989...
thought it "incredible, at least to us" that the Soviets would believe the US would launch a genuine attack. In general, Reagan did not share the secretary's belief that cooler heads would prevail, writing:
"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 ArmageddonArmageddonArmageddon is, according to the Bible, the site of a battle during the end times, variously interpreted as either a literal or symbolic location...
! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?"
According to McFarlane, the president responded with "genuine anxiety" in disbelief that a regular NATO exercise could have led to an armed attack. To the ailing Politburo
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Politburo , known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, functioned as the central policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Duties and responsibilities:The...
—led from the deathbed of the terminally ill Andropov, a man with no firsthand knowledge of the United States, and the creator of Operation RYAN—it seemed "that the United States was preparing to launch ... a sudden nuclear attack on the Soviet Union". In his memoirs, Reagan, without specifically mentioning Able Archer 83—he states earlier that he cannot mention classified information—wrote of a 1983 realization:
"Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians:
Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did …
During my first years in WashingtonWashington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strikeFirst strikeIn nuclear strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing...
against them. But the more experience I had with Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike …
Well, if that was the case, I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us."
Further reading
- "Operation RYAN, Able Archer 83, and Miscalculation: The War Scare of 1983" by Nathan B. Jones.
- "Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities", a declassified CIA publication from October 1984 that describes Soviet fears of a US attack.
- Did East German Spies Prevent A Nuclear War? by Vojtech MastnyVojtech MastnyVojtech Mastny is an American historian of Czech descent, professor of political science and international relations, specializing in the history of the Cold War. He has been considered one of the leading American authorities on Soviet affairs. Mastny received his Ph.D...
. - CNN Cold War - Spotlight: War games
- NATO First Strike Doctrine – The NATO nuclear policy at the time of Able Archer
- The Straight Dope: Operation Able Archer: Were the United States and the Soviet Union on the brink of nuclear war?
- Rhodes, RichardRichard RhodesRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction , including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb , and most recently, The Twilight of the Bombs...
(2007). Arsenals of Folly. Knopf (C-SPANC-SPANC-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
2/BookTV segment) - CIA official page on the Able Archer exercise
- 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse – Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, January 5, 2008 - Peter Scoblic, The U.S. versus Them. 2008