Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, nations have repeatedly come close to using nuclear weapons again and even to all-out nuclear war. The most famous episode in which nations came close to nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.[1] However, another terrifying case of narrowly averted nuclear war occurred 40 years ago this November.
In 1983, when Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were already extreme, a NATO military exercise called “Able Archer” further alarmed the Soviets. Soviet leaders feared the exercise was a cover for a surprise western nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and responded with their own preparations for nuclear war.
What makes this enormously dangerous incident particularly disturbing is that—unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, which unfolded largely in public, with both sides aware of the stakes—American leaders were unaware of the reaction they were provoking in their Soviet counterparts. The Able Archer episode offers a case study of how nations can miscommunicate with and misunderstand each other and how perilous the results can be.
Escalating Tensions
US-Soviet relations worsened during the late 1970s. A crucial point of contention was the presence of nuclear weapons in Europe. The Soviet Union had deployed medium-range nuclear missiles known as “Pioneers,” which could hit targets in western Europe.[2] In response, the United States planned to deploy its own medium-range nuclear missiles, including missiles called “Pershings,” to western Europe.[3]
While US policymakers might have seen the missile deployment as just a reciprocal response to the Soviets, Soviet leaders had a different view. The Soviet Pioneer missiles could not hit the United States, but US Pershing missiles could hit the Soviet Union. US missiles could conceivably hit Moscow and kill Soviet leaders before the Soviets could retaliate. To the Soviets, the Pershings were a possible sign of US preparations for a surprise attack.[4]
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan further intensified Cold War hostilities. The election of ardent Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan as US president the next year heightened Soviet fears of an American attack.
In 1981, KGB chief Yuri Andropov launched Operation RYaN, an international intelligence gathering project. Under RYaN (an acronym for the Russian phrase meaning “nuclear missile attack”), KGB agents and their eastern bloc allies carefully monitored western nations for signs of an imminent attack, such as heightened states of alert at military bases.[5]
Dueling Words and Weapons
Reagan was not wholly opposed to cooperation with the Soviets and pursued arms control talks early in his administration.[6] Nevertheless, his goal of deploying the Pershings to Europe as planned, together with his program of massive military spending, did not ease tensions. Arms control talks about the European missiles made no progress.[7]
Andropov became the preeminent Soviet leader in 1982. Matters came to a head between the leaders in 1983, the same year the US missiles were finally due to be stationed in Europe.
Reagan escalated the rhetorical war in a speech in March 1983, infamously denouncing the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and the “focus of evil in the modern world.”[8] Soon after, he announced US plans to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a military system in outer space meant to prevent nuclear missiles from hitting the United States.[9]
Reagan understood SDI as a defensive system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete. However, the Soviets understood SDI as another sign of American intentions to attack them: a US “shield” against nuclear weapons would allow the United States to attack the Soviet Union without fear of retaliation. Andropov publicly declared that “It is time they stopped devising one option after another in the search for the best ways of unleashing nuclear war in the hope of winning it.”[10]
Amid these clashes, Operation RYaN continued gathering information. The operation suffered from two flaws, though.
First, many indicators of western preparations for war that the Soviets were tracking were so broadly defined that innocuous activities could be interpreted as threatening.[11] A British drive for blood donors, for example, was reported to Moscow as a sign of possible stockpiling of blood supplies for wartime.[12]
Second, KGB and other agents tended to tell their superiors in Moscow what they wanted to hear, thus confirming the superiors’ existing suspicions.[13] The operation thus further fueled Soviet fears.
Airline Tragedy
US-Soviet enmity had tragic consequences in the summer. For decades, US spy planes had patrolled Soviet borders, gathering information.[14] The Reagan administration added a new practice to these long-standing patrols, though.
Under the new approach, US planes and ships would conduct various provocative operations close to the Soviet Union. The purpose of these exercises was to learn about Soviet early warning systems and response times, but they had the perverse effect of making a confrontation more likely. The Soviets responded by putting their air defenses on high alert. Andropov ordered any unidentified aircraft in Soviet airspace to be shot down.[15]
The night of August 31/September 1, the Soviets detected a US spy plane on a routine mission. The plane flew away without incident, but that same night a civilian Korean Airlines plane flew off course (for reasons that remain mysterious) and into Soviet airspace. Presumably mistaking the Korean plane for another US military flight and apparently unable to make contact, a Soviet fighter shot down the plane, killing all 269 people on board.[16]
The incident was a horrible accident, but Cold War tensions made it worse. Andropov privately lamented the military’s mistake, but publicly the Soviets denounced the Korean plane’s flight as a “provocation” and “a deliberate, pre-planned action pursuing far-reaching political and military aims.”[17] Reagan called the incident a “crime against humanity” and other Americans echoed the sentiment.[18]
In the autumn, two other international incidents contributed to the deterioration in US-Soviet relations. The October bombing of US Marine barracks in Lebanon led to increased security and heightened alert at US military facilities around the world.[19] The US invasion of Grenada that same month led to increased communications between the United States and the United Kingdom.[20] The KGB interpreted both the heightened military readiness and the increased US-UK communications as further signs of possible war preparations.
Able Archer
Tensions peaked in early November, when NATO conducted Able Archer, an annual exercise to practice procedures for authorizing and using nuclear weapons in a war against the Soviets.[21] The exercise involved military personnel close to NATO headquarters in Belgium as well as other European locations and consisted mostly of NATO units exchanging messages.[22]
In theory, Able Archer should not have been threatening. However, following years of worsening relations and the many ominous signs collected by Operation RYaN, the Soviets were now in a state of near panic. They feared Able Archer would serve as a cover for an actual nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
Captain Viktor Tkachenko, who commanded a Soviet nuclear missile unit, later recalled being briefed on the danger of a western attack. Another nuclear unit commander, General-Colonel Ivan Yesin, recalled the fear that “under the pretenses of [NATO] exercises that a sudden nuclear strike could be delivered.”[23]
The Soviet military was accordingly on alert, with nuclear weapons at increased readiness. About half the Pioneer missiles (which had originally helped created this crisis) were in wartime positions. Some nuclear weapons had been deployed to East Germany and Czechoslovakia.[24] Soviet fighter planes in these countries were also kept ready for immediate take off if conflict broke out.[25]
Soviet listening posts monitored the transmission of messages during Able Archer.[26] The KGB sent an urgent message to its agents on November 6 calling for vigilance for possible war preparations.[27]
Able Archer unfolded until, on November 8, it reached the stage when participants practiced requesting authorization from NATO leadership to use nuclear weapons. At this stage, participants notably switched to using a new format for sending such messages. The new message format had been introduced that year—and the unexpected break from past practice may have increased the Soviet monitors’ fears that Able Archer was not just an exercise.[28]
Tkachenko remembered that on November 8, “We were told to immediately go to raised combat alert.”[29] Yesin similarly remembered that “during the climax of the NATO exercise our state of alert was increased. The commanders of missile forces were told to stay in their bunkers full time in constant radio communication.”[30]
The Able Archer participants received the mock authorization to use nuclear weapons on November 9 and then followed procedures to confirm targets and carry out the nuclear strikes. That day, the KGB sent out another urgent message to agents warning the situation was critical and demanding immediate reports of threatening western activities.[31]
Had something unexpected happened at that point—if a NATO military unit had acted provocatively; if a technical malfunction had caused a false alarm; if some freak accident similar to the Korean airliner going astray had occurred—then the situation might have flared up into a real military conflict. Mercifully for humanity, though, nothing like that happened.
One small but important event might have helped lessen tensions. An eastern bloc spy working within the top levels of NATO sent his superiors a reassuring message on November 9 saying he saw no evidence of actual preparations for war.[32]
Able Archer came to an end on November 11, without incident and with the NATO participants oblivious to the panic their actions had caused.[33]
Relaxing Tensions
After Able Archer, US-Soviet relations initially seemed to continue their downward spiral. The Pershings and other US missiles were finally sent to Europe by the end of the year. In protest, the Soviets quit further arms control negotiations and promised to deploy more missiles of their own.[34]
However, US policymakers gradually realized how alarmed the Soviets had become. US and NATO intelligence noticed the heightened state of Soviet military readiness.[35] Perhaps more important, a British spy within the KGB passed along to the west information about the KGB fears of a possible nuclear attack.[36]
US National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane was disturbed by this information and spoke to Reagan about it.[37] Reagan was also rattled, writing in his diary that the Soviets are “so paranoid about being attacked, that without being in any way soft on them we ought to tell them that no one here has any intention of doing anything like that.”[38]
In January 1984, Reagan gave a speech that, along with criticisms of the Soviet Union, included more conciliatory comments. Reagan stressed the importance of regular dialogue, cooperation on shared interests, and arms control. He significantly stressed the importance of “practical, meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities and to diminish the risk of surprise attack.”[39] Andropov would never reciprocate these sentiments, though, as he died a few weeks later.[40]
The next year, Mikhail Gorbachev became the new Soviet leader. He was able to reciprocate, meeting with Reagan in November 1985. Despite disagreements, the two leaders affirmed the importance of arms control and that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”[41] US-Soviet relations then began to move away from the threat of nuclear war.
Avoiding Disaster
Two lessons stand out from this bizarre, frightening episode. One is the necessity of communication among nations. Journalist Taylor Downing, who chronicled the Able Archer crisis, noted, “Because there had been almost no dialogue between American and Soviet officials since the invasion of Afghanistan, there were no contacts through which either side could understand how the other was thinking.”[42] Clearer, more frequent communication can help avoid serious misunderstandings.
Another lesson is the need to consider how an adversary might view one’s actions. Steps that US leaders did not regard as inherently threatening, such as sending new missiles to Europe or pursuing SDI, were interpreted as serious threats by Soviet leaders. Reagan’s apparent surprise at Soviet fears of a US attack is notable given how harshly he had condemned the Soviet Union; why would Soviet leaders not fear attack from someone who called their country an “evil empire”?
US behavior may have fallen prey to an understandable human tendency to view one’s own actions as benign and to assume everyone else will view them the same way. Remembering that an adversary might not view one’s actions that way and trying to imagine how that adversary would interpret those actions is vital.
With international tensions, including among nuclear-armed nations, a continuing condition of world affairs, the lessons of the Able Archer scare are well worth remembering today. We do not want to come that close to the brink again.
A version of this essay originally appeared on the Consistent Life Network blog.
Notes
[1] See “Stepping Back from the Brink: The Cuban Missile Crisis and Lessons for Today,” for an analysis of that crisis.
[2] Marc Ambinder, The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 21-22; Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink (New York: De Capo, 2018), p. 75.
[3] Ambinder, The Brink, 22; Downing, 1983, 53.
[4] Ambinder, The Brink, 22; Downing, 1983, 78-80.
[5] Downing, 1983, 80-86, 87-89.
[6] Ibid. 59, 64, 94.
[7] Ibid., 52-55, 94-95.
[8] Ibid., 66-67.
[9] Ibid., 98-102.
[10] Ibid., 104-105.
[11] Ibid., 82.
[12] Ibid., 86.
[13] Ibid., 84-86, 124-125.
[14] Ibid., 140-141.
[15] Ibid., 136-139, 140-143.
[16] Ibid., 150, 156-168.
[17] Ibid., 179-182.
[18] Ibid., 177-179, 182-183.
[19] Ibid., 217, 228.
[20] Ibid., 217-218.
[21] Ambinder, The Brink, 2.
[22] Downing, 1983, 222-227.
[23] Ambinder, The Brink, 203; Downing, 1983, 243 [quotation in Ambinder].
[24] Ambinder, The Brink, 203; Downing, 1983, 238.
[25] Downing, 1983, 247-248.
[26] Ibid., 227.
[27] Ibid., 228-229.
[28] Ambinder, The Brink, 4-5, 192-193; Downing, 1983, 231.
[29] Downing, 1983, 243.
[30] Ibid., 245.
[31] Ibid., 250-251.
[32] Ibid., 251-253.
[33] Ibid., 256.
[34] Ambinder, The Brink, 226.
[35] Ibid., 222-223.
[36] Downing, 1983, 259-260.
[37] Ibid., 260-261.
[38] Ibid., 262.
[39] President Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation and Other Countries on United States-Soviet Relations,” January 16, 1984, transcript available from Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, accessed January 23, 2024, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-nation-and-other-countries-united-states-soviet-relations.
[40] Downing, 1983, 263-264.
[41] Ibid., 302-307.
[42] Ibid., 112.
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