Able Archer 83: The Near-Nuclear Accident
A NATO command exercise in November 1983 was read in Moscow as preparation for a nuclear first strike. The year had been the worst of the late Cold War. Reagan had called the Soviet Union an evil empire in March and announced the Strategic Defense Initiative later that month; Pershing II missiles with a flight time of some six minutes were being deployed in West Germany; and a Soviet fighter had shot down a Korean airliner in September, killing 269 people. The Soviet leadership was also running Operation RYaN, an intelligence programme begun in 1981 on the premise that the West was planning a surprise attack, which instructed residencies to report indicators — lights burning late at defence ministries, blood bank activity, the movements of senior officials. An intelligence system told to find evidence of an attack found it. Able Archer 83 was an annual command post exercise practising the release procedures for nuclear weapons, and that year it introduced new coded communications, a period of radio silence, and the participation of heads of government in the script. Soviet forces in Eastern Europe were placed on alert and nuclear-capable aircraft in Poland and East Germany were readied. The exercise ended on 11 November and nothing happened. How close it came is still argued about — a 1990 American review concluded that the danger had been real and had not been understood at the time. Reagan was shown the assessments and was reportedly shaken by them. Reagan's response is the part that matters. He had assumed the Soviets knew perfectly well that the United States would not attack, discovered from the reporting that they did not, and spent the rest of his presidency saying so publicly and negotiating.
- Year: 1983 CE
- Category: Military
