“Able Archer 83 – A Nuclear War Avoided”
“Lessons of the Past Lost Today”
The cause of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is not entirely clear but the ongoing discussions of Ukraine admission into NATO is considered a factor in the Russian decision. The admission of Ukraine into NATO was not imminent but was a topic that was part of high-level NATO discussions since 2008. The isolation of Russia starting with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections severely curtailed communication between Russia and the West. This left open the possibility of misunderstandings of intentions between the two sides with their longstanding suspicion of each other. Just over forty years ago, the West and Soviet Union nearly stumbled into a nuclear war because both sides misread each other’s intentions. The narrow avoidance of nuclear war and its lessons have apparently been lost on current world leaders.
NATO conducted a command post exercise annually called Able Archer. Able Archer was an exercise to test procedures for launching a retaliatory nuclear strike in response to a Warsaw Pact invasion (Warsaw Pact was not used but was called the “Orange” team). In 1983, the exercise designated Able Arch 83 added elements to the exercise that included new procedures in secure communications, new codes, periods of radio silence, and the participation of some NATO heads of state. The exercise started on November 7, 1983, and ended on November 11th. The script in 1983 was that rising international tensions with proxy wars in Syria, South Yemen, and Iran escalating and Yugoslavia switching from the Eastern bloc to the Western bloc. This led to the invasion by the Warsaw Pact of Finland, Norway, and West Germany and included the use of chemical weapons in West Germany. The exercise called for the U.S. to eventually assume DEFCON 1 (nuclear forces on high alert with nuclear war considered imminent) due to the Soviet use of chemical weapons and its escalatory nature eventually requiring a nuclear response. This was the goal of the exercise to manage the escalation from conventional to a nuclear war and the procedures to launch a nuclear first strike.
NATO had announced the exercise well in advance and it was not the first time that the exercise had been conducted. However, 1983 was a particularly tense year in the Cold War. Long time leader, Leonid Brezhnev had passed away in 1982 and was replaced by the ailing head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov (who by the way had never even visited the West). The U.S., under President Ronald Reagan, sworn into office in 1981, was in year two of the largest peace time defense building up. This included the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (more commonly known as Star Wars), a provocative speech on the arms race by Reagan where he called the Soviets the “evil empire” and the decision to deploy nuclear capable cruise missiles and more importantly the medium range Pershing II nuclear missiles to western and southern Europe to counter the Soviets intermediate range RSD-10 Pioneer (NATO designation SS-20) nuclear missiles.
The Soviets were early in their war in Afghanistan which was turning into a proxy war of its own. The Soviets had dedicated two years under Andropov, when he was the head of the KGB to gather intelligence on U.S. nuclear first strike capability. This was due to the Soviet suspicion that the West was going to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union. They were collecting this information to feed into a new computer-generated process to predict when NATO was going to launch a first strike nuclear attack so that Soviets would know when to launch a pre-emptive nuclear first strike. This process required a vast intelligence network of human intelligence and improved satellite capability that was “complimented” by Soviet suspicions and paranoia that were near their near highest point of the Cold War.
The U.S. for its part was acting aggressively, or at least historically aggressively when compared to past American administrations that had not been seen since the 1950s and 1960s. The U.S. Navy had conducted exercises that were meant to illicit a Soviet response (to test Soviet radar capabilities and reaction) that included a carrier strike group to sail through the Greenland – Iceland – United Kingdom gap and was able to do so undetected and operate off the Soviet Kola Peninsula. The U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet conducted the largest naval exercise since World War II in the North Pacific with the fleet operating between the Aleutian Islands and the Soviet Kamchatka Peninsula with the goal to provoke the Soviets. This included F-14 overflights of a Soviet island military based and the Kuril Islands and simulated bombing runs. The U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) conducted simulated bombing raids along Soviet territory by flying right up to Soviet air space and breaking off just before penetrating the air space starting in 1981 and through to the current crisis of 1983.
The tensions significantly escalated in September 1983. On the night of September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airline flight (KAL007) enroute to Seoul via Anchorage over the Sea of Japan near the Sakhalin Island. The flight had strayed into Soviet restricted air space and the Soviets launched fighters to identify the aircraft and intercept it. Warning shots were fired but no response from KAL007 with suspicion that tracers were not used in the warning shots (it was night, and the KAL pilots probably did not see the warning shots). The fighters were subsequently ordered to shoot down the aircraft using an air-to-air missile. The Soviets accused the U.S. of deliberate provocation to test its air defenses and the U.S. accused the Soviets of hindering the investigation. The result of the incident was all 269 passengers and crew, including a U.S. Congressman from Georgia, Larry McDonald, were killed.
The next incident happened on the night of September 26, 1983, when the Soviet satellite missile launch warning system, codename Oko, reported an ICBM launch from the U.S. against the Soviet Union. The Soviet officer on duty ignored the warning when ground radars did not corroborate the launch. The system was new and prone to error, and the Soviet officer (Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov) knew that an ICBM attack from the U.S. would not be a single missile but hundreds to thousands of missiles. Later that night, Oko, reported four more launches which were also ignored. The missile warnings did make it up to Soviet high command, and though the launches were false, Petrov’s actions were scrutinized by his chain of command because of ongoing suspicion of U.S. intentions.
The next incident was the U.S. invasion of Grenada on October 25, 1983. The invasion did not involve the Soviet Union directly but demonstrated a renewed U.S. assertiveness on the world stage. It did involve the Soviet client state of Cuba which had military advisors on the island when the U.S. invaded. The Soviets also noticed during the invasion an increase of communication between the U.S. and the U.K. that they misinterpreted as coordination. This would play into their suspicion during Able Archer in November. The communications were in reality protests from Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over the U.S. decision to invade a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations without consultations.
This was the background when Able Archer 83 started in November. The exercise was an annual exercise, but the Soviets becoming weary of NATO intentions had speculated that a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union from the West could be camouflaged as an exercise. KGB observers reported that they witnessed nuclear weapons being loaded onto NATO aircraft at the start of the exercise which would not be part of a command post exercise. This set into motion a Soviet alert that led preparations for a nuclear response including putting forces in Eastern Europe and the western Soviet Union on standby to launch a nuclear attack. The response included loading nuclear weapons onto bombers and the deployment of mobile long-range nuclear missiles to their launch locations.
The Soviet leadership receiving fragment and possibly misinterpreted data from the field and the new nature of the communication of Able Archer 83, which included new ciphers more communication between the U.S. and U.K., played right into Soviet paranoia about the West’s intentions. Most of the leaders of the Soviet Union were elderly veterans of World War II and were taught to have suspicion about the West after having been invaded twice since 1914. The ratcheted tensions of 1983 played into their worst Soviet fears as Able Archer started, or was it an intentional escalation? Yuri Andropov was a Soviet hardliner, and he may have used this exercise to justify the arms race with the West and to match the defense spending of the U.S. This is still an alternate theory over the idea of the Soviets close to launching a nuclear attack on NATO but is one that has not been sufficiently investigated.
The U.S. for its part were aware of the Soviet nuclear activities during Able Archer but proceeded with the exercise as planned. The U.S. attitude was that Soviet threats and paranoia were not going to deter the U.S. and NATO from conducting readiness exercises. The U.S. did modify the exercise by not allowing President Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger to participate because it was too provocative and risky based on the determination of the National Security Council. The U.S. after the exercise, in late 1983, started receiving reports that the Soviets preparations were a real response to Able Archer, and that the exercise did put NATO and the Warsaw Pact very close to an unintended nuclear war. This shocked President Reagan who wrote into his diary that he surprised that the Soviets were so suspicious of the West that they believed the U.S. would launch an unprovoked first strike against the Soviet Union. This realization did lead to a reduction in rhetoric and provocations in the following year.
Able Archer 83 brought the world closer to nuclear war at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The chance of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the Soviets against the West, whether real fear or a manufactured act by Yuri Andropov, demonstrated that by the end of 1983, suspicions by the Soviets had put the world on a nuclear “hair trigger”. Despite the rhetoric in present day coming from the West and Russia, the crisis in the Ukraine is not as dangerous of a time as the fall of 1983. The one part that is the same is that neither the West nor Russia have learned, or maybe just forgotten the lessons of 1962 or 1983 when misreading the other side’s intent can lead to unnecessary international tension and risk wider wars.
References:
https://armscontrolcenter.org/the-soviet-false-alarm-incident-and-able-archer-83/
https://warontherocks.com/2021/03/the-mythical-war-scare-of-1983/
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-05/able-archer-how-close-of-a-call-was-it/